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THE 



LIFE AND WORK 



OF 



ST. PAUL 



BT 



W. FAEEAE, D.D-, F.E.S 

iote .FeWow 0/ Trinity College, Cambridge 

Canon of Westminster 

and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen 



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NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
31 West 23d Street 

1902 



St ° E s I — 



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TO THB 

RIGHT REV. J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., 

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM, 

TO WHOM ALL STUDENTS OP ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES ARE DEEPLY INDEBTED, 
AND FROM WHOM FOE THIETT YEARS I HAVE RECEIVED MANY KINDNESSES, 

3f Dedicate 

THESE STUDIES ON THE LIFE AND WORK 



THE APOSTLE OF THE GENTILES. 



2 I 



PREFACE 



In the Life of Christ I endeavoured, to the best of my power, to furnish 
in the form of a narrative, such a commentary upon the Gospels as should 
bring to bear the most valuable results of modern research. By studying 
every line and word of the Evangelists with close and reverent attention ; 
by seeking for the most genuine readings and the most accurate translations ; 
by visiting the scenes in the midst of which our Lord had moved ; by en- 
deavouring to form a conception at once true and vivid of the circumstances 
of the age in which He lived, and the daily conditions of religious thought 
and national custom by which He was surrounded — I thought that, while call- 
ing attention in large to His Divine Nature as the Incarnate Son of God, I 
might be enabled to set forth in clear outline the teaching and the actions 
of that human life which He lived for our example, and of that death which 
He died for us men and for our salvation. 

In that work it was no small part of my object to enable readers to study 
the Gospels with a fuller understanding of their significance, and with a 
more intense impression of their reality and truth. In the present volume 
I have undertaken a similar task for the Acts of the Apostles and the thirteen 
Epistles of St. Paul. My first desire throughout has been to render some 
assistance towards the study of that large portion of the New Testament 
which is occupied with the labours and writings of the Apostle of the 
Gentiles ; to show the grandeur of the work and example of one who was 
indeed a " vessel of election ; " and to bring his character and history to bear 
on the due comprehension of those Epistles, which have bequeathed to all 
subsequent ages an inestimable legacy of wisdom and knowledge. In order 
to accomplish this task, I can conscientiously say that I have used my best 
diligence and care. Circumstances have precluded me from carrying out my 
original intention of actually visiting the countries in which St. Paul laboured; 
and to do this was the less necessary because abundant descriptions of them 
may be found in the works of many recent travellers. This branch of the 
subject has been amply illustrated in the well-known volumes of Messrs 
Conybeare and Howson, and Mr. Thomas Lewin. To those admirable works 



▼lii PREFACE. 

nil students of St. Paul must be largely indebted, and I need not say that my 
own book is not intended in any way to come into competition with theirs. 
It has been written in great measure with a different purpose, as well as from 
a different point of view. My chief object has been to give a definite, ac- 
curate, and intelligible impression of St. Paul's teaching ; of the controversies 
in which he was engaged ; of the circumstances which educed his statements 
of doctrine and practice ; of the inmost heart of his theology in each of its 
phases ; of his Epistles as a whole, and of each Epistle in particular as com- 
plete and perfect in itself. The task is, I think, more necessary than might 
be generally supposed. In our custom of studying the Bible year after year 
in separate texts and isolated chapters, we are but too apt to lose sight of 
what the Bible is as a whole, and even of the special significance of its 
separate books. I thought, then, that if I could in any degree render each 
of the Epistles more thoroughly familiar, either in their general aspect or 
in their special particulars, I should be rendering some service — however 
humble — to the Church of God. 

With this object it would have been useless merely to retranslate the 
Epistles. To do this, and to append notes to the more difficult expressions, 
would have been a very old, and a comparatively easy task. But to make the 
Epistles an integral part of the life — to put the reader in the position of those 
to whom the Epistles were first read in the infant communities of Macedonia 
and Proconsular Asia — was a method at once less frequently attempted, and 
more immediately necessary. I wish above all to make the Epistles comprehen- 
sible and real. On this account I have constantly deviated from the English 
version. Of the merits of that version, its incomparable force and melody, it 
would be impossible to speak with too much reverence, and it only requires 
the removal of errors which were inevitable to the age in wnich it was 
executed, to make it as nearly perfect as any work of man can be. But our 
very familiarity with it is often a barrier to our due understanding of many 
passages ; for " words," it has been truly said, " when often repeated, do 
ossify the very organs of intelligence." My object in translating without 
reference to the honoured phrases of our English Bible has expressly been, 
not only to correct where correction was required, but also to brighten the 
edge of expressions which time has dulled, and to reproduce, as closely as 
possible, the exact force and form of the original, even in those roughnesses, 
turns of expression, and unfinished clauses which are rightly modified in 
versions intended for public reading. To aim in these renderings at rhythm 
or grace of style has been far from my intention. I have simply tried to 
adopt the best reading, to give its due force to each expression, tense, and 



PREFACE. « 

particle, and to represent as exactly as is at all compatible with English idiom 
what St. Paul meant in the very way in which he said it. 

With the same object, I have avoided wearying the reader with those 
interminable discussions of often unimportant minutiae — those endless refu- 
tations of impossible hypotheses — those exhaustive catalogues of untenable 
explanations which encumber so many of our Biblical commentaries. Both 
as to readings, renderings, and explanations, I have given at least a definite 
conclusion, and indicated as briefly and comprehensively as possible the 
grounds on which it is formed. 

In excluding the enumeration of transient opinions, I have also avoided 
the embarrassing multiplication of needless references. When any German 
book has been well translated I have referred to the translation of it by its 
English title, and I have excluded in every way the mere semblance of re- 
search. In this work, as in the Life of Christ, I have made large use of 
illustrations from Hebrew literature. The Talmud is becoming better known 
every day ; the Mishna is open to the study of every scholar in the mag- 
nificent work of Surenhusius; and the most important treatises of the 
Gemara — such as the Berachoth and the Abhoda Zara — are now accessible to 
all, in French and German translations of great learning and accuracy. I 
have diligently searched the works of various Jewish scholars, such as Jost, 
Gratz, Schwab, Weill, Babbinowicz, Deutsch, Derenbourg, Munk, and others ; 
but I have had two great advantages — first, in the very full collection of 
passages from every portion of the Talmud, by Mr. P. J. Herson, in his 
Talmudic Commentaries on Genesis and Exodus — an English translation of 
the former of which is now in the press — and, secondly, in the fact that every 
single Talmudic reference in the following pages has been carefully verified 
by a learned Jewish clergyman — the Rev. M. Wolkenberg, formerly a mis- 
sionary to the Jews in Bulgaria. All scholars are aware that references to 
the Gemara are in general of a most inaccurate and uncertain character, but 
I have reason to hope that, apart, it may be, from a few accidental errata, 
every Hebraic reference in the following pages may be received with absolute 
reliance. 

The most pleasant part of my task remains. It is to offer my heartfelt 
thanks to the many friends who have helped me to revise the following pages, 
or have given me the benefit of their kind suggestions. To one friend in 
particular— Mr. 0. J. Monro, late Fellow of Trin. Coll., Cambridge — I owe 
the first expression of my sincerest gratitude. To the Rev. J. LI. Davies ana 
the Rev. Prof. Plumptre I am indebted for an amount of labour and trouble such 
as it can be the happiness of few authors to receive from scholars at once so 



X PREFACE. 

competent and so fully occupied by public and private duties. From the Very 
Rev. the Dean of Westminster ; from Mr. Walter Leaf, Fell, of Trin. Coll., 
Cambridge, my fri e nd and former pupil ; from the Rev. J. E. Kempe, Rectoi 
of St. James's, Piccadilly ; from Mr. R. Garnett, of the British Museum ; 
and from my valued colleagues in the parish of St. Margaret's, the Rev. H. 
H. Montgomery and the Rev. J. S. Northcote, I have received valuable 
advice, or kind assistance in the laborious task of correcting the proof-sheets. 
The Bishop of Durham had kindly looked over the first few pages, and but 
for his elevation to his present high position, I might have derived still fur- 
ther benefit from his wide learning and invariable kindness. If my book fail 
to achieve the purposes for which it was written, I shall at least have enjoyed 
the long weeks of labour spent in the closest study of the Word of God, and 
next to this I shall value the remembrance that I received from so many 
friends, a self- sacrificing kindness which I had so little right to expect, and 
am so little able to repay. 

I desire also to express my best obligations to my Publishers, and the 
gentlemen connected with their firm, who have spared no labour in seeing 
these volumes through the press. 

After having received such ungrudging aid it would be ungrateful to 
dwell on the disadvantages in the midst of which this book has been written. 
I have done my best under the circumstances in which a task of such dimen- 
sions was alone possible ; and though I have fallen far short of my own ideal 
— though I am deeply conscious of the many necessary imperfections of my 
work — though it is hardly possible that I should have escaped errors in a 
book involving so many hundreds of references and necessitating the exami- 
nation of so many critical and exegetical questions — I still hope that these 
volumes will be accepted as furnishing another part of a humble but faithful 
endeavour to enable those who read them to acquire a more thorough know- 
ledge of a large portion of the Word of God. 

F. W. FARRAR. 



8t. Maboabet's Reotobt, 
1879. 






TABLE OF COETE1STS. 



totfk I.— THE TRAINING OF THE APOSTLE. 

CHAPTER I. — Introductory. paob 

Various types of the Apostolate — St. Peter and St. John — The place af St. 
Paul in the History of the Church — His Training in Judaism — What we 
may learn of his Life — Modern Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles — 
Authorities for the Biography of St. Paul — Records, though fragmentary, 
suffice for a true estimate — Grandeur of the Apostle's Work . 1 

CHAPTER II.— Boyhood in a Heathen City. 

Date of his Birth — Question of Birthplace — Giscala or Tarsus ? — The Scenery 
of Tarsus — Its History and Trade — Paul's indifference to the beauties of 
Nature — His Parentage — Early Education — Contact with Paganism — Pa- 
ganism as seen at Tarsus — Paganism as it was — A decadent culture — 
Impressions left on the mind of St. Paul — St. Paul a Hebraist — His 
supposed familiarity with Classical Literature shown to be an untenable 
opinion 7 

CHAPTER III.— The School of the Rabbi. 

Roman Citizenship — School Life at Tarsus and Jerusalem — Gamaliel — Perma- 
nent effects of Rabbinic training as traced in the Epistles — St. Paul's 
knowledge of the Old Testament — His method of quoting and applying 
the Scriptures — Instances — Rabbinic in form, free in spirit — Freedom 
from Rabbinic faults — Examples of his allegoric method — St. Paul a 
Hagadist — The Hagada and the Halacha . . . .... 23 

CHAPTER IV.— Saul the Pharisee. 

Early struggles — The Minutiae of Pharisaism — Sense of their insufficiency — 
Legal blamelessness gave no peace — Pharisaic hypocrisies — Troubled 
years — Memories of these early doubts never obHterated — Had Saul seen 
Jesus ? — It is almost certain that he had not — Was he a married man ? 
— Strong probability that he was . 35 

CHAPTER V.— St. Peter and the First Pentecost. 

Saul's First Contact with the Christians — Source of their energy — The Resur- 
rection — The Ascension — First Meeting — Election of Matthias — The Upper 
Room — Three Temples — The Descent of the Spirit at Pentecost — Earth- 
quake, Wind, and Flame — Tongues — Nature of the Gift — Varying opinions — 
Ancient and Modern Views — Glossolaly at Corinth — Apparent nature of the 
sign — Derisive Comment — Speech of Peter — Immediate Effects on the 
Progress of the Church 46 

CHAPTER VI.— Early Persecutions. 

Beauty and Power of the Primitive Christian Life — Alarm of the Sanhedrin — 
Peter and John — Gamaliel — Toleration and Caution — Critical Arguments 
against the Genuineness of his Speech examined — The Tubingen School on 
theActe , , , , , P . , , , , , . 5j) 



Xil CONTENTS. 

TBook M.-ST. STEPHEN AND THE HELLENISTS. 

CHAPTER VII.— The Diaspora : Hebraism and Hellenism. pasi 

Preparation for Christianity by three events — Spread of the Greek Language — 
Rise of the Roman Empire — Dispersion of the Jews — Its vast Effects — 
Its Influence on the Greeks and Romans — Its Influence on the Jews them- 
selves — Worked in opposite directions — Pharisaic Jews — Growing Power 
of the Scribes — Decay of Spirituality— Liberal Jews — Commerce Cosmo- 
politan — Hellenes and Hellenists — Classes of Christians tabulated — Two 
Schools of Hellenism — Alexandrian Hellenists — Hebraising Hellenists- 
Hellenists among the Christians — Widows — The Seven — Stephen . . 65 

CHAPTER VIII.— Work and Martyrdom of St. Stephen. 
Success of the Seven — Pre-eminent faith of Stephen — Clear Views of the 
Kingdom — Tardier Enlightenment of the Apostles — Hollow Semblance of 
Union with Judaism — Relation of the Law to the Gospel — Ministry of St. 
Stephen — Hellenistic Synagogues — Saul — Power of St. Stephen — Rabbinic 
Views of Messiah — Scriptural View of a Suffering Messiah — Suspected 
Heresies — Discomfiture and Violence of the Hellenists — St. Stephen 
arrested — Charges brought against him — The Trial — " The Pace of an 
Angel " — The Speech delivered in Greek — Line of Argument — Its consum- 
mate Skill — Proofs of its Authenticity- — His Method of Refutation and 
Demonstration — Sudden Outburst of Indignation — Lawless Proceedings — 
" He fell asleep " — Saul 76 



IBook III.— THE CONVERSION. 
CHAPTER IX.— Saul the Persecutor. 
Age of Saul — His Violence — Severity of the Persecution underrated — " Com- 
pelled them to blaspheme " — Flight of the Christians — Continued Fury of 
Saul — Asks for Letters to Damascus — The High Priest Theophilus — Aretas 95 

CHAPTER X.— The Conversion of Saul. 
he Commissioner of the Sanhedrin — The Journey to Damascus — Inevitable 
Reaction and Reflection — Lonely Musings — Kicking against the Pricks — 
Doubts and Difficulties — Noon — The Journey's End — The Vision and the 
Voice — Change of Heart — The Spiritual Miracle — Sad Entrance into 
Damascus — Ananias — The Conversion as an Evidence of Christianity . 101 

CHAPTER XI.— The Retirement of St. Paul. 
Saul a " Nazarene " — Records of this Period fragmentary — His probable 
Movements guided by Psychological Considerations — His Gospel not " of 
man" — Yearnings for Solitude — Days in Damascus — Sojourn in Arabia — 
Origin of the " Stake in the Flesh" — Feelings which it caused — Influence 
on the Style of the Epistles — Peculiarities of St. Paul's Language — 
Alternating Sensibility and Boldness 115 

CHAPTER XII.— The Beginning of a Long Martyrdom. 
"To the Jew first" — Reappearance in Damascus — Saul in the Synagogues — 
No ordinary Disputant — The Syllogism of Violence— First Plot to Murder 
him — His Escape from Damascus — Journey to Jerusalem .... 125 

CHAPTER XIII.— Saul's Reception at Jerusalem. 
Visit to Jerusalem — Apprehensions and Anticipations — St. Peter's Goodness 
of Heart — Saul and James — Contrast of thoir Character and Epistles — 
The Intervention of Barnabas — Intercourse with St. Peter — Saul and the 
IL-llr ni its Trance and Vision of Saul at Jerusalem — Plot to Murder him 
9 -Flight — Silent Period at Tarsus , , f ? , t » » 129 



CONTENTS. XIW 

CHAPTER XTV.— Gaius and the Jews— Peace of the Chukch. fage 
"Then had the Church rest" — Survey of the Period — Tiberius — Accession 
of Gaius (Caligula) — Herod Agrippa I. — Persecution of the Jews of 
Alexandria — Fall of Flaccus — Madness of Gaius — Determined to place 
his Statue in the Temple — Anguish of the Jews — The Legate Petronius — 
Embassy of Philo — Murder of Gaius — Accession of Claudius . . .137 



TBook IV.— THE RECOGNITION OF THE GENTILES. 

CHAPTER XV.— The Samaritans— The Eunuch— The Centurion. 
The brightening Dawn of the Church — " Other Sheep not of this Fold " — Conse 
quence of Saul's Persecution — Philip in Samaria — Simon Magus — The 
Ethiopian Eunuch — Significance of his Baptism — St. Peter at Joppa — 
House of Simon the Tanner — Two Problems : (1) What was the Relation 
of the Church to the Gentiles (2) and to the Levitical Law ? — Christ and 
the Mosaic Law — Utterances of the Prophets — Uncertainties of St. Peter 
— The Tanner's Roof — The Trance — Its Strange Significance and Appro- 
priateness — " This he said . . . making all meats pure " — Cornelius — 
" God is no respecter of persons " — Bold initiative of Peter — Ferment 
at Jerusalem — How it was appeased . 144 



IBook V.— ANTIOCH. 
CHAPTER XVI.— The Second Capital of Christianity. 
Hellenists boldly preach to the Gentiles — Barnabas at Antioch — Need of a 
Colleague — He brings Saul from Tarsus — The Third Metropolis of the 
World, the Second Capital of Christianity — Site and Splendour of Antioch 
— Its Population — Its Moral Degradation — Scepticism and Credulity — 
Daphne and its Asylum — The Street Singon — The Name of " Christian" — 
Its Historic Significance — Given by Gentiles — Christiani and Chrestiani — 
Not at once adopted by the Church — Marks a Memorable Epoch — Joy of 
Gentile Converts 160 

CHAPTER XVII.— A Martyrdom and a Retribution. 
A Year of Happy Work — Another Vision — Agabus and the Famine— Collec- 
tions for Poor Brethren of Jerusalem — Paul and Barnabas sent with the 
Chaluka — The Royal Family of Adiabene — The Policy of Herod Agrippa I. 
— Martyrdom of St. James the Elder — Seizure and Escape of Peter — 
Agrippa in his Splendour — Smitten of God — St. Mark .... 171 

CHAPTER XVIII. —Judaism and Heathenism. 
The Church at Antioch — Stirrings of the Missionary Spirit — The Prophets and 
the Gentiles — Difficulties of the Work — Hostility of the Jews to the 
Gospel — Abrogation of the Law — A Crucified Messiah — Political Timidity 
— Hatred of Gentiles for all Jews and especially for Christian Jews — 
Depravity of the Heathen World — Influx of Oriental Superstitions — 
Despairing Pride of Stoicism — The Voice of the Spirit .... 181 



"Booh VI.— THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 
CHAPTER XLX.— Cyprus. 
Sent forth by the Holy Ghost" — Ancient Travelling — Prospects of the 
Future — Paul, his Physical and Moral Nature — His Extraordinary Gifts — 
Barnabas — Mark — Arrival at Cyprus — The Pagan Population— Salamis — 
The Syrian Aphrodite — Paphos— Sergius Paulus — Elymas — Just Denuncia- 
tion and Judgment — " Saul who also is called Paul" . , , , .189 



MV CONTENTS. 

PAen 

CHAPTER XX.— Antioch in Pisidia. 
Perga — Defection of Mark — Passes of the Taurus — St. Paul's Absorption in 
his one Purpose — Pisidian Antioch — Worship of the Synagogue — The 
Parashah and Haphtarah — The Sermon in the Synagogue — Example of 
Paul's Method — Power of his Preaching — Its Effect on the Jews— Imme- 
diate Eesults — " We turn to the Gentiles " — Driven from the City . . 201 

CHAPTER XXI.— The Close op the Jouenet. 

Jconium — Persistent Enmity of the Jews — Lystra — Healing of the Cripple — 
Unwelcome Honours — The Fickle Mob — The Stoning — Probable Meeting 
with Timothy — Derbe — They Retrace their Steps — Return to Antioch — ■ 
Date of the Journey — Effects of Experience on St. Paul — The Apostle of 
the Gentiles 212 

CHAPTER XXII.— The Consultation at Jerusalem. 
"Certain from Judaea" visit Antioch — A Hard Dogma — Circumcision — A 
Crushing Yoke — Paul's Indignation — Reference to Jerusalem — The Dele- 
gates from Antioch — Sympathy with them in their Journey — The First 
Meeting — The Private Conference — The Three won over to St. Paul's 
Views — Their Request about the Poor — Titus — Was he Circumcised ? — 
Strong Reasons for believing that he was — Motives of St. Paul — The 
Final Synod — Eager Debate — The Speech of St. Peter — St. James : his 
Character and Speech — His Scriptural Argument — Final Results — The 
Synod not a " Council" — The Apostolic Letter — Not a Comprehensive and 
Final " Decree " — Questions still Unsolved — Certain Genuineness of the 
Letter — Its Prohibitions 224 

CHAPTER XXIII.— St. Peter and St. Paul at Antioch. 
Joy at Antioch — Ascendency of St. Paul — St. Peter at Antioch — Arrival of 
" certain from James" — " He separated himself " — Want of Moral Courage 
— Unhappy Results — Arguments of St. Paul — Character of St. Peter — A 
Public Rebuke — Effects of the Rebuke — Malignity of the Pseudo Clemen- 
tine Writings — Mission-Hunger — The Quarrel of Paul and Barnabas — 
Results of their Separation — Overruled for Good — -Barnabas and Mark . 247 

CHAPTER XXIV.— Beginning of the Second Missionary Journey- 
Paul, Silas, Timothy— Paul in Galatia. 
Paul and Silas — The Route by Land — The Cilician Gates — Derbe — Where is 
Barnabas ? — Lystra — " Timothy, my Son " — His Circumcision and Ordina- 
tion — The Phrygian and Galatian District — Scanty Details of the 
Record — The Galatians — Illness of St. Paul — Kindness of the Galatians 
— Varied Forms of Religion— Pessinus, Ancyra, Tavium — Their course 
guided by Divine intimations — Troas — The Vision — "Come over into 
Macedonia and help us " — Meeting with St. Luke — His Character and 
Influence . 256 



TBook VII.— CHRISTIANITY IN MACEDONIA. 
CHAPTER XXV.— Philippi. 
The Sail to Neapolis — Philippi — The Place of Prayer — Lydia — Macedonian 
Women - Characteristics of Philippian Converts— The Girl with a Spirit of 
Python — The Philippian Praetors — Their Injustice — Scourging — The 
Dungeon and the Stocks — Prison Psalms — The Earthquake — Conversion 
of the Jailer — Honourably dismissed from Philippi 271 

CHAPTER XXVI.— Thessalonica and Beroia. 
Theasalonioa and its History — Poverty of the Apostles — Philippian Generosity 



CONTENTS. XT 

PAGE 

— Success among the Gentiles — Summary of Teaching — St. Paul's State 
■>f Mind — The Mob and the Politarchs — Attack on the House of Jason — 
Flight to Bercea — " These were more noble " — Sopater — Escape to Athens . 285 



TBoefc VIM.— CHRISTIANITY IN ACHAIA. 
CHAPTER XXVn.— St. Paul at Athens. 
Th° Spell of Athens — Its Effect on St. Paul — A City of Statues — Heathen Art 
— Impression produced on the Mind of St. Paul — Altar " to the Unknown 
God " — Athens under the Empire — Stoics and Epicureans — Curiosity 
excited — The Areopagus — A Mock Trial — Speech of St. Paul — Its Power, 
Tact, and Wisdom — Its many-sided Applications — Mockery at the Resur- 
rection — Results of St. Paul's Visit ....... 295 

CHAPTER XXVIII.— St. Paul at Corinth. 
Corinth — Its Population and Trade — Worship of Aphrodite — Aquila and 
Priscilla — Eager Activity — Crispus — Character of the Corinthian Converts 
— Effect of Experience on St. Paul's Preaching — Rupture with the Jews — 
Another Vision — Gallio — Discomfiture of the Jews — Beating of Sosthenes 
— Superficial Disdain 313 

CHAPTER XXIX.— The First Epistle to the Thessalonians. 
Timothy with St. Paul — Advantages of Epistolary Teaching — Importance of 
bearing its Characteristics in Mind — Vivid Spontaneity of Style — St. 
Paul's Form of Greeting — The Use of "we" and "I " — Grace and Peace — 
The Thanksgiving — Personal Appeal against Secret Calumnies — Going off 
at a Word — Bitter Complaint against the Jews — Doctrinal Section — The 
Coming of the Lord — Practical Exhortations — Unreasonable Fears as regards 
the Dead — Be ready — Warning against Insubordination and Despondency 
— Its Reception — The Second Advent — Conclusion of the First Epistle . 325 

CHAPTER XXX. — The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. 
News from Thessalonica — Effects of the First Letter — A New Danger — Escha- 
tological Excitement — " We which are alive and remain " — St. Paul's 
Meaning — The Day of the Lord — Destruction of the Roman and the 
Jewish Temples — Object of the Second Epistle — The Epistles Rich in 
Details, but Uniform in Method — Consist generally of Six Sections — The 
Greeting — Doctrinal and Practical Sections of the Epistle — Moral 
Warnings — Autograph Authentication — Passage respecting " the Man of 
Sin" — Mysterious Tone of the Language — Reason for this — Similar 
Passage in Josephus — What is meant by " the Checker " and " the Check " 
— The rest incapable of present explanation 340 



Book IX.— EPHESUS. 
CHAPTER XXXI.— Paul at Ephesus. 
St. Paul leaves Corinth — Nazarite Vow— Ephesian Jews — Fourth Visit to Jeru- 
salem — Cold Reception — Return to Antioch — Confirms Churches of Galatia 
and Phrygia — Re-visits Ephesus — Its Commerce, Fame, and Splendour — 
Its Great Men — Roman Rule — Asylum — Temple of Artemis — The 
Heaven-fallen — Megabyzi — Ephesian Amulets — Apollonius of Tyana — 
Letters of the Pseudo-Heraclitus — Apollos — Disciples of John— School of 
Tyrannus — " Handkerchiefs and Aprons " — Discomfiture of the Bent 
Sceva — Burning of Magic Books — Trials and Perils at Ephesus — Bad 
News from Corinth — The Ephesia — Exasperation of the Artisans — Artemis 
—Demetrius — Attempt to seize Paul— Riot in the Theatre — Gaius and 



£vi CONTENTS, 

Aristarchus — Speech of the Recorder — Farewell to the Church at Ephesus 
— Present Condition of Ephesus 351 

CHAPFER XXXII. — First Letter to the Church at Corinth. 
Difficulties of Converts from Heathenism — Letter from Corinth — Various En- 
quiries — Disputes in the Church — Apollos' Party — Petrine Party — The 
Judaic Teacher — Disorderly Scenes in Church Assemblies — The AgapaB — 
Desecration of the Eucharistic Feast — Condonation of the Notorious 
Offender — Steps taken by St. Paul — Sends Titus to Corinth — Dictates to 
Sosthenes a letter to the Corinthians — Topics of Letter — Greeting — Thanks- 
givings — Party- spirit — True and False Wisdom — Sentence on the Notorious 
Offender — Christ our Passover — Christian and Heathen Judges — Lawful 
and Unlawful Meats — Marriage — Celibacy — Widows — Divorce — Meats 
offered to Idols — Digression on his Personal Self-abnegation, and Inference 
from it — Covering the Head — Disorder at the Lord's Supper — Glossolalia — 
Charity — Rules about Preaching — The Resurrection — Practical Directions 
— Salutations — Benediction ... ... 376 

CHAPTER XXXIIL— Second Letter to the Church at Corinth. 

Anw«*ty of St. Paul — Short Stay at Troas — Meeting with Titus — Effect of First 
Letter on the Corinthians — Personal Opposition to his Authority — Return 
of Titus to Corinth — Trials in Macedonia — Characteristics of the Epistle — 
Greeting — Tribulation and Consolation — Self-defence — Explanations — Me- 
taphors — Ministry of the New Covenant — Eloquent Appeals — Liberality of 
the Churches of Macedonia — Exhortation to Liberality — Sudden change of 
Tone — Indignant Apology — Mingled Irony and Appeal — False Apostles — 
Unrecorded Trials of his Life — Vision at his Conversion — Proofs of the 
Genuineness of his Ministry — Salutation — Benediction .... 401 

CHAPTER XXXIV.— Second Visit to Corinth. 
Second Sojourn in Macedonia — Brief Notice by St. Luke — Hlyricum the furthest 
point of his Missionary Journey — Institution of the Offertory — His Fellow 
Travellers in the Journey to Corinth — His Associates at Corinth — Condition 
of the Church — Two Epistles written at Corinth 420 

CHAPTER XXXV.— Importance of the Epistle to the Galathns. 
Judaising Opponents among the Galatian Converts — Galatian Fickleness — 
Arguments against St. Paul — Circumcision the Battle-ground — Christian 
Liberty at Stake — Instances of Proselytes to Circumcision among the 
Heathen Royal Families — Courage and Passion of St. Paul's Argument — 
The Epistle to the Galatians, the Manifesto of Freedom from the Yoke 
of Judaism 425 

CHAPTER XXXVI.— The Epistle to the Galatians. 
Brief Greeting — Indignant Outburst — Vindication of his Apostolic Authority — 
Retrospect — Slight Intercourse with the Apostles — Co-ordinate Position — 
Kephas at Antioch — Second Outburst — Purpose of the Law — Its Relation 
to the Gospel — Boldness of his Arguments — Justification by Faith — Alle- 
gory of Sarah and Hagar — Bondage to the Law — Freedom in Christ — 
Lusts of the FleBh — Fruits of the Spirit — Practical Exhortations — Auto- 
graph Conclusion — Contemplates another Visit to Jerusalem, and a Letter 
to Rome 43J 

CHAPTER XXXVIL— The Epistle to the Romans, and the 
Theology op St. Paul. 
The Jews at Rome — Numbers of the Christian Converts — Christianity Intro- 
duced into Rome — Not by St. Peter — Was the Church mainly Jewish or 
Gentile ? — Solution of Apparent Contradictions — Note on the Sixteenth 
Chapter — p —Vably Part of a Letter to Ephesus — Main Object of the 



CONTENTS. IV11 

PAGE 

Epistle — Written in a Peaceful Mood — Theory of Baur as to the Origin of 
the Epistle — Origin and Idea of the Epistle — Outlines of the Epistle . . 445 

II.— General Thesis op the Epistle. 
Salutation — Thanksgiving — Fundamental Theme — The Just shall live by Faith 

— Examination of the Meaning of the Phrase 458 

III. — UNIVERSALITY OP SlN. 

Guilt of the Gentiles — God's Manifestation of Himself to the Gentiles in His 
Works — Therefore their Sin inexcusable — Vices of Pagan Life — The Jew 
more inexcusable because more enlightened — Condemned in spite of their 
Circumcision and Legal Obedience 464 

IT.— Objections and Confirmations. 
Has the Jew an Advantage ? — Can God justly Punish ? — Eepudiation of False 
and Malignant Inferences — Jew and Gentile all under Sin — Quotations 
from the Psalms and Isaiah ......... 470 

V. — Justification by Faith. 

" The Righteousness of God " explained — The Elements of Justification — Faith 
does not nullify the Law — Abraham's Faith — Peace and Hope the Blessed 
Consequences of Faith — Three Moments in the Religious History of Man- 
kind — Adam and Christ — May we sin that Grace may abound ? — The Con- 
ception of Life in Christ excludes the possibility of Wilful Sin — The Law 
cannot Justify — The Law Multiplies Transgressions — We are not under 
the Law, but under Grace — Apparent Contradictions — Faith and Works — 
Dead to the Law — The Soul's History — Deliverance — Hope — Triumph . 472 

CHAPTER XXXVIII.— Predestination and Free Wdll. 
Rejection of the Jews — Foreknowledge of God — The Resistance of Evil — The 
Potter and the Clay — Man's Free Will — Fearlessness and Conciliatoriness 
of St. Paul's Controversial Method — Rejection of Israel — Not Total nor 
Final — Gleams of Hope — Christ the Stone of Offence to the Jews — Pro- 
phesies of a Future Restoration — The Heave-offering — The Oleaster and 
the Olive — The Universality of Redeeming Grace — Doxology . . . 491 

CHAPTER XXXIX.— Fruits of Faith. 

Break in the Letter — Practical Exhortation — Christian Graces — Obedience to 
Civil Powers — Value of Roman Law — Functions of Civil Governors — Pay- 
ment of Civil Dues — Ebionitic Tendencies — Advice to " Strong " and 
"Weak " — Entreaty for the Prayers of the Church — Benediction — Reasons 
for concluding that the Sixteenth Chapter was addressed to the Ephesian 
Church — Concluding Doxology 501 

CHAPTER XL.— The Last Journey to Jerusalem. 

Preparing to Start for Jerusalem — Fury of the Jews — Plot to Murder St. Paul 
— How defeated — Companions of his Journey — He Remains at Philippi 
with St. Luke for the Passover — Troas — Eutychus — "\ 'alk from Troas to 
Assos — Sail among the Grecian Isles to Miletus — Farewell Address to the 
Elders of Ephesus — Sad Parting — Coos — Rhodes — Patara — Tyre — The 
Prayer on the Sea Shore — Csesarea — Philip the Evangelist — The Prophet 
Agabus — Warnings of Danger — Fifth Visit to Jerusalem — Guest of Mnason 
the Cyprian — Assembly of the Elders — James the Lord's Brother — Presen- 
tation of the Contribution from the Churches — St. Paul's Account of his 
Work — Apparent Coldness of his Reception — An Humiliating Suggestion — 
Nazarite Vow — Elaborate Ceremonies — St. Paul Consents — His Motives 
and Justification — Political State of the Jews at this time — Quarrels with 
the Romans — Insolent Soldiers— Quarrel with Samaritans — Jonathan— 






£vifi CONTENTS. 

Felix — Sicarii — St. Paul recognised in the Court of the Women — A Tumult 
— Lysias — Speech of St. Paul to the Mob — Preparation for Scourging — 
Civis Romanus sum — Trial by the Sanhedrin — Ananias the High Priest — 
" Thou Whited Wall " — Apology — St. Paul asserts himself a Pharisee— Was 
this Justifiable ? — Is told in a Vision that he shall go to Eome — The 
Vow of the Forty Jews — Conspiracy revealed by a Nephew — St. Paul 
oonducted to Caesarea — Letter of Lysias to Felix — In Prison . . . 510 

CHAPTER XLL— Paul and Felix. 
Trial before Felix— Speech of Tertullus— St. Paul's Defence— The Trial post- 
poned — Discourse of St. Paul before Felix and Drusilla — Riot in Caesarea — 
Felix recalled — Two Years in Prison 547 

CHAPTER XLII.— Paul befoee Festus and Agrdppa n. 
Fresh Trial before Porcius Festus — His Energy and Fairness — St. Paul appeals 
to Caesar — Visit of Agrippa II. and Berenice to Festus — A Grand Occasion 
— St. Paul's Address — Appeal to Agrippa II., and his Reply — Favourable 
Impression made by St. Paul 552 

CHAPTER XLIII.— Voyage to Rome and Shipwbeok. 
Sent to Rome under charge of Julius — The Augustani — Prisoners chained to 
Soldiers — Plan of the Journey — Luke and Aristarchus — Day spent at 
Sidon — Voyage to Myra — The Alexandrian Wheat- ship— Sail to Crete — 
Windbound at Fair Havens — Advice of St. Paul — Rejected — Julius decides 
to try for Port Phoenix — The Typhoon — Euroaquilo — Great Danger — Clauda 
— Securing the Boat — Frapping the Vessel — Other measures to save the 
Ship — Misery caused by the continuous Gale — St. Paul's Vision — He 
encourages them — They near Land — Ras el Koura — Attempted Escape of 
the Sailors — The Crew take Food — Final Shipwreck — The Soldiers — Escape 
of the Crew 56 1 



TBook X.— ROME. 
CHAPTER XLIV.— Paul at Rome. 

Received with Hospitality by the Natives of Melita— A Viper fastens on his 
Hand — Three Months at Malta— The Protos — The Father of Publius healed 
— Honour paid to St. Paul — Embarks on board the Castor and Pollux — 
Syracuse — Rhegium — Puteoli — Journey towards Rome — Met by Brethren 
at Appii Forum — Tres Tabernae — The Appian Road — Enters Rome — 
Afranius Burrus — Observatio — Irksomeness of his Bondage — Summons the 
Elders of the Jews — Their cautious Reply — Its Consistency with the 
Epistle to the Romans — The Jews express a wish for further Information — 
A long Discussion — Stern Warning from the Apostle — Two Years a 
Prisoner in Rome — The Constancy of his Friends — Unmolestedly . . 573 

CHAPTER XLV.— The First Roman Imprisonment. 
His hired Apartments — His general Position — His state of Mind — His Life and 
Teaching in Rome — Condition of various Classes in Rome — Improbability 
of his traditional Intercourse with Seneca — "Not many noble" — Few Con- 
verts among the Aristocracy of Rome — Condition of Slaves — Settlement of 
the Jews in Rome — First encouraged by Julius Caesar — Their Life and Con- 
dition among the Roman Population — The Character and Government of 
Nero — The Downfall of Seneoa — Fenius Rufus and Tigellinus, Praetorian 
Prefects 58] 

CHAPTER XLVI.— The Epistles op the Captivity. 
The History of St. Paul's Imprisonment derived from the Epistles of the 
Captivity The four Groups into which the Epistles may be divided — The 



CONTENTS. XIX 

PAGE 

Characteristics of those Groups — Key-note of eaoh Epistle — The Order of 
the Epistles — Arguments in favour of the Epistle to the Philippians being 
the earliest of the Epistles of the Captivity — Parallels in the Epistle to 
the Philippians to the Epistle to the Eomans — St. Paul's Controversy with 
Judaism almost at an end — Happier Incidents brighten his Captivity — Visit 
of Epaphroditus — His Illness and Recovery — The Purity of the Philippian 
Church — " Eejoice " the leading thought in the Epistle .... 588 

CHAPTER XLVTI.— The Epistle to the Philippians. 
Greeting — Implied Exhortation to Unity — Words of Encouragement — Even 
Opposition overruled for good — Earnest Entreaty to follow the Example 
of Christ — His hopes of liberation — Epaphroditus — Sudden break — Vehe- 
ment Outburst against the Jews — Pressing forward — Euodia and Syntyche 
— Syzygus — Farewell and Rejoice — Future of Philippian Church . . 596 

CHAPTER XLVHL— The Churches op the Ltcus Valley. 
Colossians, "Ephesians," Philemon — Attacks on their Genuineness — Epaphras — 
Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colossse — The Lycus Valley — Onesimus — Sad News 
brought by Epaphras — A new form of Error — An Essene Teacher — St. 
Paul develops the Counter- truth — Christ alone — Oriental Theosophy the 
germ of Gnosticism — The Christology of these Epistles — Universality and 
Antiquity of Gnostic Speculations — Variations in the Style of St. Paul . 605 

CHAPTER XLIX.— Epistle to the Colossians. 
Greeting — Christ the Eternal Son — Grandeur of the Ministry of the Gospel — 
The Pleroma — Warnings against False Teaching — Practical Consequences 
— A Cancelled Bond — A needless Asceticism — The true Remedy against 
Sin — Practical Exhortations— Personal Messages — Asserted Reaction 
against Pauline Teaching in Asia — Papias — Colossse ..... 615 

CHAPTER L.— St. Paul and Onesimus. 
Private Letters — Onesimus — Degradation of Slaves — A Phrygian Runaway — 
Christianity and Slavery — Letter of Pliny to Sabinianus — A " Burning 
Question " — Contrast between the Tone of Pliny and that of St. Paul . 62? 

CHAPTER LI.— The Epistle to Philemon. 
Paraphrase of the Epistle — Comparison with Pliny's appeal to Sabinianus — 

Did St. Paul visit Colossse again ? 628 

CHAPTER LH.— The Epistle to the "Ephesians." 
Genuineness of the Epistle — Testimonies to its Grandeur — Resemblances and 
Contrasts between " Ephesians : ' and Colossians — Style of St. Paul — 
Christology of the later Epistles — Doctrinal and Practical — Grandeur of 
the Mystery — Recurrence of Leading Words — Greeting — " To the praise 
of His glory " — Christ in the Church — Resultant Duties — Unity in Christ 
— The New Life — Christian Submissiveness — The Christian Armour — End 
of the Acts of the Apostles — St. Paul's Expectations — The Neronian 
Persecution 630 

CHAPTER LIIL— The First Epistle to Timothy. 
Did St. Paul visit Spain ? — Character of the First Epistle to Timothy — Pecu- 
liarities of the Greeting — False Teachers — Function of the Law — Digres- 
sions — Regulations for Public Worship — Qualifications for Office in the 
Church — Deacons — Deaconesses — The Mystery of Godliness — Dualistic 
Apostasy — Pastoral Advice to Timothy — Bearing towards Presbyters — 
Personal Advice — Duties of Slaves — Solemn Adjuration — Last Appeal . 650 

CHAPTER LTV.— The Epistle to Titus. 
Probable Movements of St. Paul — Christianity in Crete —Missions of Titus — 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAfll 

Greeting — Charaoter of the Cretans — Sobermindedness — Pastoral Duties, 
and Exhortations to various classes — Warnings against False Teachers — 
Personal Messages — " Ours also " — Titus , . . . . 658 

CHAPTER LV.— The Closing Days. 
Genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles — The Second Epistle to Timothy — State 
of the Church in the last year of St. Paul — His possible Movements — 
Arrest at Troas — Trial and Imprisonment at Ephesus — Parting with 
Timothy — Companions of his last Voyage to Rome — Closeness and Misery 
of the Second Imprisonment — Danger of visiting him — Defection of his 
Friends — Loneliness — Onesiphorus — The Prima actio — St. Paul deserted — ■ 
" Out of the mouth of the Lion " — The Trial — Paul before Nero — Contrast 
between the two — St. Paul remanded 664 

CHAPTER LVI.— St. Paul's Last Letter. 
The Greeting — Digressions — Christian Energy — Warnings against False Teaohers 
— Solemn Pastoral Appeals — Personal Entreaties and Messages — Pudens 
and Claudia — The Cloke — The Papyrus Books — The Vellum Rolls — Parallel 
with Tyndale — Triumph over Melancholy and Disappointment — Tone of 
Courage and Hope 676 

CHAPTER LVII.— The End. 
The Last Trial — The Martyrdom — Earthly Failure and Eternal Success — Un- 
equalled Greatness of St. Paul — " God buries His Workmen, but carries on 
their Work" 685 



APPENDIX. 

Excursus I. — The Style of St. Paul as Illustrative of his Character . . 689 

Excursus II.— The Rhetoric of St. Paul 693 

Excursus III. — The Classic Quotations and Allusions of St. Paul . . . 696 

Excursus IV. — St. Paul a Hagadist 701 

Excursus V. — Gamaliel and the School of Tubingen 704 

Excursus VI. — On Jewish Stoning 706 

Excursus VII. — On the Power of the Sanhedrin to Inflict Capital Punishment 707 

Excursus VIII. — Damascus under Hareth 708 

Excursus IX. — Saul in Arabia 709 

Excursus X.— St. Paul's "Stake in the Flesh" 710 

Excursus XI. — On Jewish Scourgings . 715 

Excursus XII. — Apotheosis of Roman Emperors 717 

Excursus XIII. — Burdens laid on Proselytes 718 

Excursus XIV. — Hatred of the Jews in Classical Antiquity . . . .719 
Excursus XV. — Judgment of Early Pagan Writers on Christianity . . 72o 

Excursus XVI. — The Proconsulate of Sergius Paulus 721 

Excursus XVII.— St. John and St. Paul 723 

Excursus XVIII. — St. Paul in the Clementines 724 

Excursus XIX.— The Man of Sin 726 

Excursus XX. — Chief Uncial Manuscripts of the Acts and the Epistles . . 730 

Excursus XXI. — Theology and Antinomies of St. Paul 732 

Excursus XXII. — Distinctive Words and Key-notes of the Epistle. . . 733 

Excursus XXIII. — Letter of Pliny to Sabinianus 734 

Excursus XXIV.— The Herods in the Acts 734 

Excursus XXV. — Phraseology and Doctrine of the Epistle to the Ephesians . 739 
Excursus XXVI. — Evidence as to the Liberation of St. Paul .... 741 
Excursus XXVII. — The Genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles . . . . 743 
Excursus XXVIII.— Chronology of the Life and Epistles of St. Paul . . 753 
Excursus XXIX.— Traditional Accounts of St. Paul's Personal Appearance . 758 



THE 

Life and Work of St. Paul. 



THE TRAINING OF THE APOSTLK 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 
2kcvos 4ic\oyrjs fxoi i<rr\y ovtos, — Acts ix. 15. 

Of the twelve men whom Jesus chose to be His companions and heraldt 
during the brief years of His earthly ministry, two alone can be said to have 
stamped upon the infant Church the impress of their own individuality. 
These two were John and Simon. Our Lord Himself, by the titles which He 
gave them, indicated the distinctions of their character, and the pre-eminence 
of their gifts. John was called a Son of Thunder ; Simon was to be known 
to all ages as Kephas, or Peter, the Apostle of the Foundation stone. 1 To 
Peter was granted the honour of authoritatively admitting the firnt rmcircum- 
cised Gentile, on equal terms, into the brotherhood of Christ, and &• has ever 
been regarded as the main pillar of the early Church. 2 John, on the other 
hand, is the Apostle of Love, the favourite Apostle of the Mystic, the chosen 
Evangelist of those whose inward adoration rises above the level of outward 
forms. Peter as the first to recognise the Eternal Christ, John as the chosew 
friend of the living Jesus, are the two of that first order of Apostles whose 
names appear to human eyes to shine with the brightest lustre upon those 
twelve precious stones which are the foundations of the New Jerusalem. 3 

Tet there was another, to whom was entrusted a wider, a more fruitful, a 
more laborious mission; who was to found more numerous churches, to 
endure intenser sufferings, to attract to the fold of Christ a vaster multitude 
of followers. On the broad shoulders of St. Peter rested, at first, the support 
and defence of the new Society ; yet his endurance was not tested so terribly 
as that of him on whom fell daily the " care of all the churches." St. John 
was the last survivor of the Apostles, and he barely escaped sharing with his 
brother the glory of being one of the earliest martyrs ; yet even his life of 
long exile and heavy tribulations was a far less awful trial than that of him who 
counted it but a light and momentary affliction to "die daily," to be "in 
deaths oft." 4 A third type of the Apostolate was necessary. Besides the 
Apostle of Catholicity and the Apostle of Love, the Church of Christ needed 
also " the Apostle of Progress." 

» Pet. ii. 4—8. 2 Gal. ii. 9. 3 Rev. xxi. 14. 

* I Cor. xv. 31 ; 2 Cor. xL 23. 



Z THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATHL 

In truth it is hardly possible to exaggerate the extent, the permanency 
the vast importance, of those services which were rendered to Christianity 
by Paul of Tarsus. It would have been no mean boast for the most heroic 
worker that he had toiled more abundantly than such toilers as the Apostles. 
It would have been a sufficient claim to eternal gratitude to have preached 
from Jerusalem to Illyricum, from Illyricum to Rome, and, it may be, even to 
Spain, the Gospel which gave new life to a weary and outworn world. Tet 
these are, perhaps, the least permanent of the benefits which mankind has 
reaped from his life and genius. For it is in his Epistles — casual as was the 
origin of some of them — that we find the earliest utterances of that Christian 
literature to which the world is indebted for its richest treasures of poetry 
and eloquence, of moral wisdom and spiritual consolation. It is to his 
intellect, fired by the love and illuminated by the Spirit of his Lord, that we 
owe the first systematic statement, in their mutual connexion and inter- 
dependence, of the great truths of that Mystery of Godliness which had 
been hidden from the ages, but was revealed in the Gospel of the Christ. 
It is to his undaunted determination, his clear vision, his moral loftiness, 
that we are indebted for the emancipation of religion from the intolerable 
yoke of legal observances — the cutting asunder of the living body of 
Christianity from the heavy corpse of an abrogated Lovitism. 1 It was 
he alone who was Gods appointed instrument to render possible the 
universal spread of Christianity, and to lay deep in the hearts of European 
churches the solid bases of Christendom. As the Apostle of the Gentries 
he was pre-eminently and necessarily the Apostle of freedom, of culture; 
of the understanding; yet he has, if possible, a higher glory than all -liis, 
in the fact that he too, more than any other, is the Apostle who made clear 
to the religious consciousness of mankind the " justification by faith " which 
springs from the mystic union of the soul with Christ — the Apostle who 
has both brought home to numberless Christians in all ages the sense 
of their own helplessness, and pointed them most convincingly to the 
blessedness and the universality of that redemption which their Saviour 
wrought. And hence whenever the faith of Christ has been most dimmed 
in the hearts of men, whenever its pure fires have seemed in greatest danger 
of being stifled, as in the fifteenth century — under the dead ashes of 
sensuality, or quenched, as in the eighteenth century, by the chilling blasts 
of scepticism, it is mostly by the influence of his writings that religious lifo 
has been revived. 2 It was one of his searching moral precepts — " Let us 
walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not iu 
chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying " — which became to 
St. Augustine a guiding star out of the night of deadly moral aberrations. 3 
It was his prevailing doctrine of free deliverance through the merits of 
Christ which, as it had worked in the spirit of Paul himself to shatter the 
bonds of Jewish formalism, worked once more in the soul of Luther to 

» Gal. \v. 9 ; Rom. viii. 3. (Heb. vii. 18.) 2 See Neander, Planting, E.T., p. 7a 
3 Aug. Confess, viii. 12 18; Krenkel, Pavlm der Ap. d. Heiden, p. 1. 



INTBODUCTORT. 3 

burst the gates of brass, and break the bars of iron in sunder with which 
the Papacy had imprisoned for so many centuries the souls which God 
made free. 

It has happened not unfrequently in the providence of God that the 
destroyer of a creed or system has been bred and trained in the inmost / 
bosom of the system which he was destined to shake or to destroy. Sakya 
Mouni had been brought up in Brahminism; Luther had taken the vows ) 
of an Augustinian ; Pascal had been trained as a Jesuit ; Spinoza was a \ 
Jew; Wesley and Whitefield were clergymen of the Church of England. J 
It was not otherwise with St. Paul. The victorious enemy of heathen 
philosophy and heathen worship had passed his boyhood amid the heathen 
surroundings of a philosophic city. The deadliest antagonist of Judaic 
exclusiveness was by birth a Hebrew of the Hebrews. The dealer of the 
death- wound to the spirit of Pharisaism was a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees ; ! 
had been brought up from his youth at Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel ; 3 
had been taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers ; 
had lived " after the most straitest sect " of the Jewish service. 3 As his work 
differed in many respects from that of the other Apostles, so his training was 
wholly unlike theirs. Their earliest years had been spent in the villages of 
Gennesareth and the fisher-huts on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; his 
in the crowded ghetto of a Pagan capital. They, with few exceptions, 
were men neither of commanding genius nor strongly marked characteristics ; 
he was a man of intense individuality and marvellous intellectual power. 
They were "unlearned and ignorant," untrained in the technicalities, in- 
experienced in the methods, which passed among the Jews for theologic 
learning; he had sat as a "disciple of the wise" 4 at the feet of the most 
eminent of the Eabbis, and had been selected as the inquisitorial agent 
of Priests and Sanhedrists because he surpassed his contemporaries in 
burning zeal for the traditions of the schools. 5 

This is the man whose career will best enable us to understand the 
Dawn of Christianity upon the darkness alike of Jew and Gentile; the 
man who loosed Christianity from the cerements of Judaism, and inspired 
the world of Paganism with joy and hope. The study of his life will 
leave upon our minds a fuller conception of the extreme nobleness of the 
man, and of the truths which he lived and died to teach. And we must 
consider that life, as far as possible, without traditional bias, and with the 
determination to see it as it appeared to his contemporaries, as it appeared 
to Paul himself. "For if he was a Paul," says St. Chrysostom, "he also 
was a man," — nay, more than this, his very infirmities enhanced his 
greatness. He stands infinitely above the need of indiscriminate panegyric. 

1 Acts xxiii. 6 (Phil. iii. 5). The true reading, vtb? ^apta-auov («, A, B, C, Syr., Vulg.); 
he was a Pharisee of the third generation, Tpi<£ap<.<mtos. 

2 Acts xxii. 3 ; xxvi. 4. 

3 Acts xxvi. 5. ep^a-KeCa is rather "cult," " external service," than "religion." 

4 The D3n 'Tobn, of whose praises and privileges the Talmud is full. 

8 Gal. i. 14, Trpoe/coiTToi/ iv T(j> 'lovSoufotup (*.&, in Jewish observances), virip, «.rwt. ( 
raoTepus ^VjAxottjs, k.tJL 
B 2 



4 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST PAXTL. 

If we describe him as exempt from all human weakness — if we look at his 
actions as though it were irreverence to suppose that they ever fell short 
of his own ideal — we not only describe an impossible character, but we 
contradict his own reiterated testimonies. It is not a sinless example which 
we are now called upon to contemplate, but the life of one who, in deep 
sincerity, called himself " the chief of sinners ; " it is the career of one 
whose ordinary life (&los) was human, not divine — human in its impetuosity, 
human in its sensibilities, human, perhaps, in some of its concessions and 
accommodations; but whose inner life (£0}?) was truly divine in so far as 
it manifested the workings of the Spirit, in so far as it was dead 
to the world, and hid with Christ in God. 1 It is utterly alien to 
the purpose and manner of Scripture to present to us any of our fellow- 
men in the light of faultless heroes or unapproachable demi-gods. The 
notion that it is irreverent to suppose a flaw in the conduct of an Apostle 
is one of those instances of " false humility " which degrade Scripture under 
pretence of honouring it, and substitute a dead letter-worship for a living 
docility. From idealised presentments of the lives of our fellow-servants, 2 
there would be but little for us to learn ; but we do learn the greatest and 
most important of all lessons when we mark in a struggling soul the 
triumph of the grace of God — when we see a man, weak like ourselves, 
tempted like ourselves, erring like ourselves, enabled by the force of a sacred 
purpose to conquer temptation, to trample on selfishness, to rear even upon 
sins and failures the superstructure of a great and holy life, — to build 
(as it were) " the cities of Judah out of the ruined fortresses of Samaria/' 3 
It may seem strange if I say that we know the heart of St. Paul to its 
inmost depths. It is true that, besides a few scattered remnants of ecclesi- 
astical tradition, we have but two sources whence to derive his history — the 
Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Paul himself ; and the day has gone 
by when we could at once, and without further inquiry, assume that both of 
these sources, in the fullest extent, were absolutely and equally to be relied on. 
Since Baur wrote his Paulus, and Zeller his Apostelgeschichte, it has become 
impossible to make use of the Acts of the Apostles, and the thirteen Epistles 
commonly attributed to St. Paul, without some justification of the grounds 
upon which their genuineness is established. To do this exhaustively would 
require a separate volume, and the work has been already done, and is being 
done by abler hands than mine. All that is here necessary is to say that I 
should in no instance make use of any statement in those Epistles of which the 
genuineness can still be regarded as fairly disputable, if I did not hope to state 
some of the reasons which appear sufficient to justify my doing so ; and that 
if in any cases the genuineness or proper superscription of any Epistle, or part 
of an Epistle, seems to me to be a matter of uncertainty, I shall feel no hesita- 
tion in expressing such an opinion. Of the Acts of the Apostles I shall have 
various opportunities to speak incidentally, and, without entering on anj 

1 Bc'os, vita qucm vivimm ; fwr?, vita qud vwvrrms. (Gal. ii. 20. ) 

' Rev. xix. 10. 3 Bossuet (1 Kings xv. 22). Acta xiv. lfc. 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

separate defence of the book against the assaults of modern critics, I "will at 
present only express my conviction that, even if we admit that it was " an 
ancient Eirenicon," intended to check the strife of parties by showing that 
there had been no irreconcilable opposition between the views and ordinances 
of St. Peter and St. Paul ;— even if we concede the obvions principle that 
whenever there appears to be any contradiction between the Acts and the 
Epistles, the authority of the latter must be considered paramount ; — nay, 
even if we acknowledge that subjective and artificial considerations may have 
had some influence in the form and construction of the book ; — yet the Acts of 
the Apostles is in all its main outlines a genuine and trustworthy history. Let 
it be granted that in the Acts we have a picture of essential unity between the 
followers of the Judaic and the Pauline schools of thought, which we might 
conjecture from the Epistles to have been less harmonious and undisturbed ; 
let it be granted that in the Acts we more than once see Paul acting in a way 
which from the Epistles we should a priori have deemed unlikely. Even 
these concessions are fairly disputable ; yet in granting them we only say 
what is in itself sufficiently obvious, that both records are confessedly frag- 
mentary. They are fragmentary, of course, because neither of them even 
professes to give us any continuous narrative of the Apostle's life. That life 
is — roughly speaking — only known to us at intervals during its central and 
later period, between the years A.D. 36 and A.D. 66. It is like a manuscript 
of which the beginning and the end are irrecoverably lost. It is like one of 
those rivers which spring from unknown sources, and sink into the ground 
before they have reached the sea. But more than this, how incomplete is our 
knowledge even of that portion of which these records and notices remain ! Of 
this fact we can have no more overwhelming proof than we may derive from 
reading that " Iliad of woes," the famous passage of the Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians, where, driven against his will by the calumnies of his enemies to 
an appearance of boastfulness of which the very notion was abhorrent to him, 
he is forced to write a summary sketch of what he had done and suffered. 1 
That enumeration is given long before the end of his career, and yet of the 
specific outrages and dangers there mentioned no less than eleven are not once 
alluded to in the Acts, though many others are there mentioned which were 
subsequent to that sad enumeration. Not one, for instance, of the five scourg- 
ings with Jewish thongs is referred to by St. Luke ; one only of the three 
beatings with Roman rods ; not one of the three shipwrecks, though a later one 
is so elaborately detailed ; no allusion to the night and day in the deep ; two 
only of what St. Clement tells us were seven imprisonments. 2 There are even 
whole classes of perils to which the writer of the Acts, though he was certainly 
at one time a companion of St. Paul, makes no allusion whatever — as, for 
instance, the perils of rivers, the perils of robbers, the perils in the wilderness, 
the perils among false brethren, the hunger, the thirst, the fasting, the cold, 
the nakedness. And these, which are thus passed over without notice in the 

1 2 Cor. xL 24 — 83, written about A.D. 07, nearly ten years before his death. 

* hrrmxis 8e<r/xa <J>op«'<ras (Ep. 1 ad Cor. 5). 



6 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUI* 

Acts, are in the Epistles mentioned only so cursorily, so generally, so un- 
chronologically, that scarcely one of them can be dwelt upon and assigned with 
certainty to its due order of succession in St. Paul's biography. If this, then, 
is the case, who can pretend that in such a life there is not room for a series of 
events and actions— even for an exhibition of phases of character — in the 
narrative, which neither did nor could find place in the letters ; and for events 
and features of character in the letters which find no reflection in the narra- 
tive ? For of those letters how many are preserved ? Thirteen only— even if 
all the thirteen be indisputably genuine — out of a much larger multitude 
which he must undoubtedly have written. 1 And of these thirteen some are 
separated from others by great intervals of time ; some contain scarcely a 
single particular which can be made to bear on a consecutive biography ; and 
not one is preserved which gives us the earlier stage of his views and ex- 
periences before he had set foot on European soil. It is, then, idle to assume 
that either of our sources must be rejected as untrustworthy because it presents 
us with fresh aspects of a myriad-sided character ; or that events in the narra- 
tive must be condemned as scarcely honest inventions because they present no 
'prima facie accordance with what we might otherwise have expected from 
brief and scattered letters out of the multiplex correspondence of a varied life. 
If there were anything in the Acts which appeared to me irreconcilable with 
the certain indications of the Epistles, I should feel no hesitation in rejecting 
it. But most, if not all, of the objections urged against the credibility of the 
Acts appear to me — for reasons to be hereafter given — both frivolous and 
untenable. If there are any passages in that book which have been represented 
as throwing a shade of inconsistency over the character of the great Apostle, 
there is no such instance which, however interpreted, does not find its support 
and justification in his own undoubted works. If men of great learning, 
eminence, and acuteness had not assumed the contrary, it might have seemed 
superfluous to say that the records of history, and the experiences of daily life, 
furnish us with abundant instances of lives narrated with perfect honesty, 
though they have been presented from opposite points of view ; and of events 
which appear to be contradictory only because the point of reconcilement 
between them has been forgotten. Further than this, the points of contact 
between the Acts and the Epistles are numberless, and it must suffice, once for 
all, to refer to Paley's Horai Paulince in proof that even the undesigned coin- 
cidences may be counted by scores. To furnish a separate refutation of all the 
objections which have been brought against the credibility of the Acts of the 
Apostles, would be a tedious and interminable task ; but the actual narrative 
of the following pages should exhibit a decisive answer to them, unless it can 
be shown that it fails to combine the separate data, or that the attempt to 
combine them has led to incongruous and impossible results. 

I believe, then, that we have enough, and more than enough, still left to us 
to show what manner of life Paul lived, and what manner of man he was. A 
biography sketched in outline is often more true and more useful than one 

1 I do not reckon the Epistle to the Hebrews, believing it to be the work of Apollo*. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 7 

that occupies itself with minute detail. We do not in reality know more of a 
great man because we happen to know the petty circumstances which made up 
his daily existence, or because a mistaken admiration has handed down to 
posterity the promiscuous commonplaces of his ordinary correspondence. 
We know a man truly when we know him at his greatest and his best ; we 
realise his significance for ourselves and for the world when we see him in the 
noblest activity of his career, on the loftiest summit, and in the fullest glory 
of his life. There are lives which may be instructive from their very littleness, 
and it may be well that the biographers of such lives should enter into detail. 
But of the best and greatest it may be emphatically asserted that to know 
more about them would only be to know less of them. It is quite possible 
that if, in the case of one so sensitive and so impetuous as St. Paul, a minute 
and servile record had preserved for us every hasty expression, every fugitive 
note, every momentary fall below the loftiest standard, the small souls 
which ever rejoice at seeing the noblest of their race degraded, even for 
an instant, to the same dead level as themselves, might have found some 
things over which to glory. That such must have been the result we may 
infer from the energy and sincerity of self-condemnation with which the 
Apostle recognises his own imperfections. But such miserable records, even 
had they been entirely truthful, would only have obscured for us the true Paul 
— Paul as he stands in the light of history ; Paul as he is preserved for us in 
the records of Christianity ; Paul energetic as Peter, and contemplative as 
John ; Paul the hero of unselfishness ; Paul the mighty champion of spiritual 
freedom ; Paul a greater preacher than Chrysostom, a greater missionary than 
Xavier, a greater reformer than Luther, a greater theologian than St. Thomas 
of Aquinum ; Paul the inspired Apostle of the Gentiles, the slave of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER n. 

BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 
Ovk acrtj/uou 7r<$A.ea>s ttoXIttjs. — Acts xxi. 39. 

Though we cannot state with perfect accuracy the date either of the bi: til or 
death of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, both may be inferred within 
narrow limits. When he is first mentioned, on the occasion of Stephen's 
martyrdom, he is called a young man, 1 and when he wrote the Epistle to 
Philemon he calls himself Paul the aged. 2 Now, although the words vsavlas 

1 Acts vii. 58. 

2 Philem., verse 9. It should, indeed, be mentioned that whether we read 
irpeo-/3vT7js or Trpeo-Sevrrjs, the meaning may be, "Paul an ambassador, ay, and now even a 
chained ambassador, of Jesus Christ." Compare the fine antithesis, vwkp 08 irpeaprim 



8 . THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

and irpecr/SvTrjs were used vaguely in ancient times, and though the exact limita 
of " youth " and " age " were as indeterminate then as they have ever been, 
yet, since we learn that immediately after the death of Stephen, Saul was 
entrusted with a most important mission, and was, in all probability, a member 
of the Sanhedrin, he must at that time have been a man of thirty. Now, the 
martyrdom of Stephen probably took place early in A.D. 37, and the Epistle 
to Philemon was written about A.D. 63. At the latter period, therefore, he 
would have been less than sixty years old, and this may seem too young to 
claim the title of " the aged." But " age " is a very relative term, and one who 
had been scourged, and lashed, and stoned, and imprisoned, and shipwrecked 
— one who, for so many years, besides the heavy burden of mental anguish 
and responsibility, had been " scorched by the heat of Sirius and tossed by the 
violence of Euroclydon," 1 might well have felt himself an old and outworn 
man when he wrote from his Roman prison at the age of threescore years. 2 
It is, therefore, tolerably certain that he was born during the first ten years 
of our era, and probable that he was born about A.D. 3. Since, then, our 
received Dionysian era is now known to be four years too early, the birth of 
Christ's greatest follower happened in the same decade as that of our Lord 
Himself. 3 

But all the circumstances which surrounded the cradle and infancy of the 
infant Saul were widely different from those amid which his Lord had grown 
to boyhood. It was in an obscure and lonely village of Palestine, amid 
surroundings almost exclusively Judaic, that Jesus " grew in wisdom and 
stature and favour with God and man ; " but Saul passed his earliest years 
in the famous capital of a Roman province, and must have recalled, with 
his first conscious reminiscences, the language and customs of the Pagan 
world. 

There is no sufficient reason to doubt the entire accuracy of the expression 
" born in Tarsus," which is attributed to St. Paul in his Hebrew speech to 
the infuriated multitude from the steps of the Tower of Antonia. 4 To assert 
that the speeches in the Acts could not have attained to verbal exactness may 
be true of some of them, but, on the other hand, those who on such grounds as 
these disparage the work of St. Luke, as a mere "treatise with an object," 
must bear in mind that it would, in this point of view, have been far more to 
the purpose if he had made St. Paul assert that he was born in a Jewish town. 
We must, therefore, reject the curious and twice-repeated assertion of St. 

kv oAvVei, "I am an ambassador in fetters " (Eph. vi. 20). The tone of his later writing! 
is, however, that of an old man. 

1 Jer. Taylor. 

2 Roger Bacon calls himself "senem," apparently at fifty-three, and Sir Walter 
Scott speaks of himself as a "grey old man" at fifty -five. (See Lightfoot, Golossians, 
p. 404.) According to Philo a man was veavLa<; between twenty-one and twenty-eight; 
but his distinctions are purely artificial. It seems that a man might be called navUts and 
even i/eaviWos till forty. (Xen. Mem. i. 2, 35 ; Kriiger, Vit. Xen. 12.) 

3 These dates agree fairly with the statement of the Pseudo-Chrysostom {Oral. 
Encom. w, Pet. et Paul., Opp. viii., ed. Montfaucon), that he had been for thirty -fiv» 
year* a servant of Christ, and was martyred at the age of sixty-eight. 

* Acta xxii. 3. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 9 

Jerome, 1 that the Apostle was born at Giscala, 2 and had been taken to 
Tarsus by his parents when they left their native city, in consequence of 
its devastation by the Romans. The assertion is indeed discredited because 
it is mixed up with what appears to be a flagrant anachronism as to the 
date at which Giseala was destroyed.* It is, however, worthy of attention. 
St. Jerome, from his thorough familiarity with the Holy Land, in which 
he spent so many years of his life, has preserved for us several authentic 
fragments of tradition, and we may feel sure that he would not arbitrarily 
have set aside a general belief founded upon a distinct statement in th* 
Acts of the Apostles. If in this matter pure invention had been at work, 
it is almost inconceivable that any one should have singled out for distinc- 
tion so insignificant a spot as Giscala, which is not once mentioned in the 
Bible, and which acquired its sole notoriety from its connexion with the 
zealot Judas. 4 We may, therefore, fairly assume that the tradition mentioned 
by St. Jerome is so far true that the parents or grand -parents of St. Paul 
had been Galilaeans, and had, from some cause or other — though it cannoi 
have been the cause which the tradition assigned — been compelled to migrate 
from Giscala to the busy capital of Pagan Cilicia. 

If this be the case, it helps, as St. Jerome himself points out, to explain 
another difficulty. St. Paul, on every possible occasion, assumes and glories 
in the title not only of " an Israelite," 5 which may be regarded as a "name 
of honour," but also of "a Hebrew" — "a Hebrew of the Hebrews."* 
Now certainly, in its proper and technical sense, the word " Hebrew " is 
the direct opposite of "Hellenist," 7 and St. Paul, if brought up at Tarsus, 
could only strictly be regarded as a Jew of the Dispersion — a Jew of that 
vast body who, even when they were not ignorant of Hebrew — as even the 
most learned of them sometimes were — still spoke Greek as their native 
tongue. 8 It may, of course, be said that St. Paul uses the word Hebrew 
only in its general sense, and that he meant to imply by it that he was not 
a Hellenist to the same extent that, for instance, even so learned and 
eminent a Jew as Philo was, who, with all his great ability, did not know 

1 Jer. de Viris Illustr. 5 : "De tribu Benjamin et oppido Judaeae Giscalis fuit, quo 
a Romanis capto, cum parentibus suis Tarsum Ciliciae commigravit. " It has been again 
and again asserted that St. Jerome rejects or discredits this tradition in his Commentary 
on Philemon {Opp. iv. 454), where he says that some understood the term "my fellow- 
prisoner " to mean that Epaphras had been taken captive at Giscala at the same time 
as Paul, and had been settled in Colossae. Even Neander (Planting, p. 79) follows this 
current error, on the ground that Jerome says, " Quis sit Epaphras concaptivus Pauli 
talem fabulam accepimus." But th&tfabula does not here mean " false account," as he 
translates it, is sufficiently proved by the fact that St. Jerome continues, "Quod si ita 
EST, possumus et Epaphram illo tempore captum suspicari, quo captus est Paulus," &c. 

2 Giscala, now El-Jish, was the last place in Galilee that held out against the Romans. 
(Jos. B. J. ii. 20, § 6 ; iv. 2, §§ 1—5.) 

3 It was taken A.D. 67. 

* Jos. B. J. vi. 21, § 1 ; Vit. 10. He calls it noAixwj. 

6 John i. 47 ; Acts xiii. 16 ; Bom. ix. 4. 

8 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Phil. iii. 5. 7 See Acts vi. 1, and infra, p. 71. 

8 " Parentum conditionem adolescentulum Paulum secutum, et sic posse stare illud, 
quod de se ipso testatur, 'Hebraei sunt?' et ego, &c, quae ilium Judaeum magia 
indicant, quam Tarsensem " (Jer.). 



10 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

either the Biblical Hebrew or the Aramaic vernacular, which was still called 
by that name. 1 Perhaps St. Paul spoke Aramaic with equal or greater fluency 
than he spoke Greek itself ; 2 and his knowledge of Hebrew may bft inferred 
from his custom of sometimes reverting- to the Hebrew scriptures in the 
original when the LXX. version was less suitable to his purpose. It is an 
interesting, though undesigned, 3 confirmation of this fact, that the Divine 
Vision on the road to Damascus spoke to him, at the supreme moment of his 
life, in the language which was evidently the language of his own inmost 
thoughts. As one, therefore, to whom the Hebrew of that day was a sort of 
mother-tongue, and the Hebrew of the Bible an acquired language, St. Paul 
might call himself a Hebrew, though technically speaking he was also a 
Hellenist ; and the term would be still more precise and cogent if his parents 
and forefathers had, almost till the time of his birth, been Palestinian Jews. 

The Tarsus in which St. Paul was born was very different from the dirty, 
squalid, and ruinous Mohammedan city which still bears the name and stands 
upon the site. The natural features of the city, indeed, remain unchanged : 
the fertile plain still surrounds it; the snowy mountains of the chain of 
Taurus still look down on it; the bright swift stream of the Oydnus still 
refreshes it. 4 But with these scenes of beauty and majesty we are the less 
concerned, because they seem to have had no influence over the mind of the 
youthful Saul. We can well imagine how, in a nature differently constituted, 
they would have been like a continual inspiration; how they would have 
melted into the very imagery of his thoughts; how, again and again, in 
crowded cities and foul prisons, they would have 

" Flashed upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude." 

The scenes in which the whole life of David had been spent were far less 
majestic, as well as far less varied, than many of those in which the lot of St. 
Paul was cast; yet the Psalms of David are a very handbook of poetic 
description, while in the Epistles of St. Paul we only breathe the air of cities 
and synagogues. He alludes, indeed, to the Temple not made with hands, but 
never to its mountain pillars, and but once to its nightly stars. 6 To David the 
whole visible universe is but one vast House of God, in which, like angelic 
cmnistrants, the fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfil His 
r ord. With St. Paul — though he, too, is well aware that "the invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly visible, being appre- 

1 Philo's ignorance of Hebrew is generally admitted. 

2 Acts xxi. 40 : rjj *E/3pai6i SiaAe'KTw — i.e., of course, the Syriac. These Jews of 
Palestine would for the most part be able to understand the Bible, if not in the original 
Hebrew, at any rate through the aid of a paraphrast. 

'■' E.g., in 1 Cor. iii. 19 ; 2 Cor. viii. 15 ; 2 Tim. ii. 19. Whether there existed any 
Volkebibel of extracts besides the LXX. I will not discuss. See Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr, 
xviii. (1875), p. 118. 

4 The Cydnus no longer, however, flows through Tersooa as it did (Strabo, xiv. 5 { 
Plin. H. N. vi. 22 ; Beaufort's Karamania, 271 »q.). 

6 Acts xvii. 24 i 1 Cor. xv. 41. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. I> 

hended by the things that He hath made, even His eternal power and divinity ' 
— yet to him this was an indisputable axiom, not a conviction constantly 
renewed with admiration and delight. There are few writers who, to judge 
solely from their writings, seem to have been less moved by the beauties of the 
external world. Though he had sailed again and again across the blue Medi- 
terranean, and must have been familiar with the beauty of those Isles of 
Greece — 

" Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, 
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung;'* 

thoQgh he had again and again traversed the pine-clad gorges of the Asian 
hills, and seen Ida, and Olympus, and Parnassus, in all their majesty; though 
his life had been endangered in mountain torrents aud stormy waves, and he 
must have often wandered as a child along the banks of his native stream, to 
see the place where it roars in cataracts over its rocky course — his soul was so 
entirely absorbed in the mighty moral and spiritual truths which it was his 
great mission to proclaim, that not by one verse, scarcely even by a single 
expression, in all his letters, does he indicate the faintest gleam of delight or 
wonder in the glories of Nature. There is, indeed, an exquisite passage in his 
speech at Lystra on the goodness of " the living God, which made heaven and 
earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein," and " left not Hiinself with- 
out witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful 
seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." 1 But in this case 
Barnabas had some share in the address, which even if it do not, as has been 
conjectured, 2 refer to the fragment of some choral song, is yet, in tone and 
substance, directly analogous to passages of the Old Testament. 3 And apart 
from this allusion, I cannot find a single word which shows that Paul had even 
the smallest susceptibility for the works of Nature. There are souls in which 
the burning heat of some transfusing purpose calcines every other thought, 
every other desire, every other admiration ; and St. Paul's was one. His life 
was absorbingly, if not solely and exclusively, the spiritual life — the life which 
is utterly dead to every other interest of the groaning and travailing creation, 
the life hid with Christ in God. He sees the universe of God only as it is 
reflected in the heart and life of man. It is true — as Humboldt has shown in 
his CosTthos — that what is called the sentimental love of Nature is a modern 
rather than an ancient feeling. 4 In St. Paul, however, this indifference to the 

1 Acts xiv. 17. 

2 By Mr. Humphry, ad loc. 

8 Job v. 10 ; Ps. civ. 15 ; cxlvii. 8, 9. 

4 Compare the surprise expressed by the Athenian youth at Socrates' description ol 
the lovely scene at the beginning of the Phaedrus, § 10, %v 84 ye S> eav/xdcne a.Toiru>Ta.T6<; xis 
4><u'vei. There is an admirable chapter on th s subject in Friedliinder, Sittengesch. Boms. 
vii. 5, § 3. The reader will recall the analog?us cases of St. Bernard riding all day along 
the Lake of Geneva, and asking in the evening where it was ; of Calvin showing no trace 
of deligkc in the beauties of Switzerland ; and of Whitefield, who seems not to have 
borrowed a single impression or illustration from his thirteen voyages across the Atlantio 
and his travels from Georgia to Boston. 



12 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

outer world is neither due to his antiquity nor to his Semitic birth, but solely 
to his individual character. The poetry of the Old Testament is lull of the 
tenderness and life of the pastures of Palestine. In the discourses and con- 
versations of our Lord we find frequent allusions to the loveliness of the 
flowers, the joyous carelessness of birds, the shifting winds, the red glow 
of morning and evening clouds. St. Paul's inobservance of these things — for 
the total absence of the remotest allusion to them by way of even passing 
illustration amounts to a proof that they did not deeply stir his heart— -was 
doubtless due to the expulsive power and paramount importance of other 
thoughts. It may, however, have been due also to that early training which 
made him more familiar with crowded assemblies and thronged bazaars than 
with the sights and sounds of Nature. 1 It is at any rate remarkable that the 
only elaborate illustration which he draws from Nature turns not on a natural 
phenomenon but on an artificial ^process, and that even this process — if not 
absolutely unknown to the ancients — was the exact opposite of the one most 
commonly adopted. 2 

But if St. Paul derived no traceable influence from the scenery with which 
Tarsus is surrounded, if no voices from the neighbouring mountains or the 
neighbouring sea mingled with the many and varied tones of his impassioned 
utterance, other results of this providential training may be easily observed, 
both in his language and in his life. 

The very position of Tarsus made it a centre of commercial enterprise and 
political power. Situated on a navigable stream, by which it communicated 
with the easternmost bay of the Mediterranean, and lying on a fruitful plain 
under that pass over the Taurus which was known as " the Oilician gates," 
while by the Amanid and Syrian gates it communicated with Syria, it was so 
necessary as a central emporium that even the error of its having embraced 
the side of Antony in the civil war hardly disturbed its fame and prosperity. 8 

1 "For I was bred 

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 

And saw nought lovely save the sky and stars." 

Coleridge. 
8 I allude to the famous illustration of the wild olive graft (Rom. xi. 16 — 25). St. Paul's 
argument requires that a wild slip should have been budded upon a fruitful tree — viz., 
the AypieXaio? of heathendom on the eWa of Judaism. But it is scarcely needful to 
remark that this is never done, but the reverse — namely, the grafting of a fruitful scion 
on a wild stock. The olive shoot would be grafted on the oleaster, not the oleaster on 
the olive (Aug. in Ps. lxxii.). It is true that St. Paul here cares solely for the general 
analogy, and would have been entirely indifferent to its non-accordance with the ordinary 
method of kyxevT pianos. Indeed, as he says that it is napa Avcnv (xi. 24), it seems needless 
to show that this kind of grafting was ever really practised. Yet the illustration would, 
under these circumstances, hardly have been used by a writer more familiar with the 
facts of Nature. The notion that St. Paul alluded to the much rarer African custom of 
grafting oleaster (or Ethiopic olive) on olive, to strengthen the latter (cf. Plin. H. N. xvii. 
18; Colum. De re Bust. v. 9; Palladius ; &c), is most unlikely, if only foi the reason 
that it destroys the whole force of the truth which he is desiring to inculcate. (See 
Ewbank, ii. 112; Tholuck, Mom. 617; Meyer, 343.) He may have known the proverb, 
aKapn6repoy aypie?mlov . See, however, a somewhat different view in Thomson, Land and 
Book, p. 53. 

" Tarsus resisted the party of Brutus and Cassius, but was conquered bv Luciu» 
Kufvu, B.C. 43, and many Tarsians were sold as slaves to pay the fine of 1,500 talent* 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 13 

It was here that Cleopatra held that famous meeting with the Roman 
Triumvir which Shakspeare has immortalised, when she rowed up the silver 

Cydnus, and 

" The barge she sat in like a burnished throne 
Burnt on the water ; the poop was beaten gold, 
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
The winds were love-sick with them." 

Yet it continued to nourish under the rule of Augustus, and enjoyed the dis- 
tinction of being both a capital and a free city — libera and immunis. It was 
from Tarsus that the vast masses of timber, hewn in the forests of Taurus, 
were floated down the river to the Mediterranean dockyards ; it was here that 
the vessels were unladen which brought to Asia the treasures of Europe ; it 
was here that much of the wealth of Asia Minor was accumulated before it 
was despatched to Greece and Italy. On the coins of the city she is repre- 
sented as seated amid bales of various merchandise. The bright and busy 
life of the streets and markets must have been the earliest scenes which 
attracted the notice of the youthful Saul. The dishonesty which he had 
witnessed in its trade may have suggested to him his metaphors of " huckster- 
ing" and "adulterating" the word of life; 1 and he may have borrowed a 
metaphor from the names and marks of the owners stamped upon the goods 
which lay upon the quays, 2 and from the earnest-money paid by the pur- 
chasers. 3 It may even have been the assembly of the free city which made 
him more readily adopt from the Septuagint that name of Ecclesia for the 
Church of Christ's elect of which his Epistles furnish the earliest instances. 4 

It was his birth at Tarsus which also determined the trade in which, during 
so many days and nights of toil and self-denial, the Apostle earned his daily 
bread. The staple manufacture of the city was the weaving, first into ropes, 
then into tent- covers and garments, of the hair which was supplied in 
boundless quantities by the goat flocks of the Taurus. 5 As the making of 
these cilicia was unskilled labour of the commonest sort, the trade of tent- 
maker 6 was one both lightly esteemed and miserably paid. It must not, 

which he inflicted on the city. (Appian, Bell. Civ. iv. 64.) Tdp<m . . wdpavTols t*»» 

rroAewi' a£ioAoyu>TaT7) ju.rjTp67roA.ts oflcra ( Jos. A.ntt. X. Q f % 1). 

1 2 Cor. ii. 17, /eaTrrjAeiWTe? ; iv. 2, SoAoviref. 

2 Eph. i. 13 ; iv. 30. eo-(£payio%re. 

8 2 Cor. i. 22, appafav. 

* bnp T 1 Kings xii. 2 (LXX.) The word "Church," in its more technical modern 
sense (as in Eph. and Col. ), is developed out of the simpler meaning of congregation in 
St. Paul's earlier Epistles. 

5 See Philo, De Victim. 836 ; Plin. H. N. v. 32. 

6 ow»i>o7roibs, Acts xviii. 3; o-KTjvoppa</>o?, Ps. Chrys. Orat. Encon. (Opp. viii. 8, Mont- 
fauc). When Chrysostom calls him a o-kutoto>os, "leather-cutter" [Horn. iv. 3, p. 864, 
on 2 Tim. ii. ), this can hardly be correct, because such a trade would not be favoured by 
strict Pharisees. On the use of cilicium for tents see Veget. Milit. iv. 6 ; Serv. ad Virg. 
Georg. iii. 313. It served for many other purposes, as garden rugs, mantelets, shoes, and 
beds. (Colum. xii. 46; Liv. xxxviii. 7; Mart. xlv. 140; Jer. Ep. 108.) To handle the 
**olentis barba mariti" could not have been a pleasant trade. It was "bought from the 
shepherds of Taurus, and sold to Greek shippers of the Levant." To this day cilice 

hair-cloth in French. 



14 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

however, be inferred from this that the family of St. Paul were people of low 
position. The learning of a trade was a duty enjoined by the Rabbis on tho 
parents of every Jewish boy. 1 The wisdom of the rule became apparent in 
the case of Paul, as doubtless of hundreds besides, when the changes and 
chances of life compelled him to earn his own livelihood by manual labour. It 
is clear, from the education provided for Paul by his parents, that they could 
little indeed have conjectured how absolutely their son would be reduced to 
depend on a toil so miserable and so unremunerative. 2 But though we see how 
much he felt the burden of the wretched labour by which he determined to 
earn his own bread rather than trespass on the charity of his converts, 3 yet it 
had one advantage in being so absolutely mechanical as to leave the thoughts 
entirely free. While he plaited the black, strong-scented goat's hair, he might 
be soaring in thought to the inmost heaven, or holding high converse with 
A polios or Aquila, with Luke or Timothy, on the loftiest themes which can 
engage the mind of man. 

Before considering further the influence exercised by the birthplace on the 
future fortunes of St. Paul, we must pause to inquire what can be discovered 
about his immediate family. It must be admitted that we can ascertain but 
little. Their possession, by whatever means, of the Roman citizenship — the 
mere fact of their leaving Palestine, perhaps only a short time before Paul's 
birth, to become units in the vast multitude of the Jews of the Dispersion — 
the fact, too, that so many of St. Paul's "kinsmen" bear Greek and Latin 
names, 4 and lived in Rome or in Ephesus, 6 might, at first sight, lead us to sup- 
pose that his whole family were of Hellenising tendencies. On the other hand, 
we know nothing of the reasons which may have compelled them to leave 
Palestine, and we have only the vaguest conjectures as to their possession of 
the franchise. Even if it be certain that av-yyeveh means " kinsmen " in our 
sense of the word, and not, as Olshausen thinks, "fellow-countrymen," 6 it was 
so common for Jews to have a second name, which they adopted during their 
residence in heathen countries, that Andronicus and the others, whom he 
salutes in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, may all have been 
genuine Hebrews. The real name of Jason, for instance, may have been Jesus, 

1 On this subject see my Life of Christ, i. p. 82, n. Gamaliel himself was the author 
of the celebrated apborism, that " learning of any kind (mm to, i.e., even the advanced 
study of the Law) unaccompanied by a trade ends in nothing, and leads to sin " (Pirke 
Abhdth, ii. 2). R. Judah said truly that "labour honours the labourer" {Nedarim, f. 
49, 2) ; R. Mcir said, "Let a man always teach his son pure and easy trades" (Toseft. in 
Kidd. f. 82, 1) ; R. Judah says, that not to teach one's son a trade is like teaching him 
robbery {Kiddushin, f. 30, 2). 

2 The reason why he was taught this particular trade may have been purely local. 
Possibly his father had been taught the same trade as a boy. "A man should not change 
his trade, nor that of his father," says R. Yochanan ; for it is said, " Hiram of Tyre was 
a widow's son, . . . and his father was ... a worker in brass " (1 Kings vii. 13. 
14) ; Erechin, f. 16, 2. 

^ 1 Thess. ii. 6, 9 ; 2 Tliess. iii. 8 ; 1 Cor. be. 12, 15. 

4 Rom. xvi. 7 ; Andronicus, Junia, or perhaps Junias (=« Junianus) ; 11, "^erodion ; 
21, Lucius, Jason, Sosipafcer {avyyn'^)- 

• See infra, ad loc, for the question whether ch. xvi is a genuine portion of the 
Epistle to the Romans. 

8 As in Rom. ix. & 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 15 

just as the real name of Paul was Saul. 1 However this may be, the thorough 
Hebraism of the family appears in many ways. Paul's father and grandfa ther 
had been Pharisees, 2 and were, therefore, most strict observers of the Mosaic 
law. They had so little forgotten their extraction from the tribe of Benjamin 
— one of the two tribes which had remained faithful to the covenant — that they 
called their son Saul, 3 partly perhaps because the name, like Thesetetus, means 
" asked " (of God), and partly because it was the name of that unfortunate 
hero-king of their native tribe, whose sad fate seems for many ages to have 
rendered his very name unpopular. 4 They sent him, probably not later than 
the age of thirteen, to be trained at the feet of Gamaliel. They seem to have 
had a married daughter in Jerusalem, whose son, on one memorable occasion, 
saved Paul's life. 5 Though they must have ordinarily used the Septuagint 
version of the Bible, from which the great majority of the Apostle's quotations 
are taken, 6 and from which nearly his whole theological phraseology is derived, 
they yet trained him to use Aramaic as his native tongue, and to read the 
Scriptures — an accomplishment not possessed by many learned Jewish 
Hellenists — in their own venerable original Hebrew. 7 

That St. Paul was a " Hebraist " in the fullest sense of the word is clear 
from almost every verse of his Epistles. He reckons time by the Hebrew 
calendar. He makes constant allusion to Jewish customs, Jewish laws, and 
Jewish festivals. His metaphors and turns of expression are derived with 
great frequency from that quiet family life for which the Jews have been in 
all ages distinguished. Though he writes in Greek, it is not by any means in 
the Greek of the schools, 8 or the Greek which, in spite of its occasional 
antitheses and paronomasias, would have been found tolerable by the 
rhetoricians of his native city. The famous critic Longinus does indeed, if 
the passage be genuine, praise him as the master of a dogmatic style ; but 
certainly a Tarsian professor or a philosopher of Athens would have been 
inclined to ridicule his Hebraic peculiarities, awkward anakolutha, harshly- 
mingled metaphors, strange forms, and irregular constructions. 9 St. Jerome, 

1 When a Greek or Roman name bore any resemblance in sound to a Jewish one, it 
was obviously convenient for the Jew to make so slight a change. Thus Dosthai became 
Dositheus ; Tarphon, Tryphon ; Ehakim, Alkirnos, &c. 

2 Acts xxiii. 6. 3 bwv, Shaul. 

4 It is found as a Hebrew name in the Pentateuch (Gen. xxxvi. 37 ; xlvi. 10 ; Ex. vi. 
15 ; Numb. xxvi. 13 ; but after the death of King Saul it does not occur till the time of 
the Apostle, and again later in Josephus (Anit. xx. 9, § 4 ; B. J. ii. 17, § 4 ; ELrehkel, 
Paulus, p. 217). 

5 Acts xxiii. 16. 

6 There are about 278 quotations from the Old Testament in the New. Of these 53 
are identical in the Hebrew, Septuagint, and New Testament : in 10 the Septuagint is 
correctly altered ; in 76 it is altered incorrectly— i.e., into greater divergence from the 
Hebrew ; in 37 it is accepted where it differs from the Hebrew ; in 99 all three differ ; 
and there are 3 doubtful allusions. (See Turpie, The Old Testament in the New, p. 267, 
and passim.) 

7 V. supra, p. 9. 

8 A m ong numerous explanations of the tkiXCkols ypdixixaa-iv of Gal. vi. 11, one is that his 
Greek letters were so ill-formed, from want of practice, as to look almost laughable. 

9 See infra, Excursus I., "The Style of St. Paul;" and Excursus II., "Rhetoric 
of St Paul." 



16 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

criticising the ov KarevcipKr](ra vfi&v of 2 Cor. xi. 9, xii. 13 — which in our version 
is rendered, " I was not burdensome to you," but appears to mean literall/, " 1 
did not benumb you " — speaks of the numerous cilicisms of his style ; and it 
is probable that such there were, though they can hardly be detected with 
certainty by a modern reader. 1 For though Tarsus was a city of advanced 
culture, Cilicia was as intellectually barbarous as it was morally despicable. 
The proper language of Cilicia was a dialect of Phoenician, 2 and the Greek 
spoken by some of the cities was so faulty as to have originated the term 
" solecism," which has been perpetuated in all languages to indicate impossible 
constructions. 3 

The residence of a Jew in a foreign city might, of course, tend to under- 
mine his national religion, and make him indifferent to his hereditary customs. 
It might, however, produce an effect directly the reverse of this. There had 
been abundant instances of Hellenistic Jews who Hellenised in matters far 
more serious than the language which they spoke ; but, on the other hand, the 
Jews, as a nation, have ever shown an almost miraculous vitality, and so fai 
from being denationalised by a home among the heathen, have only been 
confirmed in the intensity of their patriotism and their faith. "We know that 
this had been the case with that numerous and important body, the Jews 
of Tarsus. In this respect they differed considerably from the Jews of 
Alexandria. They could not have been exempt from that hatred which has 
through so many ages wronged and dishonoured their noble race, and which 
was already virulent among the Koreans of that day. All that we hear about 
them shows that the Cilician Jews were as capable as any of their brethren of 
repaying hate with double hatred, and scorn with double scorn. They would 
be all the more likely to do so from the condition of things around them. The 
belief in Paganism was more firmly rooted in the provinces than in Italy, and 
was specially vigorous in Tarsus — in this respect no unfitting burial-place for 
Julian the Apostate. No ages are worse, no places more corrupt, than those 
that draw the iridescent film of an intellectual culture over the deep stagnancy 
of moral degradation. And this was the condition of Tarsus. The seat of a 
celebrated school of letters, it was at the same time the metropolis of a 
province so low in universal estimation that it was counted among the rpfa 
Kairira K&Kiara — the three most villainous k's of antiquity, Kappadokia, 

1 "Multa sunt verba, quibus juxta morem urbis et provinciae suae, familiariua 
Apostolus utitur: e quibus exempli gratia pauca ponenda sunt." He refers to 

KaTevaptcqaa (2 Cor. xi. 9), vnb ai'0pw7riV»)S 17/xepas (1 Cor. iv. 3), and KaTa/3pa/3eveTw (Col. ii. 18) ! 

und adds, " Quibus, et aliis multis, usque hodie utuntur Cilices" (Jer. Up. ad Algas, qu. 
10). Wetstein, however, adduces inwap/caw, from Plut. De Liber. Educ. p. 8, and vapKd<a 
occurs in the LXX. (Gen. xxxii. 25, 32 ; Job xxxiii. 19) and in Jos. Antt. viii. 8, § 5 ; 
vapK-q is the torpedo or i/yinnotus. Since KaravapKouo is only found in Hippocrates, Dr. 
Plumptre thinks it may have been a medical word in vogue in the schools of Tarsus. 
Gregory of Nyssa, on 1 Cor. xv. 28, quotes htivtamv (Phil. ii. 7), ifi.eip6p.cvot. (1 Thess. ii. 8), 
Trepirepeiferai (1 Cor. xiii. 4), eptfleias (Rom. ii. 8), &c, as instance b of St. Paul's autocracy 
over words. 

2 See Hdt. i. 74, vii. 91 ; Xen. Anab. b. ii. 26. 

3 2o\oi/tt<r/ufc. See Strabo, p. 603 ; Diog. Laert. f. 51. B? t the derivation from foil 
\z not certain. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITT. 17 

Kilikia, and Krete. What religion there was at this period had chiefly 
assumed an orgiastic and oriental character, and the popular faith of many 
even in Rome was a strange mixture of Greek, Koman, Egyptian, Phrygian, 
Phoenician, and Jewish elements. The wild, fanatical enthusiasms of the 
Eastern cults shook with new sensations of mad sensuality and weird super- 
stition the feeble and jaded despair of Aryan Paganism. The Tarsian 
idolatry was composed of these mingled elements. There, in Plutarch's time, 
& generation after St. Paul, the sword of Apollo, miraculously preserved from 
decay and rust, was still displayed. Hermes Eriounios, or the luck-bringer, 
still appears, purse in hand, upon their coins. iEsculapius was still believed 
to manifest his power and presence in the neighbouring iEgae. 1 But the 
traditional founder of the city was the Assyrian, Sardanapalus, whose semi- 
historical existence was confused, in the then syncretism of Pagan worship, 
with various representatives of the sun -god— the Asiatic Sandan, the Phoeni- 
cian Baal and the Grecian Hercules. The gross allusiveness and origin of 
this woiship, its connexion with the very types and ideals of luxurious 
effeminacy, unbounded gluttony, and brutal licence, were quite sufficient to 
awake the indignant loathing of each true-hearted Jew; and these revolts of 
natural antipathy in the hearts of a people in whom true religion has ever been 
united with personal purity would be intensified with patriotic disgust when 
they saw that, at the main festival of this degraded cult the effeminate 
Sardanapalus and the masculine Semiramis — each equally detestable — were 
worshipped with rites which externally resembled the pure and thankful 
rejoicings of the Feast of Tabernacles. St. Paul must have witnessed this 
festival. He must have seen at Anchiale the most defiant symbol of cynical 
contentment with all which is merely animal in the statue of Sardanapalus, 
represented as snapping his fingers while he uttered the sentiment engraved 
upon the pedestal — 

" Eat, drink, enjoy thyself ; the rest is nothing."* 

The result which such spectacles and such sentiments had left upon 
his mind had not been one of tolerance, or of blunted sensibility to the 
horror of evil. They had inspired, on the one hand, an overpowering 
sense of disgust ; on the other, an overwhelming conviction, deepened by 
subsequent observation, that mental perversity leads to, and is in its turn 
aggravated by, moral degradation ; that error in the intellect involves an 
ultimate error in the life and in the will; that the darkening of the 
understanding is inevitably associated with the darkening of the soul 
and spirit, and that out of such darkness spring the hidden things which 
degrade immoral lives. He who would know what was the aspect of 
Paganism to one who had seen it from his childhood upwards in its 

1 De Def. Orac. 41; Hausrath, pp. 7 — 9. See, too, Plutarch, Trepl 8e«nS<u|u.oiaas kou 
ifcdnjTos, ii. ; Neander, Ch. Hist. i. 15 sq. 

2 Strabo, xiv. 4; Athen. xii., p. 529 ; Cic. Tusc. Disp. v. 35. Hausrath, p. 7, finds a 
reminiscence of this in 1 Cor. xv. 32, which may. however, have been quite as probably 
derived from the wide-spread fable of the Epicurean fly dying in the honey-pot, 

cai fiiPp-joKa ical ireywxa kou AcAovmcu kSo> anoOavu) ovBev /t*A« fioC. 





18 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

characteristic developments, must read that most terrible passage of all 
Scripture, in which the full blaze of scorching sunlight burns with its fiercest 
flame of indignation upon the pollutions of Pagan wickedness. Under that 
glare of holy wrath we see Paganism in all its unnatural deformity. No 
halo of imagination surrounds it, no gleam of fancy plays over its glittering 
corruption. We see it as it was. Far other may be its aspect when the 
glamour of Hellenic grace is flung over it, when " the lunar beam of Plato's 
genius " or the meteoric wit of Aristophanes light up, as by enchantment, its 
revolting sorceries. But he who would truly judge of it — he who would see it 
as it shall seem when there shall fall on it a ray out of God's eternity, must 
view it as it appeared to the penetrating glance of a pure and enlightened eye. 
St. Paul, furnished by inward chastity with a diviner moly, a more potent 
haemony, than those of Homer's and Milton's song — unmoved, untempted, 
unbewitched, unterrified — sees in this painted Circe no laughing maiden, no 
bright-eyed daughter of the sun, but a foul and baleful harlot; and, seizing her 
by the hair, stamps deep upon her leprous forehead the burning titles of her 
shame. Henceforth she may go for all time throughout the world a branded 
sorceress. All may read that festering stigma; none can henceforth deceive the 
nations into regrets for the vanished graces of a world which knew not God. 1 

But besides this unmitigated horror inspired by the lowest aspect of 
heathen life, St. Paul derived from his early insight into its character his 
deep conviction that earthly knowledge has no necessary connexion with 
heavenly wisdom. If we may trust the romance of the sophist Philostratus, 
and if he is not merely appropriating the sentiments which he had derived 
from Christianity, the youthful Apollonius of Tyana, who was afterwards 
held up as a kind of heathen parallel to Christ, was studying under the orator 
Euthydemus at Tarsus at the very time when it must also have been the 
residence of the youthful Paul ; 2 and even Apollonius, at the age of thirteen, 
was so struck with the contrast between the professed wisdom of the city and 
its miserable morality, that he obtained leave from his father to remove 
to iEgee, and so pursue his studies at a more serious and religious place. 8 
The picture drawn, so long afterwards, by Philostratus, of the luxury, 
buffoonery, the petulance, the dandyism, the gossip, of the life at 
Tarsus, as a serious boy-philosopher is supposed to have witnessed it, 
might have no historical value if it were not confirmed in every particular 
by the sober narrative of the contemporary Strabo. " So great," he says, " is 
the zeal of the inhabitants for philosophy and all other encyclic training, that 
they have surpassed even Athens and Alexandria, and every other place one 
could mention in which philological and philosophical schools have arisen. ,,| 

1 V. infra, on Eom. i. 18—32. 2 Philostrat. Vit. Apoll. i. 7. 

* 'O Se rbv nev fiiSaafcaA.oi' «ix eT0 T ^ &* rf* ™te<»<; f/0o? aronov re -qyelro Kal ov xPI^tJjf 
t/i.(f>iA.O(ro<J/TJcra(.. rpv^rjs re yap ovSa/j-ov /xaAAof anrovraL, o-Kinirrorai re /cat vjSptarat 7rai/Tes 

(Philostr. Vit. Apollon., i., p. 8, chap. 7, ed. Olear. 1709). 

4 Strabo, xiv. 4, pp. 672, 673. See, too, Xen. Anab. i. 2, 23 ; Plin. v. 22; Q. Curt. 
Hi. 5, 1. The Stoics, Athenodorus, tutor of Augustus, and Nestor, tutor of Tiberius, 
lived at Tarsus ; and others are mentioned. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 19 

The state of affairs resulting from the social atmosphere which he proceeds 
to describe is as amusing as it is despicable. It gives us a glimpse of the 
professorial world in days of Pagan decadence ; of a professorial world, 
not such as it now is, and often has been, in our English and German 
Universities, where Christian brotherhood and mutual esteem have taken 
the place of wretched rivalism, and where good and learned men devote 
their lives to " gazing on the bright countenance of truth in the mild and 
dewy air of delightful studies," but as it was also in the days of the Poggios, 
Filelfos, and Politians of the Renaissance— cliques of jealous savcms, narrow, 
selfish, unscrupulous, base, sceptical, impure — bursting with gossip, scandal, 
and spite. "The thrones" of these little "academic gods" were as 
mutually hostile and as universally degraded as those of the Olympian deities, 
in which it was, perhaps, a happy thing that they had ceased to believe. One 
illustrious prof essor cheated the State by stealing oil; another avenged himself 
on an opponent by epigrams ; another by a nocturnal bespattering of his 
house ; and rhetorical jealousies often ended in bloody quarrels. On this 
unedifying spectacle of littleness in great places the people in general looked 
with admiring eyes, and discussed the petty discords of these squabbling 
sophists as though they were matters of historical importance. 1 We can well 
imagine how unutterably frivolous this apotheosis of pedantism would appear 
to a serious-minded and faithful Jew ; and it may have been his Tarsian 
reminiscences which added emphasis to St. Paul's reiterated warnings — that 
the wise men of heathendom, " alleging themselves to be wise, became fools ; " 
that " they became vain in their disputings, and their unintelligent heart 
was darkened ; " 2 that " the wisdom of this world is folly in the sight of God, 
for it is written, He who graspeth the wise in their own craftiness." And 
again, " the Lord knoweth the reasonings of the wise that they are vain." 3 
But while he thus confirms his tenet, according to his usual custom, by 
Scriptural quotations from Job and the Psalms, and elsewhere from Isaiah and 
Jeremiah, 4 he reiterates again and again from his own experience that the 
Greeks seek after wisdom and regard the Cross as foolishness, yet that the 
foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than 
men, and that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound 
the wise, and the base things of the world to confound the mighty ; and that 
when, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, 
it pleased God by "the foolishness of the proclamation" 5 — for in his 
strong irony he loves and glories in the antitheses of his opponent's choosing — 
" by the foolishness of the thing preached " to save them that believe. 6 
If the boasted wisdom of the Greek and Roman world was such as the young 

IT.OTap.ds re avrow? SuxppeZ KvSvos, <j> *rapajca0ijvTai, Ka.6a.Trep T<av bpviOuiv oi iypot (Philostr. 

ubi supr. ). 

2 Rom. i. 21, 22. 3 1 Cor> ^ 18—20. 

4 Job v. 13 ; Ps. xciv. 11 ; Isa, xxix. 14 ; x xxii i. 18 ; xliv. 25 ; Jer. viii 9 ; 1 Cor. iw 
18 — 27. 

1 Cor. 1. 21, Sta. ttjs /xwpi'as toC KTjpvy/xaTo?. 

• 1 Cor. i. 18—25; ii. 14; iii. 19; iv. 10; 2 Cor. xL 16, 19. 
c 2 



20 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAITL. 

Saul had seen, if their very type of senselessness and foolishness was 
that which the converted Paul believed, then Paul at least — so he says in 
his passionate and scornful irony — would choose for ever to be on the side of, 
to cast in his lot with, to be gladly numbered among, the idiots and the 
fools. 

" He who hath felt the Spirit of the Highest 
Cannot confound, or doubt Him, or defy ; 
Yea, with one voice, world, though thou deniest, 
Stand thou on that side— for on this am I ! " 

St. Paul, then, was to the very heart a Jew — a Jew in culture, a Jew in 
sympathy, a Jew in nationality, a Jew in faith. His temperament was in no 
sense what we ordinarily regard as a poetic temperament ; yet when we re- 
member how all the poetry which existed in the moral depths of his nature was 
; .ustained by the rhythms and imagery, as his soul itself was sustained by th( 
thoughts and hopes, of his national literature — when we consider how the star 
of Abraham had seemed to shine on his cradle in a heathen land, and his boy- 
hood in the dim streets of unhallowed Tarsus to gain freshness and sweetness 
'•from the waving and rustling of the oak of Man-ire" 1 — we can understand 
that though in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither circumcision nor 
uncircumcision, but a new creation, 2 yet for no earthly possession would he 
have bartered his connexion with the chosen race. In his Epistle to the 
Romans he speaks in almost the very language of the Talmudist : " Israel hath 
sinned (Josh. vii. 11), but although he hath sinned," said Rabbi Abba bar Zavda, 
" he is still Israel. Hence the proverb — A myrtle among nettles is still called 
a myrtle." 8 And when we read the numerous passages in which he vaunts his 
participation in the hopes of Israel, his claim to be a fruitful branch in the 
rich olive of Jewish life ; when we hear him speak of their adoption, their 
Shechinah, their covenants, their Law, their worship, their promises, their 
Fathers, their oracles of God, their claim of kinsmanship with the humanity 
of Christ, 4 we can understand to the full the intense ejaculation of his patriotic 
fervour, when — in language which has ever been the stumbling-block of reli- 
gious selfishness, but which surpasses the noblest utterances of heroic self- 
devotion— lie declares that he could wish himself accursed from Christ 5 for his 
brethren, his kinsmen, according to the flesh. 6 The valiant spirit of the Jews 

» Hausrath, p. 20. 2 «fac, Gal. vi. 15 ; iii 2a 

3 Sanhedrin, f. 44, 1. Rom. iii. 2; ix.. , passim. 

4 Rom. ix. 1 — 5 ; x. 1 ; xi. 1. 6 Rom. ix. 3. 

' Any one who wishes to see the contortions of a narrow exegesis struggling to 
extricate itself out of a plain meaning, which is too noble for its comprehension, may see 
specimens of it in commentaries upon this text. This, alas ! is only one instance of the 
spirit which so often makes the reading of an ordinary variorum Pauline commentary 
one of the most tedious, bewildering, and unprofitable of employments. Strange that, 
with the example of Christ before their eyes, many erudite Christian commentators 
should know so little of the sublimity of unselfishness as to force us to look to the 
parallels of a Moi es nay, even of a Danton — in order that we may be able to conceive 
of the true nobleness of a Paul ! J>ut there are cases in which he who would obtain from 
the writings of St. Paul their true, and often quite simple and transparent, meaning, 
muoL teai away with unsparing hand the accumulated cobwebs of centuries of error. 



BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 21 

of Tarsus sent them in hundreds to die, sword in hand, amid the carnage of 
captured Jerusalem, and to shed their last blood to slake, if might be, the very 
embers of the conflagration which destroyed the Temple of their love. The 
same patriotism burned in the spirit, the same blood flowed in the veins, not 
only of Saul the Pharisee, but of Paul the prisoner of the Lord. 

It will be seen from all that we have said that we wholly disagree with 
those who have made it their favourite thesis to maintain for St. Paul the early 
acquisition of an advanced Hellenic culture. His style and his dialectic method 
have been appealed to in order to support this view. 1 His style, however, is 
that of a man who wrote in a peculiar and provincial Greek, but thought in 
Syriac ; and his dialectical method is purely Rabbinic. As for his deep know- 
ledge of heathen life, we may be sure that it was not derived from books, but 
from the fatal wickedness of which he had been a daily witness. A Jew in a 
heathen city needed no books to reveal to him the " depths of Satan." In this 
respect how startling a revelation to the modern world was the indisputable 
evidence of the ruins of Pompeii ! Who would have expected to find the 
infamies of the Dead Sea cities paraded with such infinite shamelessness in 
every street of a little provincial town ? What innocent snow could ever hide 
the guilty front of a life so unspeakably abominable ? Could anything short 
of the earthquake have engulfed it, or of the volcano have burnt it up ? And 
if Pompeii was like this, we may judge, from the works of Aristophanes and 
Athenseus, of Juvenal and Martial, of Petronius and Apuleius, of Strato and 
Meleager — which maybe regarded as the "pieces justificatives " of St. Paul's 
estimate of heathendom — what Tarsus and Ephesus, what Corinth and Miletus, 
were likely to have been. In days and countries when the darkness was so 
deep that the very deeds of darkness did not need to hide themselves — in days 
and cities where the worst vilenesses of idolatry were trumpeted in its streets, 
and sculptured in its market-places, and consecrated in its worship, and stamped 
upon its coins — did Paul need Greek study to tell him the characteristics of a 
godless civilisation ? The notion of Baumgarten that, after his conversion, 
St. Paul earnestly studied Greek literature at Tarsus, with a view to his mission 
among the heathen— or that the "books" and parchments which he asked to 
be sent to him from the house of Carpus at Troas, 2 were of this description — 
is as precarious as the fancy that his parents sent him to be educated at Jeru- 
salem in order to counteract the commencing sorcery exercised over his 
imagination by Hellenic studies. Gamaliel, it is true, was one of the few 
Rabbis who took the liberal and enlightened view about the permissibility of 
the Chohmah Jovanith, or " wisdom of the Greeks " — one of the few who held 
tie desirability of not wholly dissevering the white tallith of Shem from the 
stained pallium of Japhet. 3 But, on the one hand, neither would Gamaliel 

1 See Schaff, Hist, of And. Christianity, i. 68. 2 2 Tim. iv. 13. 

3 See Life of Christ, Exc. IV. vol. ii. 461. The study of Greek literature by the 
House of Gamaliel is said to hare been connived at by the Kabbis, on the plea that they 
needed a knowledge of Greek in civil and diplomatic intercourse on behalf of their 
countrymen (see Etheridge, Heb. Lit. p. 45). Rabban Sbimon Ben Gamaliel is said to 
have remarked that there were 1,000 children in his father's house, of whom 500 studied 



22 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

have had that false toleration which seems to think that " the ointment of tl e 
apothecary " is valueless without " the fly which causeth it to stink;" and, en 
the other hand, if Gamaliel had allowed his pupils to handle such books, cr 
such parts of books, as dwelt on the darker side of Paganism, Paul was not the 
kind of pupil who would, for a moment, have availed himself of such "ruinous 
edification." 1 The Jews were so scrupulous, that some of them held concern- 
ing books of their own hagiographa — such, for instance, as the Book of Esther 
— that they were dubious reading. They would not allow their youth even to 
open the Song of Solomon before the age of twenty-one. Nothing, therefore, 
can be more certain than that a " Pharisee of Pharisees," even though hia 
boyhood were spent in heathen Tarsus, would not have been allowed to read — 
barely even allowed to know the existence of — any but the sweetest and soundest 
portions of Greek letters, if even these. 2 But who that has read St. Paul can 
believe that he has ever studied Homer, or .ZEschylus, or Sophocles ? If he 
had done so, would there— in a writer who often " thinks in quotations " — 
have been no touch or trace of any reminiscence of, or allusion to, epic or tragic 
poetry in epistles written at Athens and at Corinth, and beside the very tumuli 
of Ajax and Achilles? Had Paul been a reader of Aristotle, would he have 
argued in the style which he adopts in the Epistles to the Galatians and the 
Romans ? 3 Had he been a reader of Plato, would the fifteenth chapter of the 
first Epistle to the Corinthians have carried in it not the most remotely faint 
allusion to the splendid guesses of the Phaedo ? Nothing can be more clear 
than that he had never been subjected to a classic training. His Greek is not 
the Greek of the Atticists, nor his rhetoric the rhetoric of the schools, nor his 
logic the logic of the philosophers. It is doubtful whether the incomparable 
energy and individuality of his style and of his reasoning would not have been 

the law, and 500 the wisdom of the Greeks, and that of these all but two perished [in 
the rebellion of Bar-chocba?] {Babha Kama, f. 83, 1). The author of the celebrated 
comparison, that "because the two sons of Noah, Shem and Japhet, united to cover with 
one garment their father's nakedness, Shem obtained the fringed garment (tallith), and 
Japhet the philosopher's garment {pallium), which ought to be united again," was R. 
Jochanan Ben Napuchah {Midr. Rabbah, Gen. xxxvi. ; Jer. Sotah, ad /.; Selden, Be 
Synedr. ii. 9, 2 ; Biscoe, p. 60). On the other hand, the narrower Rabbis identified 
Greek learning with Egyptian thaumaturgy ; and when R. Elieser Ben Dama asked his 
uncle, R. Ismael, whether one might not learn Greek knowledge after having studied the 
entire law, R. Ismael quoted in reply Josh. i. 8, and said, "Go and find a moment which 
is neither day nor night, and then abandon yourself in it to Greek knowledge " {Mena- 
chdth, 99, 2). 

1 1 Cor. vili. 10, rj crvi/e(o'Tjcr<s avrov acrOevovs ovtos oI/co8o/uuj#»ja"eTai els to to. ei8<xi\.69vTa e<F0CeiV. 

Ruinosa aedificatio, Calv. ad loc. 

2 See Sota, 49, 6 ; and the strong condemnation of all Gentile books by R. Akibha, 
Bab. Sanhedr. 90, a. (Gfrorer, Jahrh. d. Heils. i. 114 ; Philo, ii. 350 ; Gratz, hi. 502 ; 
Derenbourg, Palest. 114.) In Yadayim, iv. 0, the Sadducees complain of some Pharisees 
for holding that the Books of Ecclesiastes and Canticles "defile the hands," while "the 
books of Homeros " do not. The comment appended to this remark shows, however, the 
most astounding ignorance. The two Rabbis [in loco) take "Meros"to be the proper 
name, preceded by the article, and deriving Meros from rasas, to destroy, make the 
poems of Homer into books which cavil against the Law and are doomed to destruction ! 
Gratz denies that DTon is Homer. 

8 "Melius haec sibi convenissent," says Fritzsche, in alluding to one of St. PauTi 
antinomies, "si Apostolus Aristotelis non Gamalielis alumnus fuisset," 



THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 23 

merely enfeebled and conventionalised if he had gone through any prolonged 
course of the only training which the Sophists of Tarsus could have given 
him. 1 



CHAPTER in. 

THE SCHOOL OP THE RABBI. 



'H«ou(raT6 yhp t4)i/ ifirjv avaarpo(pi]V irore iv 'louSaicr/^), '6ri . . . Trpfe/coirro* 
ip 1$ 'lovSai(T/ji.w virep iroWovs <rvvr)hiKia>Tas iv rep yevei jjlov. — Gal. i. 13, 14. 

" Let thy house be a place of resort for the wise, and cover thyself with the 
dust of their feet, and drink their words with thirstiness. " — Pirke Abhotk, i. 4. 

"The world was created for the sake of the Thorah." — Nedarim, 32, 1. 

"Whoever is busied in the law for its own sake is worth the whole world." — 
Perek E. Meir, 1. 

So far, then, we have attempted to trace in detail, by the aid of St. Paul's 
own writings, the degree and the character of those influences which were 
exercised upon his mind by the early years which he spent at Tarsus, modified 
or deepened as they must have been by long intercourse with heathens, and 
with converts from heathendom, in later years. And already we have seen 
abundant reason to believe that the impressions which he received from 
Hellenism were comparatively superficial and fugitive, while those of his 
Hebraic training and nationality worked deep among the very bases of his 
life. It is this Hebraic side of his character, so important to any under- 
standing of his life and writings, that we must now endeavour to trace and 
estimate. 

That St. Paul was a Roman citizen, that he could go through the world 
and say in his own defence, when needful or possible, Givis Bomanus sum, is 
stated so distinctly, and under circumstances so manifestly probable, that the 
fact stands above all doubt. There are, indeed, some difficulties about it 
which induce many German theologians quietly to deny its truth, and attri- 
bute the statement to a desire on the part of the author of the Acts " to 
recommend St. Paul to the Romans as a native Roman," or " to remove the 
reproach that the originators of Christendom had been enemies of the Roman 
State." It is true that, if St. Paul was a free-born Roman citizen, his legal 
rights as established by the Lex Porcia 2 must, according to his own state- 
ment, have been eight times violated at the time when he wrote the Second 

» See Excursus I., " The Style of St. Paul ; " Excursus II., " Rhetoric of St. Paul ; " 
and Excursus III., "The Classic Quotations and Allusions of St. Paul." I may sum up 
the conclusion of these essays by stating that St. Paul h > d but a slight acquaintance 
with Greek literature, but that he had very probably attended some elementary classes 
in Tarsus, in which he had gained a tincture of Greek rhetoric, and possibly even of 
Stoic principles. 

2 "Porcia lex virgas ab omnium civium Romanorum corpore amovet " (Gio. pro. Bah. 
I; lav. x. 9). 



24 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Epistle to the Corinthians; 1 while a ninth violation of those rights was only 
prevented by his direct appeal. Five of these, however, were Jewish 
scourgings ; and what we have already said, as well as what we shall say 
hereafter, may well lead us to suppose that, as against the Jews, St. Paul 
would have purposely abstained from putting forward a claim which, from 
the month of a Jew, would have been regarded as an odious sign that he was 
willing to make a personal advantage of his country's subjection. The Jewish 
authorities possessed the power to scourge, and it is only too sadly probable 
that Saul himself, when he was their agent, had been the cause of its infliction 
on other Christians. If so, he would have felt a strong additional reason for 
abstaining from the plea which would have exempted him from the authority 
of his countrymen ; and we may see in this abstention a fresh and, so far as 
I am aware, a hitherto unnoticed trait of his natural nobleness. As to the 
Roman scourgings, it is clear that the author of the Acts, though well a ware 
of the privileges which Roman citizenship entailed, was also aware that, on 
turbulent occasions and in remote places, the plea might be summarily set 
aside in the case of those who were too weak or too obscure to support it. If 
under the full glare of publicity in Sicily, and when the rights of the " Civitas" 
were rare, a Yerres could contemptuously ignore them to an extent much 
more revolting to the Roman sense of dignity than scourging was — then very 
little difficulty remains in reconciling St. Paul's expression, " Thrice was I 
beaten with rods," with the claim which he put forth to the praetors of 
Philippi and to the chiliarch at Jerusalem. How St. Paul's father or grand- 
father obtained the highly-prized distinction we have no means of ascertaining. 
It certainly did not belong to any one as a citizen of Tarsus, for, if so, Lysias 
at Jerusalem, knowing that St. Paul came from Tarsus, would have known 
that he had also the rights of a Roman. But Tarsus was not a Colonia or a 
Mv/nicipivm, but only an JJrbs Libera; and this privilege, bestowed upon it 
by Augustus, did not involve any claim to the Civitas. The franchise may 
either have been purchased by Paul's father, or obtained as a reward for some 
services of which no trace remains. 2 When Cassius punished Tarsus by a 
heavy fine for having embraced the side of Antony, it is said that many 
Tarsians were sold as slaves in order to pay the money ; and one conjecture 
is that St. Paul's father, in his early days, may have been one of these, and 
may have been first emancipated and then presented with the Civitas during 
a residence at Rome. The conjecture is just possible, but nothing more. 

At any rate, this Roman citizenship is not in any way inconsistent with 
his constant claim to the purest Jewish descent; nor did it appreciably affect 
his character. The father of Saul may have been glad that he possessed an 
inalienable right, transmissible to his son, which would protect him in many 
of those perils which were only too possible in such times; but t made no 

1 "When he WBM about fifty-three years old. 

7 Sec for such means of acquiring it, Suet. Anrj. 47; Jos. B.J. *A. 14; Acts xxii. 
28. The possession of citizenship had to be proved by a " c/i^nr/ia," and Claudius 
punished ;i false assumption of it with death. (Suet, Claud. 26, Calig. 28; Nero, 12$ 
gpiutet. Dis$eri. hi. xi.) 



THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 25 

difference in the training which he gave to the young Saul, or in the destiny 
which he marked out for him. That training, as we can clearly see, was the 
ordinary training of every Jewish boy. " The prejudices of the Pharisaic 
house, it has been said, " surrounded his cradle ; his Judaism grew like the 
mustard-tree in the Gospel, and intolerance, fanaticism, national hatred, pride, 
and other passions, built their nests among its branches." x At the age of five 
he would begin to study the Bible with his parents at home ; and even earlier 
than this he would doubtless have learnt the Shema 2 and the Hallel (Psalms 
cxiii. — cxviii.) in whole or in part. At six he would go to his "vineyard," as the 
later Rabbis called their schools. At ten he would begin to study those 
earlier and simpler developments of the oral law, which were afterwards 
collected in the Mishna. At thirteen he would, by a sort of " confirmation," 
become a " Son of the Commandment." 3 At fifteen he would be trained in 
yet more minute and burdensome halachoth, analogous to those which ulti- 
mately filled the vast mass of the Gemara. At twenty, or earlier, like every 
orthodox Jew, he would marry. During many years he would be ranked 
among the " pupils of the wise," 4 and be mainly occupied with " the traditions 
of the Fathers.'' 5 

It was in studies and habits like these that the young Saul of Tarsus grew 
up to the age of thirteen, which was the age at which a Jewish boy, if he were 
destined for the position of a Rabbi, entered the school of some great master. 
The master among whose pupils Saul was enrolled was the famous Rabban 
Gamaliel, a son of Rabban Simeon, and a grandson of Hillel, "a doctor of 
the law had in reputation among all the people.' ' ° There were only seven of 
the Rabbis to whom the Jews gave the title of Rabban, and three of these 
were Gamaliels of this family, who each in turn rose to the high distinction 
of Nasi, or President of the School. Gamaliel I., like his grandfather 
Hillel, held the somewhat anomalous position of a liberal Pharisee. A Pharisee 
in heartfelt zeal for the traditions of his fathers, 7 he yet had none of the 
narrow exclusiveness which characterised Shammai, the rival of his grand- 
father, and the hard school which Shammai had founded. His liberality of 
intellect showed itself in the permission of Pagan literature ; his largeness of 
heart in the tolerance which breathes through his speech before the Sanhedrim 

1 Hausrath, p. 19. 

2 Strictly Deut. vi. 4—9 ; but also xi. 13—27 ; Num. xv. 37—41. 

3 Bwr Mitsvah. 

4 Pirke Abhdth, v. 21. See too Dr. Ginsburg's excellent article on " Education " in 
Kitto's 3-jM. Cycl. 

5 Pirke Abhdth, i. 1. The two favourite words of the Pharisees were aicpCpeia and 
rd. irdrpia e0rj. See Acts xxvi. 5; xxii. 3; Jos. B. J. ii. 8, 14 ; i. 5, 2; Antt. xiii. 10, 6; 
xvii. 2, ad fin. 

6 Acts v. 34, xxii. 3. See Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden. iii. 274. 

7 I have noticed farther on (see Excursus V.) the difficulty of being sure which of the 
Gamaliels is referred to when the name occurs in the Talmud. This, however, is less im- 
portant, since they were all of the same school, and entirely faithful to Mosaism. We 
may see the utter change which subsequently took place in St, Paul's views if we com- 
pare Eom. xiv. 5, Col. ii. 16, Gal. iv. 10, with the following anecdote: — "Kabban 
Gamaliel's ass happened to be laden with honey, and it was found dead one Sabbath 
evening, because he had been unwilling to unload it on that day" (Shabbath, f. 154, o. 2). 



26 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

There is no authority for the tradition that he was a secret Christian, 1 but w« 
see from the numerous notices of him in the Talmud, and from the sayings 
there ascribed to him, that he was a man of exactly the character which we 
should infer from the brief notice of him and of his sentiments in the Acts 
of the Apostles. In both sources alike we see a humane, thoughtful, high- 
minded, and religious man — a man of sufficient culture to elevate him above 
vulgar passions, and of sufficient wisdom to see, to state, and to act upon the 
broad principles that hasty judgments are dangerously liable to error ; that 
there is a strength and majesty in truth which needs no aid from persecu- 
tion ; that a light from heaven falls upon the destinies of man, and that by 
that light God " shows all things in the slow history of their ripening." 

At the feet of this eminent Sanhedrist sat Saul of Tarsus in all pro- 
bability for many years; 2 and though for a time the burning zeal of his 
temperament may have carried him to excesses of intolerance in which he 
was untrue to the best traditions of his school, yet, since the sunlight of the 
grace of God ripened in his soul the latent seeds of all that was wise and 
tender, we may believe that some of those germs of charity had been 
implanted in his heart by his eminent teacher. So far from seeing any 
improbability in the statement that St. Paul had been a scholar of Gamaliel, 
it seems to me that it throws a flood of light on the character and opinions of 
the Apostle. With the exception of Hillel, there is no one of the Jewish 
Rabbis, so far as we see them in the light of history, whose virtues made him 
better suited to be a teacher of a Saul, than Hillel's grandson. We must bear 
in mind that the dark side of Pharisaism which is brought before us in the 
Gospels — the common and current Pharisaism, half hypocritical, half 
mechanical, and wholly selfish, which justly incurred the blighting flash of 
Christ's denunciation — was not the only aspect which Pharisaism could wear. 
When we speak of Pharisaism we mean obedience petrified into formalism, 
religion degraded into ritual, morals cankered by casuistry; we mean the 
triumph and perpetuity of all the worst and weakest elements in religious 
party- spirit. But there were Pharisees and Pharisees. The New Testament 
furnishes us with a favourable picture of the candour and wisdom of a 
Mcodemus and a Gamaliel. In the Talmud, among many other stately 
figures who walk in a peace and righteousness worthy of the race which 
sprang from Abraham, we see the lovable and noble characters of a Hillel, of 
a Simeon, of a Chaja, of a Juda " the Holy." It was when he thought of 
such as these, that, even long after his conversion, Paul could exclaim before 
the Sanhedrin with no sense of shame or contradiction — " Men and brethren, 
I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees." He would be the more able to make 
this appeal because, at that moment, he was expressly referring to the 

1 Recogn. Clem. i. 65 ; Phot. Cod. 171, p. 199 ; Thilo, Cod. Apocr. p. 501 (Meyer ad 
Acts v. 34). 

2 Acta xxii. 3. The Jewish Rabbis sat on lofty chairs, and their pupils sat at theil 
feet, either on the ground or on benches. There is no sufficient ground for the tradition 
that up till the time of Gamaliel's death it had been the custom for the pupils to stand, 
(2 Kings ii. 3 j iv. 38 ; Bab. Sanhedr. vii. 2 ; Biscoe, p. 77.) 



THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 27 

resurrection of the dead, which has been too sweepingly characterised as " the 
one doctrine which Paul the Apostle borrowed from Saul the Pharisee." 

It is both interesting, and for the study of St. Paul's Epistles most 
deeply important, to trace the influence of these years upon his character and 
intellect. Much that he learnt during early manhood continued to be, till the 
last, an essential part of his knowledge and experience. To the day of his 
death he neither denied nor underrated the advantages of the Jew ; and first 
wnong those advantages he placed the possession of "the oracles of God." 1 
He had begun the study of these Scriptures at the age of six, and to them, 
and the elucidations of them which had been gathered during many centuries 
in the schools of Judaism, he had devoted the most studious years of his life. 
The effects of that study are more or less traceable in every Epistle which he 
wrote ; they are specially remarkable in those which, like the Epistle to the 
Romans, were in whole or in part addressed to Churches in which Jewish 
converts were numerous or predominant. 

His profound knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures shows how 
great had been his familiarity with them from earliest childhood. From the 
Pentateuch, from the Prophets, and above all from the Psalter, he not only 
quotes repeatedly, advancing at each step of the argument from quotation to 
quotation, as though without these his argument, which is often in reality 
quite independent of them, would lack authority; but he also quotes, as is 
evident, from memory, and often into one brief quotation weaves the verbal 
reminiscences of several passages. 2 Like all Hellenistic Jews he uses tne 
Greek version of the LXX., but he had an advantage over most Hellenists in 
that knowledge of the original Hebrew which sometimes stands him in good 
6tead. Yet though he can refer to the original when occasion requires, the 
LXX. was to him as much " the Bible " as our English version is to us ; and, 
as is the case with many Christian writers, he knew it so well that his 
sentences are constantly moulded by its rhythm, and his thoughts incessantly 
coloured by its expressions. 

And the controversial use which he makes of it is very remarkable. It 
often seems at first sight to be wholly independent of the context. It often 
seems to read between the lines. 3 It often seems to consider the mere words 
of a writer as of conclusive authority entirely apart from their original 
application. 4 It seems to regard the word and letter of Scripture as full of 
divine mysterious oracles, which might not only be cited in matters of doctrine, 
but even to illustrate the simplest matters of contemporary fact. 5 It attaches 
consequences of the deepest importance to what an ordinary reader might 

1 Eom. iii. 2. 

2 E.g., Rom. i. 24, iii. 6, iv. 17, ix. 33, x. 18. xi. 8 ; 1 Cor. vi. 2, ix. 7, xv. 45 ; &c. 

3 Rom. ii. 24, iii. 10—18, ix. 15 ;1 Cor. x. 1—4 ; Gal. iv. 24—31; &c. This is the 
essence of the later Kabbala, with its Pardes — namely, Peshat, " explanation ; " Eemes, 
"hint;" Derush, "homily;" and Sod, "mystery." Yet in St. Paul there is not a 
trace of the methods (Genetk) of Gematria, Notarikon, or Themourah, which the Jews 
applied very early to Old Testament exegesis. I have fully explained these terms in a 
■japer on "Rabbinic Exegesis," Expositor, May, 1877. 

4 1 Cor. xiv. 21 ; Rom. x. 6—9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 45. 5 See Rom. x. 15—21. 



28 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

regard as a mere grammatical expression. 1 But if the general con ception ol 
this style of argumentation was due to Paul's long training in Rabbinic 
principles of exegesis, it should not be forgotten that while these principles 
often modified the form of his expressions, they cannot in any single instance 
be said to have furnished the essential matter of his thoughts. It was quite 
inevitable that one who had undergone the elaborate training of a Rabbi — one 
who, to full manhood, had never dreamt that any training could be superior to 
it — would not instantly unlearn the reiterated lessons of so many years. N or 
was it in any way necessary to the interests of religious truth that he should 
do so. The sort of traditional culture in the explanation of Scripture which 
he learnt at the feet of Gamaliel was not only of extreme value in all his 
controversies with the Jews, but also enriched his style, and lent fresh vivid- 
ness to his arguments, without enfeebling his judgment or mystifying his 
opinions. The ingenuity of the Jewish Rabbi never for one moment over- 
powers the vigorous sense and illuminated intellect of the Christian teacher. 
Although St. Paul's method of handling Scripture, undoubtedly, in its general 
features, resembles and recalls the method which reigns throughout the 
Talmud, yet the practical force, the inspired wisdom, the clear intuition, of 
the great Apostle, preserve him from that extravagant abuse of numerical, 
kabbalistic, esoteric, and impossibly inferential minutiae which make anything 
mean anything — from all attempt to emulate the remarkable exegetical feats 
of those letter-worshipping Rabbis who prided themselves on suspending 
dogmatic mountains by textual hairs. He shared, doubtless, in the views of 
the later Jewish schools — the Tanaim and Amoraim — on the nature of 
inspiration. These views, which we find also in Philo, made the words of 
Scripture co-extensive and identical with the words of God, and in the 
clumsy and feeble hands of the more fanatical Talmudists often attached to 
the dead letter an importance which stifled or destroyed the living sense. 
But as this extreme and mechanical literalism — this claim to absolute in- 
fallibility even in accidental details and passing allusions — this superstitious 
adoration of the letters and vocables of Scripture as though they were the 
articulate vocables and immediate autograph of God — finds no encouragement 
in any part of Scripture, and very direct discouragement in more than cne of 
the utterances of Christ, so there is not a single passage in which any 
approach to it is dogmatically stated in the writings of St. Paul. 2 Nay, more 
— the very point of his specific difference from the Judseo- Christians was his 
denial of the permanent validity of the entire scheme of legislation which it 
was the immediate object of the Pentateuch to record. If it be asserted 
that St. Paul deals with the Old Testament in the manner of a Rabbi, let it 
be said in answer that he uses it to emancipate the souls which Judaism 

i Gal. iii. 16. 

2 2 Tim. iii. 16 is no exception ; even if 0e67n/ev<rTo? be there regarded as a predicate, 
nothing would be more extravagant than to rest on that single adjective the vast hypo- 
thesis of literal dictation (see infra, ad Inc.). On this great subject of inspiration I have 
stated what I believe to be the Catholic faith fully and clearly in the Bible Educator, i 
190 sq. 



THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 2iJ 

enslaved; and that he deduces from it, not the Kabbala and the Talmud — " a 
philosophy for dreamers and a code for mummies " * — but the main ideas of 
the Gospel of the grace of God. 

It will be easy for any thoughtful and unprejudiced reader of St. Paul's 
Epistles to verify and illustrate for himself the Apostle's use of Scripture. 
He adopts the current mode of citation, but he ennobles and enlightens it. 2 
That he did not consider the method universally applicable is clear from its 
omission in those of his Epistles which were intended in the main for Gentile 
Christians, 3 as also in his speeches to heathen assemblies. But to the Jews he 
would naturally address a style of argument which was in entire accordance 
with their own method of dialectics. Many of the truths which he 
demonstrates by other considerations may have seemed to him to acquire 
additional authority from their assonance with certain expressions of Scripture. 
We cannot, indeed, be sure in some instances how far St. Paul meant his 
quotation for an argument, and how far he used it as a mere illustrative 
formula. Thus, we feel no hesitation in admitting the cogency of his proof 
of the fact that both Jews and Gentiles were guilty in God's sight ; but we 
should not consider the language of David about his enemies in the fourteenth 
and fifty-third Psalms, still less his strong expressions " all " and " no, not 
one," as adding any great additional force to the general argument. It is 
probable that a Jew would have done so; and St. Paul, as a Jew trained in 
this method of Scriptural application, may have done so too. But what has 
been called his " inspired Targum " of the Old Testament does not bind us to 
the mystic method of Old Testament commentary. As the Jews were more 
likely to adopt any conclusion which was expressed for them in the words of 
Scripture, St. Paul, having undergone the same training, naturally enwove 
into his style — though only when he wrote to them — this particular method of 
Scriptural illustration. To them an argument of this kind would be an 
argumentum ex concessis. To us its argumentative force would be much 
smaller, because it does not appeal to us, as to him and to his readers, with all 
the force of familiar reasoning. So far from thinking this a subject for 
regret, we may, on the contrary, be heartily thankful for an insight which 
could give explicitness to deeply latent truths, and find in an observation of 
minor importance, like that of Habakkuk, that " the soul of the proud man 
is not upright, but the just man shall live by his steadfastness " 4 — i.e., that 
the Chaldeans should enjoy no stable prosperity, but that the Jews, here 
ideally represented as " the upright man," should, because of their fidelity, 
live secure — the depth of power and meaning which we attach to that palmary 
truth of the Pauline theology that "the just shall live by his faith" b 

1 Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. i. 268 and 408—421. 

3 See Jowett, Romans, i. 353—362. 

8 There axe no Scriptural quotations in 1, 2 Thess., Phil., Col. 

4 Hab. ii. 4. (Heb. inaraHa, by his trustworthiness.) See Lightfoot ad Gal. Hi. 11, 
and p. 149. 

5 Gal. in. 11 ; Rom. L 17 : also in Heb. i. 38, St. Paul omits the pov of the LXX, 
which is not in the Hebrew. 



30 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

A similar but more remarkable instance of this apparent subordination of 
the historic context in the illustrative application of prophetic words is found 
in 1 Cor. xiv. 21. St. Paul is there speaking of the gift of tongues, and 
speaking of it with entire disparagement in comparison with the loftier gift 
of prophecy, i.e., of impassioned and spiritual teaching. In support of this 
disparaging estimate, and as a proof that the tongues, being mainly meant as 
a sign to unbelievers, ought only to be used sparingly and under definite 
limitations in the congregations of the faithful, he quotes from Isaiah xxviii. II 1 
the verse — which he does not in this instance borrow from the LXX. version — 
" With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people, and 
yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord" The whole meaning 
and context are, in the origiuai, very interesting, and generally misunderstood. 
The passage implies that since the drunken, shameless priests and prophets 
chose, in their hiccoughing scorn, to deride the manner and method of the 
divine instruction which came to them, 2 God should address them in a wholly 
different way, namely, by the Assyrians, who spake tongues which they could 
not understand ; and yet even to that instruction— the stern and unintelligible 
utterance of foreign victors — they should continue deaf. This passage, in a 
manner quite alien from any which would be natural to us, St. Paul embodied 
in a pre-eminently noble and able argument, as though it illustrated, if it did 
not prove, his view as to the proper object and limitations of those soliloquies 
of ecstatic spiritual emotion which were known as Glossolalia, or " the Gift of 
Tongues/' 

One more instance, and that, perhaps, the most remarkable of all, will 
enable us better to understand a peculiarity which was the natural result of 
years of teaching. In Gal. iii. 16 he says, " Now the promises were spoken to 
Abraham and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as applying to 
many, but, as applying to one, And to thy seed — who is Christ." Certainly 
at first sight we should say that an argument of immense importance was 
here founded on the use of the Hebrew word zerd in the singular, 3 and its 
representative the a-n-ep/uLa of the LXX. ; and that the inference which St. Paul 
deduces depends solely on the fact that the plural, zeraim (o-Trspixara), is not 
used ; and that, therefore, the promise of Gen. xiii. 15 pointed from the first 
to a special fulfilment in ONE of Abraham's descendants. This prima facie 
view must, however, be erroneous, because it is inconceivable that St. Paul — a 
good Hebraist and a master of Hellenistic Greek — was unaware that the plural 
zeraim, as in 1 Sam. viii. 15, Dan i. 12, and the title of the Talmudic treatise, 
could not by any possibility have been used in the original promise, because 
it could only mean "various hinds of grain" — exactly in the sense in which he 

1 The quotation is introduced with the formula, "It has been written in the Law," ft 
phrase which is sometimes applied to the entire Old Testament. 

2 They ridiculed Isaiah's repetitions by saying they were all "bid and bid, bid and 
bid, forbid and forbid, forbid and forbid," &c. (Tsav la-tsav, tsav la-tsav, kav la-kav, 
kav la-kav, &c, Heb.). (See an admirable paper an this passage by Rev. S. Cox, 
Expositor, L p, 101.) 

»5TJ 



THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 31 

himself uses spermata in 1 Cor. xv. 38 — and that the Greek spermata, in the 
sense of " offspring," would be nothing less than an impossible barbarism. 
The argument, therefore — if it be an argument at all, and not what the 
Rabbis would hare cal!ed a sod, or " mystery" — does not, and cannot, turn, 
as has been so unhesitatingly assumed, on the fact that sperma is a singular 
noun, but on the fact that it is a collective noun, and was deliberately used 
instead of "sons" or "children;" 1 and St. Paul declares that this collective 
term was meant from the first to apply to Christ, as elsewhere lie applies it 
spiritually to the servants of Christ. In the interpretation, then, of this word, 
St. Paul reads between the lines of the original, and is enabled to see in it 
deep meanings which are the true, but not the primary ones. He does not 
say at once that the promises to Abraham found in Christ — as in the purpose 
of God it had always been intended that they should find in Christ 2 — their 
highest and truest fulfilment; but, in a manner belonging peculiarly to the 
Jewish style of exegesis, he illustrates this high truth by the use of a collective 
noun in which he believes it to hare been mystically foreshadowed. 3 

This passage is admirably adapted to throw light on the Apostle's use of 
the Old Testament. Rabbinic in form, it was free in spirit. Though he does 
not disdain either Amoraic or Alexandrian methods of dealing with Scripture, 
St. Paul never falls into the follies or extravagances of either. Treating the 
letter of Scripture with intense respect, he yet made the literal sense of it bend 
at will to the service of the spiritual consciousness. On the dead letter of the 
Urim, which recorded the names of lost tribes, he flashed a mystic ray, which 
made them gleam forth into divine and hitherto undreamed-of oracles. The 
actual words of the sacred writers became but as the wheels and wings of the 
Cherubim, and whithersoever the Spirit went they went. Nothing is more 
natural, nothing more interesting, in the hands of an inspired teacher 
nothing is more valuable, than this mode of application. We have not 
in St. Paul the frigid spirit of Philonian allegory which to a great 
extent depreciated the original and historic sense of Scripture, and was 
chiefly bent on educing philosophic mysteries from its living page ; nor have 
we a single instance of Gematria or Notarikon, of Atbash or Albam, of 
HillePs middcth or Akibha's method of hanging legal decisions on the horns 
of letters. Into these unreal mysticisms and exegetical frivolities it was 
impossible that a man should fall who was intensely earnest, and felt, in the 
vast mass of what he wrote, that he had the Spirit of the Lord. In no 
single instance does he make one of these general quotations the demon- 
strative basis of the point which he is endeavouring to impress. In every instance 

* See Lightfoot, ad loc, p. 139. 

2 As in Gen. iii. 15. The Jews could not deny the force of the argument, for they 
interpreted Gen. iv. 25, &c, of the Messiah. But St. Jerome's remark, " Galatis, quos 
paulo ante stultos dixerat, f actus est stultus," as though the Apostle had purposely used 
an " accommodation " argument, is founded on wrong principles. 

8 The purely illustrative character of the reference seems to be clear from the 
different, yet no less spiritualised, sense given to the text in Kom. iv. 13. 16. 18 ; ix. 8 ; 
Gal. in, 28, 29. 



32 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

he states the solid argument on which he rests his conclusion, and only adduces 
Scripture by way of sanction or support. And this is in exact accordance 
with all that we know of his spiritual history — of the genuineness of which 
it affords an unsuspected confirmation. He had not arrived at any one of the 
truths of his special gospel by the road of ratiocination. They came to him 
with the flash of intuitive conviction at the miracle of his conversion, or in 
the gradual process of subsequent psychological experience. We hear from 
his own lips that he had not originally found these truths in Scripture, 
or been led to them by inductive processes in the course of Scripture study. 
He received them, as agaiu and again he tells us, by revelation direct from 
Christ. It was only when God had taught him the truth of them that he 
became cognisant that they must be latent in the writings of the Old 
Dispensation. "When he was thus enlightened to see that they existed in 
Scripture, he found that all Scripture was full of them. When he knew 
that the treasure lay hid in the field, he bought the whole field, to become 
its owner. When God had revealed to him the doctrine of justification by 
faith, he saw — as we may now see, but as none had seen before him — that it 
existed implicitly in the trustfulness of Abraham and the " life" and "faith" 
of Habakkuk. Given the right, nay, the necessity, to spiritualise the meaning 
of the Scriptures — and given the fact that this right was assumed and 
practised by every teacher of the schools in which Paul had been trained and 
to which his countrymen looked up, as it has been practised by every great 
teacher since — we then possess the key to all such passages as those to which 
I have referred ; and we also see the cogency with which they would come 
home to the minds of those for whom they were intended. In other words, 
St. Paul, when speaking to Jews, was happily able to address them, as it were, 
in their own dialect, and it is a dialect from which Gentiles also have deep 
lessons to learn. 

It is yet another instance of the same method when he points to the two 
wives of Abraham as types of the Jewish and of the Christian covenant, 
and in the struggles and jealousies of the two, ending in the ejection of Agar, 
sees allegoric-ally foreshadowed the triumph of the new covenant over the 
old. In this allegory, by marvellous interchange, the physical descendants ol 
Sarah become, in a spiritual point of view, the descendants of Agar, and those 
who were A gar's children become Sarah's true spiritual offspring. The 
inhabitants of the Jerusalem that now is, though descended from Sarah and 
Abraham, are foreshadowed for rejection under the type of the offspring of 
[shmael; and the true children of Abraham and Sarah are those alone who 
are so spiritually, but of whom the vast majority were not of the chosen seed. 
A.nd the proof of this — if proof be in any case the right word for what 
perhaps St. Paul hi in self may only have regarded as allegoric confirmation — 
is found in Isaiah liv. 1, where the prophet, addressing the New Jerusalem 
which is to rise out of the ashes of her Babylonian ruin, calls to her as to 
a barren woman, and bids her to rejoice as having many more children 
thau she I hat hath a husband. The Jews become metamorphosed into the 



THE SCHOOL OF THE R A.BBI. 33 

descendants of Agar, the Gentiles into the seed of Abraham and heirs of the 
Promise. 1 

This very ranging in corresponding columns of type and antitype, or of 
the actually existent and its ideal counterpart — this Systoichia in which 
Agar, Ishmael, the Old Covenant, the earthly Jerusalem, the unconverted 
Jews, &c, in the one column, are respective counterparts of their spiritual 
opposiles, Sarah, Isaac, the New Covenant, the heavenly Jerusalem, the 
Christian Church, &c, in the other column — is in itself a Rabbinic method 
of setting forth a series of conceptions, and is, therefore, another of the many 
traces of the influence of Rabbinic training upon the mind of St. PauL A 
part of the system of the Rabbis was to regard the earth as — 

"But the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought.' 

This notion was especially applied to everything connected with the Holy 
People, and there was no event in the wanderings of the wilderness which 
did not stand typically for matters of spiritual experience or heavenly hope. 2 
This principle is expressly stated in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 3 
where, in exemplification of it, not only is the manna made the type of the 
bread of the Lord's Supper, but, by a much more remote analogy, the passing 
through the waters of the Red Sea, and the being guided by the pillar of 
cloud by day, is described as u being baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in 
the sea," and is made a prefigurement of Christian baptism. 4 

But although St. Paul was a Hebrew by virtue of his ancestry, and by 
virtue of the language which he had learnt as his mother-tongue, and although 
he would probably have rejected the appellation of " Hellenist," which is 
indeed never applied to him, yet his very Hebraism had, in one most impor- 
tant respect, and one which has very little attracted the attention of scholars, 
an Hellenic bias and tinge. This is apparent in the fact which I have already 
mentioned, that he was, or at any rate that he became, to a marked extent, 
in the technical language of the Jewish schools, an Hagadist, not an Halachist. 5 
It needs but a glance at the Mishna, and still more at the Gemara, to see that 

1 Other specimens of exegesis accordant in result with the known views of the Rabbis 
may be found, in Rom. ix. 33 (compared with Is. viii. 14, xxviii. 16 ; Luke h. 34), since 
the Rabbis applied both the passages referred to — "the rock of offence," and "the 
corner-stone " — to the Messiah ; and in 1 Cor. ix. 9, where by a happy analogy (also 
found in Philo, De Victimas Offercntibus, 1) the prohibition to muzzle the ox that 
treadetb out the coi n is applied to the duty of maintaining ministers (1 Cor. ix. 4, 11 ; 
Eph. iv. 8). The expressions in Rom. v. 12 ; 1 Cor. xi. 10 ; 2 Cor. xi. 14 ; Gal. iii. 19, 
'rv. 29, find parallels in the Targums, &c. To these may be added various images and 
expressions in 1 Cor. xv. 36 ; 2 Cor. xii. 2 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16. (See Immer, Ifeiit. Theol. 
210 ; Krenkel, p. 218.) 

2 "Quicquid evenit patribus signum filiis," &c. (Wetstein, and Schottgen on 1 Cor. 
x. 11). (See Wisd. xi., xvi. — xviii.) 

3 1 Cor. x. 6. TavTa Se tvttol r)fj.lhv eyevrjdr]<rav. On the manna ( = Qelos A.oyos), compare 
Philo, De Leg. Alleg. iv. 56 ; on the rock {=ao$ia roi> 6eo), id. ii. 21. 

4 So Greg. ISTaz. Orat. 39, p. 688, Jer. Ep. ad Fabiol. and most commentators, fol- 
lowed by the collect in our baptismal service, "figuring there! y thy holy baptism." But 
observe that the typology is quite incidental, the moral lesson paramount (1 Cor. x. 6, 11). 

5 See Excursus IV., "St. Paul a Hagadist." 

r 



34 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

the question which mainly occupied the thoughts and interests of the Pales- 
tinian and Babylonian Rabbis, and which almost constituted the entire 
education of their scholars, was the Halacha, or " rule ; " and if we compare 
the Talmud with the Midrashim, we see at once that some Jewish scholars 
devoted themselves to the Hagada almost exclusively, and others to the 
Halacha, and that the names frequent in the one region of Jewish literature 
are rarely found in the other. The two classes of students despised each 
other. The Hagadist despised the Halachist as a minute pedant, and was 
despised in turn as an imaginative ignoramus. There was on the part of 
some Eabbis a jealous dislike of teaching* the Hagadoth at all to any one who 
had not gone through the laborious training of the Halacha. fl I hold from 
my ancestors," said R. Jonathan, in refusing to teach the Hagada to R. Samlai, 
tl that one ought not to teach the Hagada either to a Babylonian or to a 
southern Palestinian, because they are arrogant and ignorant." The conse- 
quences of the mutual dis-esteem in which each branch of students held the 
other was that the Hagadists mainly occupied themselves with the Prophets, 
and the Halachists with the Law. And hence the latter became more and 
more Judaic, Pharisaic, Rabbinic. The seven rules of Hillel became the 
thirteen rules of Ishmael, 1 and the thirty-three of Akibha, and by the inter- 
vention of these rules almost anything might be added to or subtracted from 
the veritable Law. 2 The letter of the Law thus lost its comparative simpli- 
city in boundless complications, until the Talmud tells us how Akibha was 
seen in a vision by the astonished Moses, drawing from every horn of every 
letter whole bushels of decisions. 3 Meanwhile the Hagadists were deducing 
ivom the utterances of the Prophets a spirit which almost amounted to con- 
tempt for Levitical minutiae ; 4 were developing the Messianic tradition, and 
furnishing a powerful though often wholly unintentional assistance to the 
logic of Christian exegesis. This was because the Hagadists were grasping 
the spirit, while the Halachists were blindly groping amid the crumbled 
fragments of the letter. It is not wonderful that the Jews got to be so jealous 
of the Hagada, as betraying possible tendencies to the heresies of the minim — 
i.e., the Christians — that they imposed silence upon those who used certain 
suspected hagadistic expressions, which in themselves were perfectly harmless. 
" He who profanes holy things," says Rabbi Eliezer of Modin, in the Pirhe 
Ablwth, "who slights the festivals, who causes his neighbour to blush ia 
public, who breaks the covenant of Abraham, and discovers explanations of 
the Law contrary to the Halacha, even if he knew the Law and his works 
were good, would still lose his share in the life to come." 6 

It is easy to understand from these interesting particulars that if the 
Hagada and the Halacha were alike taught in the lecture-room of Gamaliel, 

1 Sec Derenbourg, Palest, p. 397. 

2 Even R. Ishmael, who shares with R. Akibha the title of Father of the World, 
admits to having found three cases in which the Halacha was contrary to the letter ol 
the Pentateuch. It would not be difficult to discover very many more. 

» Menachdth, 29, 2. < Isa. i. 11—15 ; lviii. 5—7 ; Jer. vii. 2L 

6 Pirke Abhoth, iii. 8 ; Gratz, iii. 79. 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 35 

St. Paul, whatever may have been his original respect for and study of the 
one, carried "with him in mature years no trace of such studies, while he by 
no means despised the best parts of the other, and, illuminated by the Holy 
Spirit of God, found in the training with which it had furnished him at least 
an occasional germ, or illustration, of those Christian and Messianic argu- 
ments which he addressed with such consummate force alike to the rigid 
Hebraists and the most bigoted Hellenists in after years. 1 



CHAPTER IV. 

SATJL THE PHAEIi 



ZtjA&jt??s vTr<xpx wv r ^ u TOLTpiKwv jjiov iropaSoaecov. — Gal. i. 14 ; Acts xxii. 3. 
Kara rr\v aKpifiearaTTiv aiptaiv ttjs Tjixerepas QpwcrKeias *(r)cra Qapicrcuos. — ACTS 
xx vi. 5. 

If the gathered lore of the years between the ages of thirteen and thirty-three 
has left, as it must inevitably have left, unmistakable traces on the pag^s of 
St. Paul, how much more must this be the case with all the moral struggles, 
all the spiritual experiences, all those inward battles which are not fought 
with earthly weapons, through which he must have passed during the long 
period in which " he lived a Pharisee " ? 

We know well the kind of life which lies hid behind that expression. We 
know the minute and intense scrupulosity of Sabbath observance wasting 
itself in all those dbhoth and toldoth — those primary and derivative rules and 
prohibitions, and inferences from rules and prohibitions, and combinations of 
inferences from rules and prohibitions, and cases of casuistry and conscience 
arising out of the infinite possible variety of circumstances to which those 
combinations of inference might apply — which had degraded the Sabbath 
from " a delight, holy of the Lord and honourable," partly into an anxious and 
pitiless burden, and partly into a network of contrivances hypocritically 
designed, as it were, in the lowest spirit of heathenism, to cheat the Deity 
with the mere semblance of accurate observance. 2 We know the carefulness 
about the colour of fringes, and the tying of tassels, and the lawfulness of 
meats and drinks. We know the tithings, at once troublesome and ludicrous, 
of mint, anise, and cummin, and the serio-comic questions as to whether in 
tithing the seed it was obligatory also to tithe the stalk. We know the double 
fasts of the week, and the triple prayers of the day, and the triple visits to the 
Temple. We know the elaborate strainings of the water and the wine, that 
not even the carcase of an animalcula might defeat the energy of Levitical 
anxiety. We know the constant rinsings and scourings of brazen cups and 

1 Set Derenbourg's Hist, de la Palestine (Faprte les Thalmuds (ch. xxi. and xxiii.), 
which seems to me to throw a flood of light on the views and early training of St. Paul. 

2 See the rules about the mixtures [ErubMn), Life of Christ, i. 436, ii. 472. 



36 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

pots and tables, carried to so absurd an extreme that, on the occasion of wash- 
ing the golden candelabrum of the Temple, the Sadducees remarked that their 
Pharisaic rivals would wash the Sun itself if they could get an opportunity. 
We know the entire and laborious ablutions and bathings of the whole person, 
with carefully tabulated ceremonies and normal gesticulations, not for the 
laudable purpose of personal cleanliness, but for the nervously-strained 
endeavour to avoid every possible and impossible chance of contracting cere- 
monial uncleanness. We know how this notion of perfect Levitical purity 
thrust itself with irritating recurrence into every aspect and relation of 
ordinary life, and led to the scornful avoidance of the very contact and shadow 
of fellow-beings, who might after all be purer and nobler than those who 
would not touch them with the tassel of a garment's hem. We know the 
obtrusive prayers, 1 the ostentatious almsgivings, 2 the broadened phylacteries, 3 
the petty ritualisms, 4 the professorial arrogance, 5 the reckless proselytism, 6 
the greedy avarice, 7 the haughty assertion of pre-eminence, 8 the ill-concealed 
hypocrisy, 9 which were often hidden under this venerable assumption of 
superior holiness. And we know all this quite as much, or more, from the 
admiring records of the Talmud — which devotes one whole treatise to hand- 
washings, 10 and another to the proper method of killing a fowl, 11 and another to 
the stalks of legumes 12 — as from the reiterated "woes" of Christ's denuncia- 
tion. 13 But we may be sure that these extremes and degeneracies of the Pharisaic 
aim would be as grievous and displeasing to the youthful Saul as they were to 
all the noblest Pharisees, and as they were to Christ Himself. Of the seven 
kinds of Pharisees which the Talmud in various places enumerates, we may be 
quite sure that Saul of Tarsus would neither be a " bleeding " Pharisee, nor a 
"mortar" Pharisee, nor a "Shechemite" Pharisee, nor a "timid" Pharisee, 
nor a "tumbling" Pharisee, nor a "painted" Pharisee at all; but that the 
only class of Pharisee to which he, as a true and high-minded Israelite, would 
have borne any shadow of resemblance, and that not in a spirit of self-content- 
ment, but in a spirit of almost morbid and feverish anxiety to do all that 
was commanded, would be the Tell-me-anything-more-to-do-and-I-will-do-it 
Pharisee ! 14 

And this type of character, which bears no remote resemblance to that 
of many of the devotees of the monastic life— however erroneous it may be, 
however bitter must be the pain by which it must be accompanied, 
however deep the dissatisfaction which it must ultimately suffer — is very 
far from being necessarily ignoble. It is indeed based on the enormous 
error that man can deserve heaven by care in external practices; that he 
can win by quantitative goodness his entrance into the kingdom of God ; that 

1 Matt. vi. 5. 2 Matt. vi. 2. 3 Matt, xxiii. 5 

4 Mark vii. 4—8. 6 John vii. 49. 6 Matt, xxiii. 15 

7 Luke xx. 47. 8 Luke xviii. 11. 9 Matt. xxii. 17. 

i° Yadayim. » Clwlin. ,2 Ozekin. 

w See Schottgen, Ear. Hebr. pp. 7, 100, 204. 

14 Jer. BerachOth, ix. 7, &c. See Life of Christ, vol. ii p. 248, where these names art 
explained. 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 37 

that kingdom is meat and drink, not righteousness and peace and joy in 
believing. Occasionally, by some flash of sudden conviction, one or two of 
the wisest Doctors of the Law seem to have had some glimmering of the 
truth, that it is not by works of righteousness, but only by God's mercy, 
that man is saved. But the normal and all but universal belief of the religious 
party among the Jews was that, though of the 248 commands and 385 prohi- 
bitions of the Mosaic Law some were "light" and some were "heavy," 1 yet 
that to one and all alike — not only in the spirit but in the letter — not only 
in the actual letter, but in the boundless inferences to which the letter might 
lead when every grain of sense and meaning had been crushed out of it 
under mountain loads of "decisions" — a rigidly scrupulous obedience was due. 
This was what God absolutely required. This, and this only, came up to the 
true conception of the blameless righteousness of the Law. And how much 
depended on it ! Nothing less than recovered freedom, recovered empire, 
recovered pre-eminence among the nations ; nothing less than the restoration 
of their national independence in all its perfectness, of their national worship 
in all its splendour ; nothing less than the old fire upon the altar, the holy oil, 
the sacred ark, the cloud of glory between the wings of the cherubim ; nothing 
less, in short, than the final hopes which for many centuries they and their 
fathers had most deeply cherished. If but one person could only for one day 
keep the whole Law and not offend in one point — nay, if but one person could 
but keep that one point of the Law which affected the due observance of the 
Sabbath — then (so the Rabbis taught) the troubles of Israel would be ended, 
and the Messiah at last would come. 2 

And it was at nothing less than this that, witli all the intense ardour of 
his nature, Saul had aimed. It is doubtful whether at this period the utter 
nullity of the Oral Law could have dawned upon him. It sometimes dawned 
even on the Rabbis through the dense fogs of sophistry and self-importance, 
and even on their lips we sometimes find the utterances of the Prophets 
that humility and justice and mercy are better than sacrifice. " There was 
a flute in the Temple," says the Talmud, " preserved from the days of 
Moses ; it was smooth, thin, and formed of a reed. At the command of the 
king it was overlaid with gold, which ruined its sweetness of tone until the 
gold was taken away. There were also a cymbal and a mortar, which had 
become injured in course of time, and were mended by workmen of Alex- 
andria summoned by the wise men ; but their usefulness was so completely 
destroyed by this process, that it was necessary to restore them to their 
former condition." 3 Are not these things an allegory ? Do they not imply 
that by overlaying the written Law with what they called the gold, but what 

1 See Life of Christ, ii. 239. All these distinctions were a part of the Seyyag, the 
"hedge of the Law," which it was the one raison d'etre of Rabbinism to construct. The 
object of all Jewish learning was to make a mishmereth ("ordinance," Lev. xviii. 30) to 
God's mishmereth ( Yebhamoth, f. 21, 1). 

2 See Acts hi. 19, where orrws av is "in order that haply," not "when," as in E. V, 
{Shabbath. f. 118, b). 

3 Eireehin, f . 10, 2. 



38 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

was in reality the dross and tinsel of tradition, the Rabbis had destroyed 01 
injured its beauty and usefulness ? But probably Saul had not realised this. 
To him there was no distinction between the relative importance of the Written 
and Oral, of the moral and ceremonial Law. To every precept— and they 
were countless — obedience was due. If it could be done, he would do it. If 
on him, on his accuracy of observance, depended the coming of the Mes- 
siah, then the Messiah should come. Were others learned in all that con- 
cerned legal rectitude ? he would be yet more learned. Were others scrupu- 
lous? he would be yet more scrupulous. Surely God had left man free? 1 
Surely He would not have demanded obedience to the Law if that obedience 
were not possible ! All things pointed to the close of one great aeon in the 
world's history, and the dawn of another which should be the last. The very 
heathen yearned for some deliverer, and felt that there could be no other end 
to the physical misery and moral death which had spread itself over their 
hollow societies. 2 Deep midnight was brooding alike over the chosen people 
and the G-entile world. From the East should break forth a healing light, a 
purifying flame. Let Israel be true, and God's promise would not fail. 

And we know from his own statements that if external conformity were all 
— if obedience to the Law did not mean obedience in all kinds of matters 
which escaped all possibility of attention — if avoidance of its prohibitions did 
not involve avoidance in matters which evaded the reach of the human senses 
— then Saul was, touching the righteousness of the Law, blameless, having 
lived in all good conscience towards God. 3 Had he put the question to the 
Great Master, " What shall I do to be saved ? " or been bidden to " keep the 
commandments," it is certain that he would have been able to reply with the 
youthful ruler, " All these have I kept from my youth," and — he might have 
added — " very much besides." And yet we trace in his Epistles how bitterly 
he felt the hollowness of this outward obedience — how awful and how burden- 
some had been to him " the curse of the Law." Even moral obedience could 
not silence the voice of the conscience, or satisfy the yearnings of the soul; 
but these infinitesimal Levitisms, what could they do ? Tormenting questions 
would again and again arise. Of what use was all this ? from what did the 
necessity of it spring ? to what did the obedience to it lead ? Did God indeed 
care for the exact size of a strip of parchment, or the particular number of 
lines in the texts which were upon it, or the way in which the letters were 
formed, or the shape of the box into which it was put, or the manner in which 
that box was tied upon the forehead or the arm ? 4 Was it, indeed, a very im- 
portant matter whether "between the two evenings" meant, as the Samaritans 

1 The Rabbis said, " Everything is in the hands of heaven, except the fear of heaven." 
" All things are ordained by God, but a man's actions are his own. (Barclay, Talmud, 
18.) 

2 Virg. Eel. iv. Suet. Aug. 94 ; Vesp. 4. 

3 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Rom. xi. 1 ; Acts xxii. 3, xxiii. 1, 6. 

4 I have adduced abundant illustrations from Rabbinic writers of the extravagant 
importance attached to minutiae in the construction of the two phylacteries of the hand 
{TephiLUn shel Yad) and of the head (Teph. shel Bosh), in the Expositor, 1877, No. xxiii 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 39 

believed, between sunset and darkness, or, as the Pharisees asserted, between 
the begi lining' and end of sunset ? Was it a matter worth the discussion of two 
schools to decide whether an egg laid on a festival might or might not be 
eaten P 1 Were all these things indeed, and in themselves, important ? And 
even if they were, would it be errors as to these littlenesses that would really 
kindle the wrath of a jealous God ? How did they contribute to the beauty of 
holiness ? in what way did they tend to fill the soul with the mercy which was 
better than sacrifice, or to educate it in that justice and humility, that patience 
and p irity, that peace and love, which, as some of the prophets had found grace 
to see, were dearer to God than thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers 
of oil ? And behind all these questions lay that yet deeper one which agitated 
the schools of Jewish thought — the question whether, after all, man could reach, 
or with all his efforts must inevitably fail to reach, that standard of righteous- 
ness which God and the Law required ? And if indeed he failed, what more 
had the Law to say to him than to deliver its sentence of unreprieved condem- 
nation and indiscriminate death ? 2 

Moreover, was there not mingled with all this nominal adoration of the Law 
a deeply-seated hypocrisy, so deep that it was in a great measure unconscious ? 
Even before the days of Christ the Rabbis had learnt the art of straining out 
gnats and swallowing camels. They had long learnt to nullify what they pro- 
fessed to defend. The ingenuity of Hillel was quite capable of getting rid of 
any Mosaic regulation which had been found practically burdensome. Pharisees 
and Sadducees alike had managed to set aside in their own favour, by the de- 
vices of the " mixtures," all that was disagreeable to themselves in the Sabbath 
scrupulosity. The fundamental institution of the Sabbatic year had been 
stultified by the mere legal fiction of the prosbol. Teachers who were on the 
high road to a casuistry which could construct " rules " out of every superfluous 
particle had found it easy to win credit for ingenuity by elaborating prescrip- 
tions to which Moses would have listened in mute astonishment. If there be 
one thing more definitely laid down in the Law than another it is the unclean- 
ness of creeping things, yet the Talmud assures us that " no one is appointed 
a member of the Sanhedrin who does not possess sufficient ingenuity to prove 
from the written Law that a creeping thing is ceremonially clean ;" 3 and that ' 
there was an unimpeachable disciple at Jabne who could adduce one hundred 
and fifty arguments in favour of the ceremonial cleanness of creeping things. 4 
Sophistry like this was at work even in the days when the young student of 
Tarsus sat at the feet of Gamaliel ; and can we imagine any period of his life 
when he would not have been wearied by a system at once so meaningless, so 
stringent, and so insincere ? Could he fail to notice that they " hugely violated 
what they trivially obeyed ?" 

We may see from St. Paul's own words that these years must have been 
vferj troubled years. Under the dignified exterior of the Pharisee lay a wildly- 
beating heart ; an anxious brain throbbed with terrible questionings under the 

» See Bitsah, 1 ad in. 2 Eom. x. 5 ; Gal. iii. 10. » Sanhedr. f, 17, 1* 

4 Erubhm, f . 13, 2. 



40 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAtTL. 

broad phylactery. Saul as a Pharisee believed in eternity, he believed in the 
resurrection, he believed in angel and spirit, in voices and appearances, in 
dreaming dreams and seeing visions. But in all this struggle to achieve his 
own righteousness — this struggle so minutely tormenting, so revoltingly bur- 
densome — there seemed to be no hope, no help, no enlightenment, no satisfaction, 
no nobility — nothing but a possibly mitigated and yet inevitable curse. God 
seemed silent to him, and heaven closed. No vision dawned on his slumbering 
senses, no voice sounded in his eager ear. The sense of sin oppressed him ; the 
darkness of mystery hung over him; he was ever falling and falling, and no 
hand was held out to help him ; he strove with all his soul to be obedient, and 
he was obedient — and yet the Messiah did not come. 

The experience of Saul of Tarsus was the heartrending experience of all 
who have looked for peace elsewhere than in the love of God. All that Luther 
suffered at Erfurdt Saul must have suffered in Jerusalem ; and the record of 
the early religious agonies and awakenment of the one is the best commentary 
on the experience of the other. That the life of Saul was free from flagrant 
transgressions we see from his own bold appeals to his continuous rectitude. 
He was not a convert from godlessness or profligacy, like John Bunyan or 
John Newton. He claims integrity when he is speaking of his life in the 
aspect which it presented to his fellow-men, but he is vehement in self -accusa- 
tion when he thinks of that life in the aspect which it presented to his God. 
He found that no external legality could give him a clean heart, or put a right 
spirit within him. He found that servile obedience inspired no inward peace. 
He must have yearned for some righteousness, could he but know of it, which 
would be better than the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. The 
Jewish doctors had imagined and had directed that if a man did not feel inclined 
to do this or that, he should force himself to do it by a direct vow. " Vows," 
says Rabbi Akibha, 1 are the enclosures of holiness." But Saul the Pharisee, 
long before he became Paul the Apostle, must have proved to the very depth 
the hollowness of this direction. Yows might be the enclosures of formal 
practice ; they were not, and could not be, the schooling of the disobedient 
soul ; they could not give calm to that place in the human being where meet the 
two seas of good and evil impulse 2 — to the heart, which is the battle-field on 
which passionate desire clashes into collision with positive command. 

Even when twenty years of weariness, and wandering, and struggle, and 
suffering, were over, we still catch in the Epistles of St. Paul the mournful 
echoes of those days of stress and storm — echoes as of the thunder when its 
fury is over, and it is only sobbing far away among the distant hills. We 
hear those echoes most of all in the Epistle to the Romans. We hear them 
when ho talks of " the curse of the law." We hear them when, in accents of 
deep self-pity, he tells us of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit ; 
between the law of sin in his members, and that law of God which, though 
holy and just and good and ordained to life, ho found to be unt( death. Id 

1 n^nob a«p Dni?, Pirkc AlMth, iii. 10. 

3 The Yttscr tObh and the Yetser ha-rd of the Talmud, 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 41 

the days, indeed, when he thus writes, he had at last found peace ; he had 
wrung from the lessons of his life the hard experience that by the works of 
the law no man can be justified in God's sight, but that, being justified by 
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And though, 
gazing on his own personality, and seeing it disintegrated by a miserable 
dualism, he still found a law within him which warred against that inward 
delight which he felt in the law of God — though groaning in this body of 
weakness, he feels like one who is imprisoned in a body of death, he can still, 
in answer to the question, " Who shall deliver me ? " exclaim with a burst of 
triumph, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 1 But if the Apostle, 
after he has found Christ, after he has learnt that " there is no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus " 2 still felt the power and continuity of the 
inferior law striving to degrade his life into that captivity to the law of sin 
from which Christ had set him free, through what hours of mental anguish 
must he not have passed when he knew of no other dealing of God with his 
soul than the impossible, unsympathising, deathful commandment, " This do, 
and thou shalt live ! " Could he " this do " ? And, if he could not, what 
hope, what help ? Was there any voice of pity among the thunders of Sinai ? 3 
Could the mere blood of bulls and goats be any true propitiation for wilful 
sins ? 

But though we can see the mental anguish through which Saul passed in 
his days of Parisaism, yet over the events of that period a complete darkness 
falls ; and there are only two questions, both of them deeply interesting, which 
it may, perhaps, be in our power to answer. 

The first is, Did Saul in those days ever see the Lord Jesus Christ ? 

At first sight we might suppose that the question was answered, and 
answered affirmatively, in 1 Cor. ix. 1, where he asks, " Am I not an Apostle ? 
Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord ? " and still more in 2 Cor. v. 16, where he 
says, " Tea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth 
know we Him no more." 4 

But a little closer examination of these passages will show that they do not 
necessarily involve any such meaning. In the first of them, St. Paul cannot 
possibly be alluding to any knowledge of Jesus before His crucifixion, because 
such mere external sight, from the position of one who disbelieved in Him, so 
far from being a confirmation of any claim to be an Apostle, would rather have 
been a reason for rejecting such a claim. It can only apply to the appearance 

1 See Rom. vi., vii., viii., passim. 

2 Eom. viii. 1. The rest of this verse in our E. V. is probably a gloss, or a repetition, 
since it is not found in N. B, C, D, F, G. 

3 "That man that overtook you," said Christian, "was Moses. He spareth none, 
neither knoweth he how to show mercy to them that transgress his law." {Pilgrim?* 
Progress.) 

4 el Kdl eyvaticafjiev. It is perfectly true that el /cal {quamquam, "even though," weun 
auch) in classical writers — though perhaps less markedly in St. Paul — concedes a fact, 
whereas K a\ el {etiam si, "even if,") puts an hypothesis ; but the explanation here turns, 
not on the admitted force of the particles, but on what is meant by "knowing Christ 
after the flesh." 



42 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL 

of Christ to Mm on the way to Damascus, or to some similar and subsequent 
revelation. 1 The meaning of the second passage is less obvious. St. Paul has 
there been explaining the grounds of his Apostolate in the constraining love of 
Christ for man. He has shown how that love was manifested by His death 
for all, and how the results of that death and resurrection are intended so 
utterly to destroy the self-love of His children, so totally to possess and to 
change their individuality, that " if any man be in Christ he is a new creation." 
And the Christ of whom he is here speaking is the risen, glorified, triumphant 
Christ, in whom all things are become new, because He has reconciled man to 
God. Hence the Apostle will know no man, judge of no man, in his mere 
human and earthly relations, but only in his union with their risen Lord. The 
partisans who used, and far more probably abused, the name of James, to thrust 
their squabbling Judaism even into the intercourse between a Paul and a 
Peter, and who sowed the seeds of discord among the converts of the Churches 
which St. Paul had founded, were constantly underrating the Apostolic 
dignity of Paul, because he had not been an eye-witness of the human life of 
Christ. The answer of the Apostle always was that he too knew Christ by an 
immediate revelation, that " it had pleased God to reveal His Son in him that 
he might preach Christ among the Gentiles." 2 The day had been when he had 
known " Christ according to the flesh " — not indeed by direct personal inter- 
course with Him in the days of His earthly ministry, but by the view which 
he and others had taken of Him. In his unconverted days he had regarded 
Him as a mesith — an impostor who deceived the people, or at the very best as 
a teacher who deceived himself. And after his conversion he had not perhaps, 
at first, fully learnt to ajjprehend the Plenitude of the glory of the risen Christ 
as rising far above the conception of the Jewish Messiah. All this was past. 
To apprehend by faith the glorified Son of God was a far more blessed 
privilege than to have known a living Messiah by earthly intercourse. Even 
if he had known Christ as a living man, that knowledge would have been less 
near, less immediate, less intimate, less eternal, in its character, than the close- 
ness of community wherewith he now lived and died in Him ; and although he 
had known Him first only by false report, and then only with imperfect realisa- 
tion as Jesus of Nazareth, the earthly and human conception had now passed 
away, and been replaced by the true and spiritual belief. The Christ, there- 
fore, whom now he knew was no " Christ after the flesh," no Christ in the 
days of His flesh, no Christ in any earthly relations, but Christ sitting for ever 
at the right, hand of God. To have seen the Lord Jesus with the eyes was of 
itself nothing — it was nothing to boast of. Herod had seen Him, and Annas, 

1 Cf . Acts xviii. 9, xxii. 18 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1. The absence of such personal references to 
Jesus in St. Paul's Epistles as we find in 1 Pet. ii. 21 sg. } hi. 18 sq. ; 1 John i. 1 — confirms 
this view (Ewald, Gesch. vi. 389). 

2 Gal. i. 16. I cannot agree with Dr. Lightfoot (following Jerome, Erasmus, &c.) that 
iv kfioX means " a revelation made through Paul to others,''' as in ver. 24, 1 Tim. i. 16, and 
2 Cor. xiii. 3 ; because, as a friend points out, there is an exact parallelism of clauses 

between i. 11, 12, and 13 — 17, and airoicabvtyat rbv vi'ov avrov iv ejiol balances St airoKaXv^eoK 
'l^aoii XpioroG in ver 12. 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 43 

and Pilate, and many a coarse Jewish mendicant and many a brutal Roman 
soldier. But to have seen Him with the eye of Faith — to have spiritually 
apprehended the glorified Redeemer — that was indeed to be a Christian. 

All the other passages which can at all be brought to bear on the question 
support this view, and lead us to believe that St. Paul had either not seen at 
all, or at the best barely seen, the Man Christ Jesus. Indeed, the question, 
" Who art Thou, Lord ?" x preserved in all three narratives of his conversion, 
seems distinctly to imply that the appearance of the Lord was unknown to 
him, ard this is a view which is confirmed by the allusion to the risen Christ 
in I Cor. xv. St. Paul there says that to him, the least of the Apostles, and 
not meet to be called an Apostle, Christ had appeared last of all, as to the 
abortive born of the Apostolic family. 2 And, indeed, it is inconceivable that 
Saul could in any real sense have seen Jesus in His lifetime. That ineffaceable 
impressi-m produced by His very aspect ; that unspeakable personal ascen- 
dency, which awed His worst enemies and troubled the hard conscience of His 
Roman judge ; the ineffable charm and power in the words of Him who spake 
as never man spake, could not have appealed to him in vain. We feel an 
unalterable conviction, not only that, if Saul had seen Him, Paul would again 
and again have referred to Him, but also that he would in that case have been 
saved from the reminiscence which most of all tortured him in after days — th« 
undeniable reproach that he had persecuted the Church of God. If, indeed, 
we could imagine that Saul had seen Christ, and, having seen Him, had looked 
on Him only with the bitter hatred and simulated scorn of a Jerusalem 
Pharisee, then we may be certain that that Holy Face which looked into the 
troubled dreams of Pilate's wife — that the infinite sorrow in those eyes, of 
which one glance broke the repentant heart of Peter — would have recurred so 
often and so heartrendingly to Paul's remembrance, that his sin in persecuting 
the Christians would have assumed an aspect of tenfold aggravation, from the 
thought that in destroying and imprisoning them he had yet more openly been 
crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting Him to an open shame. The 
intense impressibility of Paul's mind appears most remarkably in the effect 
exercised upon him by the dying rapture of St. Stephen. The words of 
Stephen, though listened to at the time with inward fury, not only lingered in 
his memory, but produced an unmistakable influence on his writings. If this 
were so with the speech of the youthful Hellenist, how infinitely more would 
it have been so with the words which subdued into admiration even the alien 
disposition of Pharisaic emissaries ? Can we for a moment conceive that 
Paul's Pharisaism would have lasted unconsumed amid the white lightnings of 
that great and scathing denunciation which Christ uttered in the Temple in 
the last week of His ministry, and three days before His death ? Had 
St. Paul heard one of these last discourses, had he seen one of those miracles, 
had he mingled in one of those terrible and tragic scenes to which he must 

1 Acts ix. 5 (xxii. 8, xxvi. 15). There is not the shadow of probability in the notion of 
Ewald, that St. Paul was the young man clad in a sindon, of Mark xiv. 52. 

2 I Cor. xv. 9. 



44 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

have afterwards looked back as events the most momentous in the entire 
course of human history, is there any one who can for a moment imagine that 
no personal reminiscence of such scenes would be visible, even ever so faintly, 
through the transparent medium of his writings ? 

We may, then, regard it as certain that when the gloom fell at mid-day 
over the awful sacrifice of Golgotha, when the people shouted their preference 
for the murderous brigand, and yelled their execration of the Saviour whose 
day all the noblest and holiest of their fathers had longed to see, Saul was not 
at Jerusalem. Where, then, was he ? It is impossible to answer the question 
with any certainty. He may have been at Tarsus, which, even after hi8 
conversion, he regarded as his home. 1 Or perhaps the explanation of his 
absence may be seen in Gal. v. 11. He there represents himself as having 
once been a preacher of circumcision. ISTow we know that one of the charac- 
teristics of the then Pharisaism was an active zeal in winning proselytes. " Te 
compass sea and land," said Christ to them, in burning words, " to make one 
proselyte ; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of 
Gehenna than yourselves." 2 The conversion which changed Paul's deepest 
earlier convictions left unchanged the natural impulse of his temperament. 
Why may not the same impetuous zeal, the same restless desire to be always 
preaching some truth and doing some good work which marked him out as the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, 3 have worked in him also in these earlier days, and 
made him, as he seems to imply, a missionary of Pharisaism ? If so, he may 
have been absent on some journey enjoined upon him by the party whose 
servant, heart and soul, he was, during the brief visits to Jerusalem which 
marked the three years' ministry of Christ on earth. 

2. The other question which arises is, Was Saul married ? Had he the 
support of some loving heart during the fiery struggles of his youth ? Amid 
the to-and-fro contentions of spirit which resulted from an imperfect and 
unsatisfying creed, was there in the troubled sea of his life one little island 
home where he could find refuge from incessant thoughts ? 

Little as we know of his domestic relations, little as he cared to mingle 
mere private interests with the great spiritual truths which occupy his soul, it 
seems to me that we must answer this question in the affirmative. St. Paul, 
who has been very freely charged with egotism, had not one particle of that 
egotism which consists in attaching any importance to his personal surround- 
ings. The circumstances of his individual life he would have looked on as 
having no interest for any one but himself. When he speaks of himself he 
does so always from one of two reasons — from the necessity of maintaining 
against detraction his apostolic authority, or from the desire to utilise for 
others his remarkable experience. The things that happened to him, the 
blessings and privations of his earthly condition, would have seemed matters 
of supreme indifference, except in so far as they possessed a moral significance, 
or had any bearing on the lessons which he desired to teach. 

» Acts ix. 30, xi. 25 ; Gal. i. 21. 2 Matt, xxiii. lft. 

8 Gal. i. 16. (See Krenkel, p. 18.) 



SAUL THE PHARISEE. 45 

It is, theD, only indirectly that we can expect to find an answer to the 
question as to his marriage. If, indeed, he was a member of the Sanhedrin, 
it follows that, by the Jewish requirements for that position, he must have 
been a married man. His official position will be examined hereafter ; but, 
meanwhile, his marriage may be inferred as probable from passages in his 
Epistles. In 1 Cor. ix. 5 he asks the Corinthians, " Have we not power to 
lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other Apostles, and as the brethren of 
the Lord, and Kephas ? " This passage is inconclusive, though it asserts his 
right both to marry, and to take a wife with him in his missionary journeys 
if he thought it expedient. 1 But from 1 Cor. vii. 8 it seems a distinct inference 
that he classed himself among widowers; for, he says, "I say, therefore, to 
the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide {fxdvwaiv) even 
as I." That by '" the unmarried " he here means " widowers " — for which 
there is no special Greek word — seems clear, because he has been already 
speaking, in the first seven verses of the chapter, to those who have never 
been married. 2 To them he concedes, far more freely than to the others, the 
privilege of marrying if they considered it conducive to godliness, though, 
in the present state of things, he mentions his own personal predilection for 
celibacy, in the case of all who had the grace of inward purity. And even 
apart from the interpretation of this passage, the deep and fine insight of 
Luther had drawn the conclusion that Paul knew by experience what marriage 
was. from the wisdom and tenderness which characterise his remarks respect- 
ing it. One who had never been married could hardly have written on the 
subject as he has done, nor could he have shown the same profound sympathy 
with the needs of all, and received from all the same ready confidence. To 
derive any inference from the loving metaphors which he draws from the 
nurture of little children 3 would be more precarious. It is hardly possible 
that Paul ever had a child who lived. Had this been the case, his natural 
affection could hardly have denied itself some expression of the tender love 
which flows out so freely towards his spiritual children. Timothy would not 
have been so exclusively "'his own true child" in the faith if he had had son 
or daughter of his own. If we are right in the assumption that he was 
married, it seems probable that it was for a short time only, and that his wife 
had died. 

But there is one more ground which has not, I think, been noticed, which 
seems to me to render it extremely probable that Saul, before the time of his 

1 The notion that the "true yokefellow " ( frfo-ie <rvfrye) of Phil. iv. 3 has any bearing 
on th° question is an error as old as Clemens Alexandrinus. (See Strom, hi. 7 ; Ps. Ignat. 

Ou Jrhllad. 4, fls Uerpov KaX TlavKov Kal tQ>v aAAtuv anocrToXtov tQjv ydfxois bixikr}<ra.vT<ov .) 

2 If so, Chaucer is mistaken when he says, " I wot wel the Apostle was a mayd," i.e., 
napOevos, Kev. xiv. 4 (Prologue to Wife of Bath's Tales). Ver. 7 does not militate against 
this view, because there he is alluding, not to his condition, but to the grace of continence. 
It is not true, as has been said, that early tradition was unanimous in saying that he had 
never married. Tertullian {De Monogam. 3) and Jerome [Ep. 22) says so ; but Origen 
is doubtful, and Methodius {Conviv. 45), as well as Clemens Alex, and Ps. Ignatius (v. 
supra), savs that he was a widower. 

» 1 Cor. iii. 2, vii. 14, iv. 15 ; 1 Thess. ii. 7 ; v. 8. 



46 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

conversion, had been a married man. It is the extraordinary importance 
attached by the majority of Jews in all ages to marriage as a moral duty, nay, 
even a positive command, incumbent on every man. 1 The Mishna fixes the 
age of marriage at eighteen, 2 and even seventeen was preferred. The Baby- 
lonist Jews fixed it as early as fourteen. 3 Marriage is, in fact, the first of the 
613 precepts. They derived the duty partly from the command of Gen. i. 28, 
partly from allusions to early marriage in the Old Testament (Prov. ii. 17, 
v. 18-), and partly from allegorising explanations of passages like Eccl. xi. 6 ; 
Job v. 24. 4 The Rabbis in all ages have laid it down as a stringent duty that 
parents should marry their children young ; 5 and the one or two who, like 
Ben Azai, theoretically placed on a higher level the duty of being more free 
from incumbrance in order to study the Law, were exceptions to the almost 
universal rule. But even these theorists were themselves married men. If 
St. Paul had ever evinced the smallest sympathy with the views of the 
Therapeutse and Essenes — if his discountenancing of marriage, under certain 
immediate conditions, had been tinged by any Gnostic fancies about its 
essential inferiority — we might have come to a different conclusion. But 
he held no such views either before or after his conversion ; 6 and certainly, 
if he lived unmarried as a Jerusalem Pharisee, his case was entirely 
exceptional. 



CHAPTER V. 

ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 

J ¥.KKpiros i\v rwv airocrrSAcov, teal (rrSfxa rwv fxaOvTuv, KaX Kopv<p)] rod x°P°V' — 
Chrys. In Joan. Horn. 88. 

TLerpos r) apxh T'OS opOodo^tas, 5 [xeyas ttjs iKK^vcrias lepocpdvTns.— Ps. Chrys. 
Orat. Encom. 9. 

Whatever may have been the cause of Saul's absence from Jerusalem during 
the brief period of the ministry of Jesus, it is inevitable that, oh his return, 
he must have heard much respecting it. Yet all that he heard would be 
exclusively from the point of view of the Pharisees, who had so bitterly 
opposed His doctrines, and of the Sadducees, who had so basely brought 

1 "A Jew who has no wife is not a man " (Gen. v. 2, Yebhamoth, f. 63, 1). 

2 Pirke Abhoth, v. 21. 

3 God was supposed to curse all who at twenty were unmarried (Kiddushin, 29, 1 ; 
30; Ycbhamoth, 02, 03). (See Hamburger, Talmud. Worterb. s.v. Ehe, Verhcirathung ; 
Weill, La Morale du Juda'isme, 49, seq.) The precept is inferred from "He called 
their name man (sing.)," and is found in the Rabbinic digest Tur-Shulchan Aruch. 

4 See Ecclus. vii. 25; xlii. 9; cf. 1 Cor. vii. 36. 

5 Early marriages are to this day the curse of the Jews in Eastern countries. Some- 
times girls are married at ten, hoys at fourteen (Erankl. Jews in East, ii. 18, 84). Not 
long ago a Jewish girl at Jerusalem, aged fourteen, when asked in school why she was 
■ad, replied that she had been three times divorced. 

« 1 Cor. vii. 9, 36 ; 1 Tim. iv. 3 ; v. 14. 



ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 47 

about His death. But lie would have abundant opportunities for seeing that 
the Infant Church had not, as the Jews of Jerusalem had hoped, been extin- 
guished by the murder of its founder. However much the news might fill 
him with astonishment and indignation, he could not have been many days in 
Jerusalem without receiving convincing proofs of the energy of what he then 
regarded as a despicable sect. 

"Whence came this irresistible energy, this inextinguishable vitality ? The 
answer to that question is the history of the Church and of the world. 

For the death of Jesus had been followed by a succession of events, the 
effects of which will be felt to the end of time — events which, by a spiritual 
power at once astounding and indisputable, transformed a timid handful of 
ignorant and terror-stricken Apostles into teachers of unequalled grandeur, 
who became in God's hands the instruments to regenerate the world. 

The Resurrection of Christ had scattered every cloud from their saddened 
souls. The despair which, for a moment, had followed the intense hope that 
this was He who would redeem Israel, had been succeeded by a joyous and 
unshaken conviction that Christ had risen from the dead. In the light of that 
Rosurrection, all Scripture, all history, all that they had seen and heard 
during the ministry of Jesus, was illuminated and transfigured. And though 
during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, the inter- 
course held with them by their risen Lord was not continuous, but brief and 
interrupted, 1 yet — as St. Peter himself testifies, appealing, in confirmation of 
his testimony, to the scattered Jews to whom His Epistle is addressed — God 
had begotten them again by the Resurrection unto a lively hope, to an inheri- 
tance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. 2 But besides 
this glorious truth, of which they felt themselves to be the chosen witnesses, 3 
their Risen Lord had given them many promises and instructions, and spoken 
to them about the things which concerned the Kingdom of God. In His last 
address He had specially bidden them to stay in Jerusalem, and there await 
the outpouring of the Spirit of which they had already heard. 4 That promise 
was to be fulfilled to them, not only individually, but as a body, as a Church ; 
and it was to be fulfilled in the same city in which they had witnessed His 
uttermost humiliation. And they were assured that they should not have 
long to wait. But though they knew that they should be baptised with the 
Holy Ghost and with fire " not many days hence," yet, for the exercise of their 
faith and to keep them watchful, the exact time was not defined. 6 

Then came the last walk towards Bethany, and that solemn parting on the 
Mount of Olives, when their Lord was taken away from them, and " a cloud 

1 Acts i. 3, St' rjfiepiav TeaaapaKovra o77Tav6fxe^os cu/tois. This is the only passage in 
Scripture which tells us the interval which elapsed between the Resurrection and the 
Ascension. 

2 1 Pet. i. 3, 4. 

3 Acts ii. 32 ; iii. 15 ; iv. 33 ; v. 32 : x. 40, 41 ; Luke xxiv. 48, &c. On this fact St. 
Luke dwells repeatedly and emphatically. (See Meyer on Acts i. 22.) 

4 Acts i. 4 ; Luke xxiv. 49. 

5 Chrys. ad loc. "Numerus dierum non definitus exercebat fidem apostolorum '* 
(Bongel). The reading Iws ttj? Trei/TeKoorrjs of D and the Sahidic version is a mere gloss. 



48 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST PAUL. 

received Him out of their sight." But even in His last discourse He had 
rendered clear to them their position and their duties. When, with lingerings 
of old Messianic fancies, they had asked Him whether He would at that 
time re-constitute 1 the kingdom for Israel, He had quenched such material 
longings by telling them that it was not for them to know " the times or the 
seasons," 2 which the Father placed in His own authority. 3 But though these 
secrets of God were not to be revealed to them or to any living man, there was 
a power which they should receive when the Holy Ghost had fallen upon 
them — a power to be witnesses to Christ, His sufferings, and His Resurrection, 
first in the narrow limits of the Holy Land, then to all the world. 

From the mountain slopes of Olivet they returned that Sabbath-day's 
journey 4 to Jerusalem, and at once assembled in the upper chamber, 5 which 
was so suitable a place for their early gatherings. It was one of those laige 
rooms under the flat roof of Jewish houses, which, for its privacy, was set 
apart for religious purposes ; and in the poverty of these Galilsean Apostles, 
we can scarcely doubt that it was the same room of which they had already 
availed themselves for the Last Supper, and for those gatherings on the " first 
day of the week," 6 at two of which Jesus had appeared to them. Hallowed 
by these divine associations, it seems to have been the ordinary place of 
sojourn of the Apostles during the days of expectation. 7 Here, at stated 
hours of earnest prayer, they were joined by the mother of Jesus 8 and the 
other holy women who had attended His ministry ; as well as by His brethren, 
of whom one in particular 9 plays henceforth an important part in the history 
of the Church. Hitherto these " brethren of the Lord" had scarcely been 
numbered among those who believed in Christ, 10 or, if they had believed 
in Him, it had only been in a secondary and material sense, as a human 
Messiah. But now. as we might naturally conjecture, even apart from 
tradition, they had been convinced and converted by " the power of His 
Resurrection." Even in these earliest meetings of the whole Church of 
Christ at Jerusalem it is interesting to see that, though the Apostles were 
still Jews in their religion, with no other change as yet beyond the belief in 

1 Acts i. 6, a7ro/ca0io-Tai/ei?. 2 Acts i. 7, xp°vov<; r\ Kaipovs, "periods or crises." 

3 The E.V. passes over the distinction between Qova-la here and Mvaixis hi the next 
verse, and a neglect of this distinction has led Bengel and others to understand ovx «/*«" 
ea-ri in the sense that it was not yet their prerogative to know these things ("quae 
apostolorum nondum erat nosse" — Beng.), but that it should be so hereafter. That 
this, however, was not the error of our translators appears from their marginal gloss to 
8vva/Ais in ver. 8, "the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you." We shall see here- 
after that St. Paul, in common with all the early Christians (1 Thcss. iv. 16, 17 ; 
2 Thess. ii. 8 ; Rom. xiii. 12 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 22 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; 1 Pet. iv. 5 ; James v. 8 ; 
Ileb. x. 37), hoped for the near return of Christ to earth. 

4 2,000 cubits, between five and six furlongs, the distance between the Tabernacle 
and the farthest part of the camp (cf. Numb. xxxv. 5). This is the only place in which 
it is alluded to in the N.T. 

5 Not "an upper room," as in E.V. It is probably the rpb_J?, or topmost room of the 
house, which is called ii/oiyeov in Mark xiv. 15. 

John XX. 13, 20. ' Acts 1. 13, ov ^crai/ KaTa/ueVoi/Tts o re IleVpos, k.t.\- 

H 1 [ere last mentioned in the N.T. » James, the Lord's brother. 

«> Matt. xiii. 46; xii. 55 ; Mark vi 3; 1 Cor. xv. 7. 



ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 49 

Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, 1 they yet suffered the women 
to meet with them in prayer, not in any separate court, as in the Temple 
services, not with dividing partitions, as in the worship of the synagogue, 2 but 
in that equality of spiritual communion, which was to develop hereafter into 
the glorious doctrine that among Christ's redeemed " there is neither Jew nor 
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male and female," but 
that, in Christ Jesus, all are one. 3 

During the ten days which elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost, 
it was among the earliest cares of the Apostles to fill up the vacancy which 
had been caused in their number by the death of Judas. This was done at a 
full conclave of the believers in Jerusalem, who, in the absence of many 
of those five hundred to whom Christ had appeared in Galilee, numbered 
about one hundred and twenty. The terrible circumstances of the traitor's 
suicide, of which every varied and shuddering tradition was full of horror, had 
left upon their minds a deeper faith in God's immediate retribution upon guilt. 
He had fallen from his high charge by transgression, and had gone to his 
own place. 4 That his place should be supplied appeared reasonable, both 
because Jesus Himself had appointed twelve Apostles — the ideal number of 
the tribes of Israel — and also because Peter, and the Church generally, saw in 
Judas the antitype of Ahitophel, and applying to him a passage of the 109th 
Psalm, they wished, now that his habitation was desolate, that another should 
take his office. 5 The essential qualification for the new Apostle was that he 
should have been a witness of the Resurrection, and should have companied 
with the disciples all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among 
them. The means taken for his appointment, being unique in the New 
Testament, seem to result from the unique position of the Church during the 
few days between the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. As 
though they felt that the swift power of intuitive discernment was not yet 
theirs, they selected two, Joseph Barsabbas, who in Gentile circles assumed 
the common surname of Justus, and Matthias. 6 They then, in accordance 

1 " The Church, so to speak, was but half born ; the other half was still in the womb 
of the synagogue. The followers of Jesus were under the guidance of the Apostles, but 
continued to acknowledge the authority of the chair of Moses in Jerusalem " (Dr. 
Dollinger, First Age, p. 43). 

2 Jos. Antt. xv. 11, § 5 ; Philo, ii. 476. 3 Gal. iii. 28. 

4 Acts i. 25, ets tw tottov toi/ ISiov [ol. SCkoliov). This profound and reverent euphemism 
is one of the many traces of the reticence with which the early Church spoke of the 
fate of those who had departed. The reticence is all the more remarkable if the word 
" place " be meant to bear allusive reference to the same word in the earlier part of the 
text, where the true reading is tottov ttjs Sta/covias (A, B, C, D), not n\ripov, as in E. V. 
The origin of this striking expression may perhaps be the Rabbinic comments on Numb, 
xxiv. 25, where "Balaam went to his own place" is explained to mean " to Gehenna." 
Cf. Judg. ix, 55, Wpo 1 ?, and Targ. Eccles. vi. 6 ; v. Schottgen, p. 407 ; and cf. Clem. Rom. 
ad Cor. i. 5 ; Polyc. ad Phil. 9 ; Ignat. ad Magnes. 5 (Meyer). See too Dan. xii. 13. 

5 Ps. xli. 9 ; cix. 8. The alteration of the LXX. ovtuv into cu>tov is a good illustration 
of the free method of quotation and interpretation of the Old Testament, which ia 
universally adopted in the New. The 109th has been called the Iscariotic Psalm. 

6 Of these nothing is known, unless it be true that they were among the Seventy 
{Euseb. H. E. i. 12; Epiphan. Haer. i. 20); and that Joseph drank poison unharmed 
(Papias ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 39) On the uncertain derivation of Barsabbas (so in n, A, 

E 



50 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

with OH Testament analogies 1 and Jewish custom, 2 prayed to God that He 
would appoint 3 the one whom He chose. The names were written on 
tablets and dropped into a vessel. The vessel was shaken, and the name of 
Matthias leapt out. He was accordingly reckoned among the twelve 
Apostles. 4 

We are told nothing further respecting the events of the ten days which 
elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost. With each of those days 
the yearning hope, the keen expectation, must have grown more and more 
intense, and most of all when the day of Pentecost had dawned. 5 It was the 
first day of the week, and the fiftieth day after Msan 16. The very circum- 
stances of the day would add to the vividness of their feelings. The 
Pentecost was not only one of the three great yearly feasts, and the Feast of 
Harvest, but it came to be identified — and quite rightly — in Jewish conscious- 
ness with the anniversary of the giving of the Law on Sinai. 6 The mere 
fact that another solemn festival had come round, and that at the last 
great festival their Lord had been crucified in the sight of the assembled 
myriads who thronged to the Passover, would be sufficient on this solemn 
morning to absorb their minds with that overwhelming anticipation which was 
a forecast of a change in themselves and in the world's history — of a new and 
eternal consecration to the service of a new law and the work of a new 
life. 

It was early morning. Before " the third hour of the day " summoned 
them to the Temple for morning prayer/ the believers, some hundred and 
twenty in number, were gathered once more, according to their custom, in the 
upper room. It has been imagined by some that the great event of this first 
Whit-Sunday must have taken place in the Temple. The word rendered 

B, E), see Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr., ad loc. There is a Judas Barsabbas in Acts xv. 22. 
Matthias is said to have been martyred [Nicejph. ii. 60), and there were apocryphal 
writings connected with his name (Euseb. H. E. iii. 23 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 1G3). 
i Numb. xxvi. 55, 56 ; Josh. vii. 14 ; 1 Sam. x. 20 ; Prov. xvi. 33. 2 Luke i. 9. 

3 ava8ei£ov, " appoint, " not "show": Luke X. 1, pera Se TavTo. aveSei^ev 6 Kvpios, eripovS, 

e/38o/u»j/coi/Ta. The word is peculiar in the N.T. to St. Luke. For e£eAi£u>, see Acts i. 2, 
rots airoo-ToXots .... oi's e£eA.e£aTo. I need hardly notice the strange view that the 
election of St. Matthias was a sheer mistake made before the gift of the Spirit, and that 
Paul was in reality the destined twelfth Apostle ! (Stier, Reden d. Apostl. i. 15.) 

4 The method in which the lot was cast (see Lev. xvi. 8 ; Ezek. xxiv. 6) is not cei tain, 
but the expression ISw/cav, rather than lfio.Kov nX-qpovs adroit goes against the notion of their 
casting dice as in Luke xxiii. 34. " The lot fell on Matthias " is a common idiom in all 
languages (Horn. II. v. 316 ; Od. E. 209 ; Ps. xxii. 18 ; Jon. i. 7, &c. ; ut cujusque sors 
exciderat ; Liv. xxi. 42). From the use of the word K \^po<; in this passage, in ver. 17 and 
in viii, 21, xxvi. 18, is probably derived the Latin clerus and our clergy, clerici, xArjpos = 
to avo-rqij.a. tu>v Shxkovuv koX npccrfivTepuiv. (Suid.) (Wordsworth, ad. loc.) 

5 This is the obvious meaning of oviJ.TT\r)pov<re<xi, not "was drawing near" (cf. Eph. L 
10), or, "had passed." 

6 It is true that this point is not adverted to by either Philo or Josephus. The in- 
ference arises, however, so obviously from the comparison of Ex. xii. 2 ; xix. 1, that we 
can hardly suppose that it was wholly missed. (See Schottgcn, ad. loc. ; Jer. Ep. ad 
Fabiolam, xii. ; Aug. c. Famtum, xxxii. 12; Maimon. Hor. Nevoch. iii. 41.) The Simcath 
Tkorah, or "Feast of the Joy of the Law," is kept on the last day of the Feast of 
Tabernacles, when the last Haphtarah from the Pentateuch is read. 

7 i.e., 9 o'clock in the morning (cf . Luke xxiv. 53 ; Acts ii. 46 ; iii 1). 



ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 51 

* house" 1 might equally mean a " chamber," and is actually used by Josephus 
of the thirty small chambers which were attached to the sides of Solomon's 
Temple, with thirty more above them. 2 But it is supremely improbable 
that the poor and suspected disciples should have been able to command 
the use of such a room ; and further, it is certain that if, in the Herodian 
temple, these rooms were no larger than those in the Temple of Solomon, 
the size of even the lower ones would have been wholly inadequate for the 
accommodation of so large a number. The meeting was probably one of those 
holy and simple meals which were afterwards known among Christians as the 
Agapce, or Love feasts. It need hardly be added that any moral significance 
which might attach to the occurrence of the event in the Temple would be no 
less striking if we think of the sign of a new era as having hallowed the 
common street and the common dwelling-place ; as the visible inauguration of 
the days in which neither on Zion nor on Gerizim alone were men to worship 
the Father, but to worship Him everywhere in spirit and in truth. 3 

It is this inward significance of the event which constitutes its sacredness 
and importance. Its awfulness consists in its being the solemn beginning of 
the new and final phase of God's dealings with mankind. To Abraham He 
gave a promise which was the germ of a religion. When He called His people 
from Egypt He gave them the Moral Law and that Levitical Law which was 
to sevve as a bulwark for the truths of the theocracy. During the two 
thousand years of that Mosaic Dispensation the Tabernacle and the Temple 
had been a visible sign of His presence. Then, for the brief period of the life 
of Christ on earth, He had tabernacled among men, dwelling in a tent like ours 
and of the same material. 4 That mortal body of Christ, in a sense far deeper 
than could be true of any house built with hands, was a Temple of God. Last 
of all, He who had given to mankind His Son to dwell among them, gave His 
Spirit into their very hearts. More than this He could not give ; nearer than 
this He could not be. Henceforth His Temple was to be the mortal body of 
every baptised Christian, and His Spirit was to prefer 

" Before all temples the upright heart and pure." 

He who believes this in all the fulness of its meaning, he whose heart and 
conscience bear witness to its truth, will consider in its true aspect the fulfil- 
ment of Christ's promise in the effusion of His Spirit; and regarding the 
outward wonder as the least marvellous part of the Day of Pentecost, will not, 
as Neander says, be tempted to explain the greater by the less, or " consider 
it strange that the most wonderful event in the inner life of mankind should 
be accompanied by extraordinary outward appearances as sensible indications 
of its existence." 5 

Suddenly, while their hearts burned within them with such ardent zeal, and 
glowed with such enkindled hope — suddenly on the rapt and expectant 

k 

» Acts ii. 2, oTkov. 2 Jos. Antt. viii. 3, § 2. » John iv. 21—23. 

* Archbishop Leighton, John i. 14, 6 A.6yos <rap£ eyevero &al iata^viavtv Iv viii.lv. 

6 Neander, p. 3. 
B 2 



52 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

assembly came the sign that they had desired — the inspiration of Christ 8 
promised Presence in their hearts — the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with 
fire — the transforming impulse of a Spirit and a Power from on high— the 
eternal proof to them, and through them, in unbroken succession, to all who 
accept their word, that He who had been taken from them into heaven was 
still with them, and would be with them always to the end of the world. 

It came from heaven with the sound as of a rushing mighty wind, filling 
the whole house where they were sitting, and with a semblance as of infolded 
flame, 1 which, parting itself in every direction, 2 played like a tongue of 
lambent light over the head of every one of them. It was not wind, but " a 
sound as of wind in its rushing violence;" it was not fire, but something 
which seemed to them like quivering tongues of a flame which gleamed but 
did not burn — fit symbol of that Holy Spirit which, like the wind, bloweth 
where it listeth, though we know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth ; 
and, like the kindled fire of love, glowing on the holy altar of every faithful 
heart, utters, not seldom, even from the stammering lips of ignorance, the 
burning words of inspiration. 

And that this first Pentecost marked an eternal moment in the destiny of 
mankind, no reader of history will surely deny. Undoubtedly in every age 
since then the sons of God have, to an extent unknown before, been taught by 
the Spirit of God. Undoubtedly since then, to an extent unrealised before, we 
may know that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we may 
enjoy a nearer sense of union with God in Christ than was accorded to the 
saints of the Old Dispensation, and a thankful certainty that we see the days 
which kings and prophets desired to see and did not see them, and hear the 
truths which they desired to hear and did not hear them. And this New 
Dispensation began henceforth in all its fulness. It was no exclusive 
consecration to a separated priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow 
Apostolate. It was the consecration of a whole Church — its men, its women, 
its children — to be all of them " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy 
nation, a peculiar people ; " it was an endowment, of which the full free offer 
was meant ultimately to be extended to all mankind. Each one of that 
hundred and twenty was not the exceptional recipient of a blessing and 
witness of a revelation, but the forerunner and representative of myriads 
more. And this miracle was not merely transient, but is continuously re- 
newed. It is not a rushing sound and gleaming light, seen perhaps only for a 
moment, but it is a living energy and an unceasing inspiration. It is not a 
visible symbol to a gathered handful of human souls in the upper room of a 
Jewish house, but a vivifying wind which shall henceforth breathe in all ages 
of the world's history; a tide of light which is rolling, and shall roll, from 

1 Acts ii. 2, 3, SiTirep nvofjs . . • <o(rel m/pbs. (Cf. Luke iii. 22, tocrei irepi<rrepav ', Ezek. i. 

24 ; xliii. 2 ; 1 Kings xix. 11.) 

5 yKCxraai 5io/xcpi.^6jae»/at, not " cloven tongues," as in the E.V., though this view of the 
word is said to have determined the symbolic shape of the Episcopal mitre. The 
expression "tongue of fire" is found also iu Isa. v. 24, but there it is a devouring 



ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 53 

shore to shore until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the 
waters cover the sea. 

And if this be the aspect under which it is regarded, the outward symbol 
sinks into subordinate importance. They who hold the truths on which I 
have been dwelling will not care to enter into the voluminous controversy as 
to whether that which is described as audible and visible was so in seeming 
only — whether the something which sounded like wind, and the something 
which gleamed like flame, 1 were external realities, or whether they were but 
subjective impressions, so vivid as to be identified with the things themselves. 
When the whole soul is filled with a spiritual light and a spiritual fire — when 
it seems to echo, as in the Jewish legend of the great Lawgiver, with the 
mtisic of other worlds — when it is caught up into the third heaven and hears 
words which it is not possible for man to utter — when, to the farthest horizon 
of its consciousness, it seems as it were filled with the " rush of congregated 
wings " — when, to borrow the language of St. Augustine, the natural life is 
dead, and the soul thrills, under the glow of spiritual illumination, with a life 
which is supernatural — what, to such a soul, is objective and what is subjective? 
To such questions the only answer it cares to give is, " Whether in the body 
or out of the body, I cannot tell. God knoweth." 2 

But when from these mysterious phenomena we turn to the effects wrought 
by them in those for whom they were manifested, we are dealing with things 
more capable of being defined. Here, however, it is necessary to distinguish 
between the immediate result and the permanent inspiration. The former 
astounded a multitude ; the latter revived a world. The former led to an 
immediate conversion ; the latter is the power of a holy life. The former was 
a new and amazing outburst of strange emotion ; the latter was the sustaining 
influence which enables the soul to soar from earth heavenwards in steady 
flight on the double wings of Faith and Love. 

Yet, though there be no manner of comparison between the real 
importance of the transient phenomenon and the continuous result, it is 
necessary to a true conception of the age of the Apostles that we should 
understand what is told us of the former. " And they were all immediately 
filled," it is said, "with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other 
tongues as the Spirit gave them to utter." 3 

The prima facie aspect of the narrative which follows — apart from the 
analogy of other Scriptures — has led to the belief that the outpouring of 
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was succeeded by an outburst of utterance, 
in which a body of Galilseans spoke a multitude of languages which they 
had never learned; and this has led to the inference that throughout their 

1 Acts ii. 2, 3, uHTirep . . . oio-ei. 

3 " It did me much harm that I did not then know it was possible to see anything 
otherwise than with the eyes of the body " (St. Teresa, Vida, vii. 11). 

3 Acts ii. 4. kaXelv, " to speak," as distinguished from Ae'yeiv, "to say," points rather 
to the actual articulations than to the thoughts which words convey ; iwo^eeyyea-Oai, 
eloqui, implies a brief forcible utterance. Neither Irepal nor ykoxjcrat throw light on the 
nature of the phenomena, except as referring to Isa. xxviii. XL 



54 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

lives the Apostles possessed the power of speaking languages which thej 
had not acquired. 1 

But if we examine other passages where the same phenomenon is alluded 
to or discussed, they will show us that this view of the matter is at least 
questionable. In Mark xvi. ] 7 — waiving all argument as to the genuineness 
of the passage — the word Kaivds, "new," is omitted in several uncials and 
versions ; 2 but if retained, it goes against the common notion, for it points 
to strange utterances, not to foreign languages. In the other places of 
the Acts 3 where the gift of the Spirit is alluded to, no hint is given 
of the use of unknown languages. In fact, that view of the subject has 
chiefly been stereotyped in the popular conception by the interpolation of 
the word " unknown " in 1 Cor. xiv. 4 The glossolalia, or " speaking with 
a tongue," is connected with " prophesying " — that is, exalted preaching — 
and magnifying God. The sole passage by which we can hope to under- 
stand it is the section of the First Epistle to the Corinthians to which 
I have just alluded. 5 It is impossible for any one to examine that section 
carefully without being forced to the conclusion that, at Corinth at any 
rate, the gift of tongues had not the least connexion with foreign languages. 
Of such a knowledge, if this single passage of the Acts be not an exception, 
there is not the shadow of a trace in Scripture. That this passage is not 
an exception seems to be clear from the fact that St. Peter, in rebutting 
the coarse insinuation that the phenomenon was the result of drunkenness, 
does not so much as make the most passing allusion to an evidence so 
unparalleled ; and that the passage of Joel of which he sees the fulfilment 
in the outpouring of Pentecost, does not contain the remotest hint of 
foreign languages. Hence the fancy that this was the immediate result 
of Pentecost is unknown to the first two centuries, and only sprang up 
when the true tradition had been obscured. The inference that the gift 
of unlearnt languages was designed to help the Apostles in their future 
preaching is one that unites a mass of misconceptions. In the first place, 
such a gift would be quite alien to that law of God's Providence which 
never bestows on man that which man can acquire by his own unaided 
efforts. In the second place, owing to the universal dissemination at that 
time of Greek and Latin, there never was a period in which such a gift 

1 Against this view (which, with the contrast with Bahel, &c, is not found, I think, 
earlier than the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries), see Herder, Die Gabe d. 
Sprache; Bunsen, Hippol. ii. 12; Ewald, Gesch. Isr. vi. 110; Neander, Planting, 13, 
14 ; De Wette, Einleit. 27—37 ; Hilgenfeld, Einlcit. 275 ; Reuss, Hist. Apol. 50—55 ; 
Olshausen, ad loc. ; De Pressense, Trois prem. Siecles, i. 355 ; and almost every un- 
biassed modern commentator. Meyer (ad loc. ) goes so far as to say that "the sudden 
communication of the gift of speaking in foreign languages is neither logically possible 
nor psychologically and morally conceivable)." 

2 C, L, a, Copt., Arm. Apart from these questions, the unlimited universality of 
the promise leads us to believe that our Lord here, as elsewhere, is using the language 
of spiritual metaphor. Many a great missionary and preacher has, in the highest 
sense, spoken "with new tongues" who lias yet found insuperable difficulty in th« 
Eoquisition of foreign languages. 

1 x. 46 ; xix. 6 (cf. xi. 15). « 1 Cor. xiv. 4, 13, 14, 27. 5 1 Cor. xii.— xiv. 3& 



ST. PETER AND THE FIKST PENTECOST. 5b 

would have been more absolutely needless. 1 In the third place, though 
all other miracles of the New Testament found their continuance and 
their analogies, for a time at any rate, after the death of the Apostles, 
there is no existing allusion, or even early legend, which has presumed 
the existence of this power. 2 In the fourth place, although Paul 'spoke 
with a tongue ' 3 more than all his converts, it is clear from the narrative 
of what occurred at Lycaonia, that at a most crucial moment he did not 
understand the Lycaonian dialect. In the fifth place, early Christian 
tradition distinctly asserts that the Apostles did not possess a supernatural 
knowledge of foreign tongues, since Papias tells us that Mark accompanied 
St. Peter as an 'interpreter' (ep/j.r)vevTr)s), and Jerome that Titus was useful 
to St. Paul from his knowledge of Greek. 4 We are, therefore, forced to 
look for some other aspect of the utterance of that inspiration which 
accompanied the heavenly signs of Pentecost. The mistaken explanation 
of it has sprung from taking too literally St. Luke's dramatic reproduction 
of the vague murmurs of a throng, who mistook the nature of a gift of 
which they witnessed the reality. I do not see how any thoughtful 
student who has really considered the whole subject can avoid the con- 
clusion of Neander, that "any foreign languages which were spoken on 
this occasion were only something accidental, and not the essential element 
of the language of the Spirit." 6 

In ancient times — especially before Origen — there seems to have been 
an impression that only one language was spoken, but that the miracle 
consisted in each hearer imagining it to be his own native tongue. 6 The 
explanation is remarkable as showing an early impression that the passage 
had been misunderstood. The modern view, developed especially by 
Schneckenburger (following St. Cyprian and Erasmus), is that the "tongue" 
was, from its own force and significance, intelligible equally to all who 
heard it. That such a thing is possible may be readily admitted, and it 
derives some probability from many analogies in the history of the Church. 

1 For instance, the whole multitude from fifteen countries which heard the Apostles 
speak "in their own tongues" the wonderful works of God, yet all understood the 
speech which St. Peter addressed to them in Greek. Hence such a power of speaking 
unlearnt foreign languages would have been a " Luxus wunder " (Immer, Neut. Theol. 
195). Far different was it with the true glossolaly, which in its controlled force involved 
a spiritual power of stirring to its inmost depths the heart of unbelief. (1 Cor. xiv. 22. ) 

2 Middleton, Mirac. Powers, 120. The passage of Irenseus (Haer. v. 6, 1) usually 
quoted in favour of such a view, tells the other way, since the object of the TravToSairoi 

yAxoercrai is there explained to be to. /cpu<|>ia tu>v av9pojTr(ov els (f>avepov ayeiv. 

3 1 Cor. xiv. 18, yW<rr, {a, A, D, E, F, G). 

4 Papias, ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 30 ; cf. Iren. iii. 1 ; interpres. Tert. adv. Marc. iv. 5. 

6 Planting, 13, 14. I have not touched on any modern analogies to these spiritual 
manifestations, but agree with the view of Dr. Dollinger, who says that they have 
occurred "in a lower sphere, and without any miraculous endowment ... an unusual 
phenomeL mi, but one completely within the range of natural operations, which the gift 
of the Apostolic age came into to exalt and ennoble it " {First Age of Church, 315). 

' Greg. Nyss. De Spir. Sanct. Bp. Martensen, Christl. Dogm. 381 ; Overbeck, App., 
p. 26, and many others. The often-repeated objection of Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 
xliv.) that this is to transfer the miracle to the hearers, has no weight whatever. Th® 
effect on the hearers was solely due to the power of the new spiritual "tongue." 



56 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL 

The stories of St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Yincent Ferrer, 
St. Louis Bertrand, St. Franeis Xavier, and others who are said to have 
been endowed with the spiritual power of swaying the passions, kindling 
the enthusiasm, or stirring the penitence of vast multitudes whom they 
addressed in a language unintelligible to the majority of the hearers, are so 
far from being inventions, that any one who has been present at the speech 
of a great orator, though beyond the range of his voice, can readily under- 
stand the nature aud the intensity of the effect produced. 1 But neither of 
these theories taken alone seems adequate to account for the language used 
by St. Peter and St. Paul. Almost all the theories about the glossolalia 
are too partial. The true view can only be discovered by a combination of 
them. The belief that languages were used which were unknown, or only 
partially known, or which had only been previously known to the speaker; 
that the tongue was a mystic, exalted, poetic, unusual style of phraseology 
and utterance ; 2 that it was a ditliyrambic outpouring of strange and 
rhythmic praise ; that it was the impassioned use of ejaculatory words 
and sentences of Hebrew Scripture ; that it was a wild, unintelligible, 
inarticulate succession of sounds, which either conveyed no impression to 
the ordinary hearer, or could only be interpreted by one whose special 
gift it was to understand the rapt and ecstatic strain — none of these views 
is correct separately, all may have some elements of truth in their combina- 
tion. This is the meaning of St. Paul's expression " hinds of tongues." 
If we assume, as must be assumed, that the glossolalia at Corinth and 
elsewhere was identical with the glossolalia at Pentecost, then we must 
interpret the narrative of St. Luke by the full and earnest discussion of 
the subject — written, bo it remembered, at a far earlier period, and in 
immediate contact with, and even experience of, the manifestation — by 
St. Paul. That the glossolaly at Corinth was not a speaking in foreign, 
languages is too clear to need proof. St. Paul in speaking of it uses the 
analogies of the clanging of a cymbal, the booming of a gong, 3 the in- 
distinct blare of a trumpet, 4 the tuneless strains of flute or harp. 6 We 
learn that, apart from interpretation, it was not for the edification of any 
but the speaker ; 6 that even the speaker did not always understand it ; 7 that 
it was sporadic in its recurrences; 8 that it was excited, inarticulate, 

i See Chapters on Language, p. 63 ; Marsh, Led. on Lcmg. 486 — 488 ; Cic. de Oral, 
iii 216. 

2 rAwcrcra sometimes means "an unusual expression" (Arist. JRhet. iii. 2, 14). Cf. ou> 
"gloss," "glossology." See especially Bleek, Stud, u Krit. 1829. " Linguam esse cum 
quis loquatur obscuras et mysticas significationes " (Aug. de Gen. ad liti. xii. 8). 

3 1 (Jor. xiii. 1, X"^*^ ^X^", KvpfiaKov a\a\a^ou. 

4 8, iav «£8t)Aoi/ ^witjv aaXmyZ 8<3. St. Chrysostom uses language equally disparaging of 
analogous outbreaks in Constantinople {Horn, in Ps. vi. 12; see Dr. Plumptre's interestr tg 
a: tide in Smith's Diet. iii. 1560). 

6 XIV. 7,o/jlojs rot ai//vx a <btevr)v StSovra, k.t.K., eav 8ta<rTo\T)i/ rot? </>06yyois M-*? Saj- 

6 xiv. 2, ov/c a^ptoTHHs AaAeZ. 4, iavrbv oiKoSoiiel. Cf. 11. The proper meaning of the 
word* AoAeli/, yAiao-a, o>w^j, all point in this direction. In St. Luke's phraseology tb» 
word for a language is not yXuaaa, but SidAe/cros- 

7 xiv. 19. 8 xiv. 27. 



ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 57 

astonishing, 1 intended as a sign to unbelievers rather than as an aid to 
believers, but even on unbelievers liable, when not under due regulation, 
to leave an impression of madness ; 2 lastly, that, though controllable by 
all "who were truly and nobly under its influence, it often led to spurious 
and disorderly outbreaks. 3 Any one who fairly ponders these indications 
can hardly doubt that, when the consciousness of the new power came over 
the assembled disciples, they did not speak as men ordinarily speak. The 
voice they uttered was awful in its range, in its tone, in its modulations, 
in its startling, penetrating, almost appalling power; 4 the words they spoke 
were exalted, intense, passionate, full of mystic significance ; the language 
they used was not their ordinary and familiar tongue, but was Hebrew, or 
Greek, or Latin, or Aramaic, or Persian, or Arabic, as some overpowering 
and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct ; the burden of their 
thoughts was the ejaculation of rapture, of amazement, of thanksgiving, 
of prayer, of impassioned psalm, of dithyrambic hymn ; their utterances 
were addressed not to each other, but were like an inspired soliloquy of the 
soul with God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, all 
simultaneously raised in the accordance of ecstatic devotion, 5 there were 
some which none could rightly interpret, which rang on the air like the 
voice of barbarous languages, and which, except to those who uttered them, 
and who in uttering them felt carried out of themselves, conveyed no 
definite significance beyond the fact that they were reverberations of one 
and the same ecstasy — echoes waked in different consciousnesses by the 
same immense emotion. Such — as we gather from the notices of St. Luke, 
St. Peter, and St. Paul— was the " Gift of Tongues." And thus regarded, 
its strict accordance with the known laws of psychology 6 furnishes us with 
a fresh proof of the truthfulness of the history, and shows us that no sign 
of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit could have been more natural, more 
evidential, or more intense. 

The city of Jerusalem at that moment was crowded by a miscellaneous 
multitude of Jews and Proselytes. It was inevitable that the awful sound 7 
should arrest the astonished attention, first of one, then of more, lastly of a 
multitude of the inhabitants and passers-by. The age — an age which was in 

1 xiv. 2. 2 XIV. 23, ovk epovcriv oti fxaivetrOe ; 

3 xiv. 9, 11, 17, 20-23, 26-28, 33, 40. 

4 So we infer from St. Pauls allusions, which find illustration in modern analogies. 
Archd. Stopford describes the " unknown tongue" of the Irish Bevivalists in 1859 as " a 
Bound such as I never heard before, unearthly and unaccountable." 

5 This simidtaneity of utterance by people under the same impressions is recorded 
several times in the Acts of the Apostles. It was evidently analogous to, though not 
perhaps identical with " glossolalia " — the eloquence of religious transport thrilling with 
rapture and conviction. 

6 Compare in the Old Testament the cases of Saul, &c. (1 Sam. x. 11 ; xviii. 10 ; xix. 
23, 24). " C'est le langage brulant et mysterieux de l'extase " (De Pressense, i. 355). 

' In Acts iL 6 the words -yevojaenj? Se rrj? 4>wvfjs rav-Tys do not mean (as in the E.Y.) 
"now when this was noised abroad," but "when this sound occurred" (cf. fjxos, ver. 2; 
John hi. 8 ; Rev. vi. 1). It is evidently an allusion to the Bath Kol, (See Herzog, 
Real. Encycl., *.v.) 



58 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

keen expectation of some divine event ; the day — the great anniversary of 
Pentecost and of Sinai ; the hour — when people were already beginning to 
throng the streets on their way to the Temple service — would all tend to swell 
the numbers, and intensify the feelings of the crowd. Up the steps which led 
outside the house to the " upper room " they would first begin to make their 
way in twos and threes, and then to press in larger numbers, until their 
eagerness, their obtrusion, their exclamations of fear, surprise, admiration, 
insult, could not fail to break the spell. The Church for the first time found 
itself face to face with the world — a world loud in its expressions of perplexity, 
through which broke the open language of hate and scorn. That which fixed 
the attention of all the better portion of the crowd was the fact that these 
" Galilseans " were magnifying, in strange tongues, the mercies and power of 
God. But most of the spectators were filled with contempt at what seemed 
to them to be a wild fanaticism. "These men," they jeeringly exclaimed, 
" have been indulging too freely in the festivities of Pentecost. 1 They are 
drunk with sweet wine." 2 

It was the prevalence of this derisive comment which forced upon the 
Apostles the necessity of immediate explanation. 3 " The spirits of the 
prophets," as St. Paul says, with that masculine practical wisdom which in 
him is found in such rare combination with burning enthusiasm, " are subject 
unto the prophets." 4 The Apostles were at once able not only to calm their 
own exaltation, but also, even at this intense moment, to hush into absolute 
silence the overmastering emotion of their brethren. They saw well that it 
would be fatal to their position as witnesses to a divine revelation if anything 
in their worship could, however insultingly, be represented as the orgiastic 
exhibition of undisciplined fervour. It was a duty to prove from the very 
first that the Christian disciple offered no analogy to the fanatical fakeer. 
Clearing the room of all intruders, making a space for themselves at the top 
of the steps, where they could speak in the name of the brethren to the surging 
throng who filled the street, the Apostles came forward, and Peter 
assumed the otfice of their spokesman. Standing in an attitude, and 
speaking in a tone, which commanded attention, 5 he first begged for serious 
attention, and told the crowd that their coarse suspicion was refuted at once 
by the fact that it was but nine o'clock. He then proceeded to explain to them 
that this was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that, among other signs 
and portents of the last days, there should be a special effusion of the Spirit of 
God, like that of which they had witnessed the manifestations. It was the 
object of the remainder of his speech to prove that this Spirit had been 

i See Deut. xvi. 11. 

2 ykevKos cannot be "new wine," as in E.V., for Pentecost fell in June, and the 
vintage was in August. 

3 Acts ii. 15, ws vfieU vnoXa^av^re. There is a slight excuse for this insult, since 
ipiriti lal emotion may produce effects similar to those which result from intoxication (Eph. 
v. 18; 1 Sam. x. 10, 11 ; xviii. 10— Heb., "raved"). Compare the German expression, 
"Kin (lott-trunkener Mann." 

4 1 Cor. xiv. 32. 6 Acts ii. 14, orafleis . . . «rj}pe tjji/ (fttoviiv. 



EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 59 

outpoured by that same Jesus of Nazareth 1 whom they had nailed to the cross, 
but whose resurrection and deliverance from the throes of death were fore- 
Bhadowed in the Psalms of His glorious ancestor. 

The power with which this speech came home to the minds of the hearers ; 
the force and fearlessness with which it was delivered by one who, not two 
months before, had been frightened, by the mere question of a curious girl, 
into the denial of his Lord ; the insight into Scripture which it evinced in men 
who so recently had shown themselves but ' fools and slow of heart ' to believe 
all that the prophets had spoken concerning Christ ; 2 the three thousand who 
were at once baptised into a profession of the new faith — were themselves the 
most convincing proofs — proofs even more convincing than rushing wind, and 
strange tongues, and lambent flames — that now indeed the Promise of the 
Paraclete had been fulfilled, and that a new ceon had begun in God's dealings 
with the world. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 

«« It fills the Church of God ; it fills 
The sinful world around ; 
Only in stubborn hearts and wills 
No place for it is found." — Keblb. 

T H E life of these early Christians was the poetic childhood of the Church in 
her earliest innocence. It was marked by simplicity, by gladness, by worship, 
by brotherhood. At home, and in their place of meeting, their lives were a 
perpetual prayer, their meals a perpetual love-feast and a perpetual eucharist. 
In the Temple they attended the public services with unanimous zeal. In the 
first impulses of fraternal joy many sold their possessions to contribute to a 
common stock. The numbers of the little community increased daily, and the 
mass of the people looked on them not only with tolerance, but with admira- 
tion and esteem. 

The events which followed all tended at first to strengthen their position. 
The healing of the cripple in Solomon's porch; the bold speech of Peter 
afterwards ; the unshaken constancy with which Peter and John faced the fury 
of the Sadducees ; the manrer in which all the disciples accepted and even 
exulted in persecution, if it came in the fulfilment of their duties ; 3 the power 

1 Acts ii. 22,Na^wpaios, the Galilsean f orm of Na^xpcuo?. 2 Luke xxiv. 25. 

3 It is a very interesting fact that on the first summons of Peter and John before the 
Hierarchs, they were dismissed, with threats, indeed, and warnings, but unpunished, 
because the Council became convinced (Ka.TaA.a/36/iei/oi ) that they were "unlearned and 
ignorant men " (Acts iv. 13). The words, however, convey too contemptuous a notion to 
English leaders. ' Ay paju-jaa-nn simply means that their knowledge of Jewish culture was 
confined to the Holy Scriptures ; iSiwrai, that they had never studied in rabbinic schools. 
The word Hediot (iSiwnjs) occurs frequently in the Talmud, and expresses a position in 



60 THS LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

with which they witnessed to the resurrection of their Lord ; the beautiful 
spectacle of their unanimity ; the awful suddenness with which Ananias and 
Sapphira had been stricken down ; the signs and wonders which were wrought 
by the power of faith ; the zeal and devotion which marked their gatherings 
in Solomon's porch, caused a rapid advance in the numbers and position of the 
Christian brothers. As their influence increased, the hierarchic clique, which 
at that time governed the body which still called itself the Sanhedrin, grew 
more and more alarmed. In spite of the populace, whose sympathy made it 
dangerous at that time to meddle with the followers of Jesus, they at last sum- 
moned the two leading Apostles before a solemn conclave of the Sanhedrin 
and senate. 1 Probably, as at the earlier session, the whole priestly party were 
there — the crafty Annas, the worldly Caiaphas, 2 the rich, unscrupulous, money- 
loving body of Kamhiths, and Phabis, and Kantheras, and Boethusim, 3 the 
Pharisaic doctors of the law, with Gamaliel at their head; John, perhaps the 
celebrated Johanan Ben Zakkai ; 4 Alexander, perhaps the wealthy brother of 
the learned Philo; 5 the same body who had been present at those secret, 
guilty, tumultuous, illegal meetings in which they handed over the Lord Jesus 
to their Roman executioners — were again assembled, but now with something 
of misgiving and terror, to make one more supreme effort to stamp out the 
Galilsean heresy. 

The Apostles, when first brought before the Sanhedrin, had been arrested 
in the evening by the Captain of the Temple, and had been released with 
strong threats, partly because the Sadducees affected to despise them, but still 
more because they did not know how to gainsay the miracle of the healing of 
the cripple. The Apostles had then openly declared that they should be 
compelled by the law of a higher duty to disregard these threats, and they 
had continued to teach to increasing thousands that doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion which filled the Sadducees with the greatest jealousy. It was impossible 
to leave them unmolested in their career, and by the High Priest's order they 
were thrust into prison. The Sanhedrin met at dawn to try them ; but when 
they sent for them to the prison they found that the Apostles were not there, 
but that, delivered by " an angel of the Lord," they were calmly teaching in 
the Temple. In the deepest perplexity, the Sanhedrists once more despatched 

superior to that of the am-haarets. The Hediot is one who, though not a frequenter of 
the schools, still pays deference to the authority of the Rabbis ; the am-haarets is one who 
hates and despises that authority. Hillel was distinguished for his forbearing condescen- 
sion towards the ignorance of Hediots {Babha Metzia, f. 104, 1). Compare John vii. 15, 
" How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ? " 

1 "Populus sanior quam qui praesunt " (Bengel). The use of the word yepovo-ia in 
A.cts v. 21 is somewhat perplexing, because we know nothing of any Jewish "senate" 
apart from the Sanhedrin, and because if yepovaia. be taken in an etymological rather than 
a political sense, the Sanhedrin included the elders (iv. 8 ; xxv. 15). It is impossible, in 
the obscurity of the subject, to distinguish between the political and the Talmudic San- 
hedrim See Derenbourg (Palestine, 213), who thinks that Agrippa had been the first to 
introduce Rabbis into the Sanhedrin. 

2 Both of these ar* mentioned as having been at the earlier meeting, and we ire 
probably intended to understand they were also present at this. 

8 On these, see Life of Christ, ii., pp. 329 — 342. 

« Lightfoot, Cent. Chor. in Matt., cap. 15, • Joe. Antt. xviii. 8, § L 



BAELY PERSECUTIONS. 61 

the Levitieal officer to arrest them, but this time without any violence, which 
might lead to dangerous results. They offered no resistance, and were once 
more placed where their Lord had once stood — in the centre of that threaten- 
ing semicircle of angry judges. In reply to the High Priest's indignant 
reminder of the warning they had received, St. Peter simply laid down the 
principle that when our duty to man clashes with our duty to God, it is God 
that must be obeyed. 1 The High Priest had said, " Ye want to bring upon us 
the bluod of this man." The words are an awful comment on the defiant cry, 
f His blood be on us, and on our children." TJien the Sanhedrin had not been 
afraid of Jesus ; now they were trembling at the vengeance which might yet 
be brought on them by two of the despised disciples. The phrase is also 
remarkable as furnishing the first instance of that avoidance of the name of 
Christ which makes the Talmud, in the very same terms, refer to Him most 
frequently as Peloid 2 — "so and so." Peter did not aggravate the Priests' 
alarm. He made no allusion to the charge of an intended vengeance ; he 
only said that the Apostles, and the Holy Spirit who wrought in them, were 
witnesses to the resurrection and exaltation of Him whom they had slain. 
At these words the Sanhedrin ground their teeth with rage, and began to 
advise another judicial murder, which would, on their own principles, have 
rendered them execrable to their countrymen, as an assembly given to deeds 
of blood. 3 This disgrace was averted by the words of one wise man among 
them. How far the two Apostles were protected by the animosities between 
the rival sects of Sadducees and Pharisees we do not know, but it was 
certainly the speech of Gamaliel which saved them from worse results than 
that scourging by Jewish thongs — those forty stripes save one — which they 
received, and in which they exulted. 4 

That speech of Gamaliel was not unworthy of a grandson of Hillel — of 
one of those seven who alone won the supreme title of Rabbanim 5 — of one 
who subsequently became a President of the Sanhedrin. It has been strangely 
misunderstood. The supposed anachronism of thirty years in the reference to 
Theudas has led the school of Baur to deny altogether the genuineness of the 
speech, but it has yet to be proved that the allusion may not have been 
perfectly correct. The notion that the speech was due to a secret leaning in 
favour of Christianity, and the tradition of the Clementine Recognitions, that 
Gamaliel was in heart a Christian, 6 have no shadow of probability in their 
favour, since every allusion to him in the Talmud shows that he lived and 

1 Cf. Plat. Apol. 29. ireCa-ofiai Se ®ew naWov ri vfjitv. "It were better for me to be 
called ' fool ' all the days of my life, than to be made wicked before Ha-3fakom," i.e., 
God ; literally " the Place " {Edioth, ch. v. 6). 

2 In Spanish and Portuguese fulano (through the Arabic). The designation otho hatsh, 
"that man," is still more contemptuous. W ( Yeshu) is used as the contraction for £itt}>, 
Mid is composed of the initial letters of an imprecation. 

3 "The Sanhedrin is not to save, but to destroy life" {Sanhedr. 42 6). (See Life of 
Christ, ii. 352, and infra, Excursus VII. 

4 Duut. xxv. 2. 

6 All the Eabbans except Johanan Ben Zakkai were descendants of Gamaliel. 
• Thilo, Cod. Apocr., p. 501. 



62 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

died a Pharisee. Nor, again, is there the least ground for Schrader's in. 
dignation against his supposed assertion of the principle that the success of a 
religion is a sufficient test of its truth. We must remember that only the 
briefest outline of his speech is given, and all that Gamaliel sterns to have 
meant was this — ' Let these men alone at present. As far as we can see, they 
are only the victims of a harmless delusion. There is nothing seditious in 
their practice, nothing subversive in their doctrines. Even if there were we 
should have nothing to fear from them, and no need to adopt violent measures 
of precaution. Fanaticism and imposture are short-lived, even when backed 
by popular insurrection ; but in the views of these men there may be some- 
thing more than at present appears. Some germ of truth, some gleam of 
revelation, may inspire their singular enthusiasm, and to fight against this 
may be to fight against God.' Gamaliel's plea was not so much a plea for 
systematic tolerance as for temporary caution. 1 The day of open rupture 
between Judaism and Christianity was indeed very near at hand, but it had 
not yet arrived. His advice is neither due to the quiescence of Pharisaic 
fatalism, nor to a ' fallacious laisser alter view of the matter, which serves to 
show how low the Jews had sunk in theology and political sagacity if such 
was the counsel of their wisest.' 2 There was time, Gamaliel thought, to wait 
and watch the development of this new fraternity. To interfere with it 
might only lead to a needless embroilment between the people and the 
Sanhedrim A little patience would save trouble, and indicate the course 
which should be pursued. Gamaliel was sufficiently clear-sighted to have 
observed that the fire of a foolish fanaticism dies out if it be neglected, and 
is only kindled into fury by premature opposition. Let those who venture to 
arraign the principle of the wise Rabbi remember that it is practically 
identical with the utterance of Christ, "Every plant, which my heavenly 
Father planted not, shall be plucked up by the roots." 3 

The advice was too sound, and the authority of the speaker too weighty, 
to be altogether rejected. The Priests and Rabbis, tortured already with 
guilty anxiety as to the consequences of their judicial murder, renewed their 
futile command to the Apostles to preach no more in the name of Jesus, and 
scourging them for disobedience to their former injunctions, let them go. 
Neither in public nor in private did the Apostles relax their exertions. The 
gatherings still continued in Solomon's porch ; the agapce were still held in 
the houses of the brethren. So far from being intimidated, the two Apostles 
only rejoiced that they were counted worthy of the honour of being die* 
honoured for the name of Him on whom they believed. 

1 Too much has, perhaps, been made of the Zav f) e£ avBp&irwv as contrasted with 
el Se etc &eov ivriv, vv. 38, 39 ; cf. Gal. i. 8, 9 — (Beng. Zav rj si fit, conditionaliter ; el e<rru» 
si est, categorice) — as though Gamaliel leaned to the latter view — "wornach der gesetzte 
Zweite Fall als der dem Gamaliel wahrscheinlichere trscheint" (Meyer). It merely 
means— 'If it should be from men, as results will show,' and, 'if, a case which I at 
present suppose, from God.' (See Winer.) 

2 Alford, following Schrader, Der Apostel Paulus. 

8 See Matt. xv. 13. It was in this sense that Luther urged the advice of Gamaliel 
upon the Elector of Treves. 



EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 63 

And here I must pause for a moment to make a remark on the grounds 
■which have led many modem critics to reject the authority of the Acts of the 
Apostles, and to set it down as a romance, written in the cause of reconciliation 
between Judaising and Pauline Christians. My object in this volume is not 
controversial. It has been my endeavour here, as in my Life of Christ, to 
diffuse as widely as I can a clear knowledge of the Dawn of the Christian 
Faith, and to explain as lucidly as is in my power the bearing of its earliest 
documents. But I have carefully studied the objections urged against the 
authenticity and the statements of the New Testament writings ; and I cannot 
forbear the expression of my astonishment at the baselessness of many of the 
hypotheses which have been accepted in their disparagement. Honesty of 
course demands that we should admit the existence of an error where such an 
error can be shown to exist ; but the same honesty demands the rejection of all 
charges against the accuracy of the sacred historian which rest on nothing 
better than hostile prepossession. It seems to me that writers like Baur and 
Zeller — in spite of their wide learning and great literary acumen — often prove, 
by captious objections and by indifference to counter considerations, the funda- 
mental weakness of their own system. 1 Hausrath altogether rejects the 

1 See Baur, Paul. i. 35 ; Zeller, Die Apostelgesch. , p. 134. Baur asserts that Gamaliel 
could not have delivered the speech attributed to him because of "the striking chrono 
logical error in the appeal to the example of Theudas. " And yet he does not offer any 
proof ( ither that the Theudas here alluded to is identical with the Theudas of Josephus, or 
that Josephus must necessarily be right and St. Luke necessarily wrong. Zeller, wnne 
entering more fully into the discussion, seems only to be struck by the resemblance 
between the two impostors, without allowing for the obvious differences in the accounts 
of them ; and he attaches an extravagant importance to the silence of Josephus about 
the unimportant movement of the earlier fanatic to whom Gamaliel is supposed to allude ; 
nor does he notice the possibility, admitted even by a Jewish writer (Jost, Gesch. d. Jud. 
ii. 76), that the Theudas of Gamaliel may be the Simon, a slave of Herod, of Jos. Antt. 
xvii. 10, § 6 ; Tac. H. v. 9. On this identification, see Sonntag, Stud. u. Krit., 1837, 
p. 622 ; and Hackett, ad loc. Again, critics of the Tubingen school point out the 
supposed absurdity of believing that the Sanhedrin would admit " a notable miracle " 
and yet punish the men who performed it. But this is to reason from the standpoint of 
modern times. The Jews have never denied the miracles of Jesus, but they have not on 
that account believed in His mission. Just as a modern Protestant, familiar with the 
peculiarities of nervous maladies, might accept the narrative of wonderful cures performed 
at La Salette, without, for a moment admitting the reality of the vision which is supposed 
to have consecrated the place, so the Jews freely admitted the possibility of inconclusive 
miracles, which they attributed generally to kishouf (i.e., thaumaturgy, miracles wrought 
by unhallowed influence), or to DW nrn^, phantasmagoria, or deception of the eyes. 
(Derenbourg, Palest. 106, n. 3; 361, n. 1.) Thus they allowed miraculous power to 
idols (Abhoda Zara, f. 54, 2). There is a Talmudic anecdote (perhaps a sort of allegory 
on Eccles. x. 8) which exactly illustrates this very point. R. Eliezer ben Dama was 
bitten by a serpent, and Jacob the rain {i.e., Christian) offered to heal him in the name of 
Jesus. "Ben Dama, it is forbidden!" said his uncle, R. Ismael. "Let me do it," 
urged Jacob; "I will prove to you by the Law that it is allowable." Before the 
argument was over the sick man died. "Happy Ben Dama !" exclaimed his uncle; 
"thou hast yielded thy soul in purity, without violating a precept of the wise " (Abhoda 
Zara, cf. 27, 6 ; 55, 1 ; Jer. Shabbath, 14, 4). — "When St. Luke makes Gamaliel speak of 
"Judas of Galilee," whereas Judas was born at Gamala, and commonly known as Judas 
the Gaulonite (ravAavt'-nj? avrjp, Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, § 1), this trivial peculiarity would 
unquestionably have been paraded by German critics as a proof of the unhistorical 
character of the speech, but for the fortunate accident that Josephus, with reference to 
the sphere of his activity, thrice calls him 6 TaAiAatos ( Antt, xviii. 1, § 6 j xx. 5, § 2 ; 
B. J. ii. 8, § 1). 



64 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

statement that Paul was "brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," on the ground 
that Paul calls himself " a zealot '" for the traditions of the fathers, and must 
therefore have belonged far rather to the school of Shammai. He could not, 
according to this writer, have been trained by a Rabbi who was remarkable for 
his mildness and laxity. He accordingly assumes that the author of the Acts 
only invents the relations between St. Paul and Gamaliel in order .to confer a 
sort of distinction upon the former, when the fame of Gamaliel the Second, 
founder of the school of Jabne, kept alive, in the second century, the fame of 
his grandfather, Gamaliel the Elder. 1 Now of what value is a criticism which 
contemptuously, and I may even say calumniously, contradicts a writer whose 
accuracy, in matters where it can be thoroughly tested, receives striking con- 
firmation from the most opposite sources ? It would have been rightly con- 
sidered a very trivial blot on St. Luke's accuracy if he had fallen into some 
slight confusion about the enrolment of Quirinus, the tetrarchy of Abilene, 
the Ethnarch under Aretas, the Asiarchs of Ephesus, the "Praetors" of 
Philippi, the " Politarchs " of Thessalonica, the " Protos " of Malta, or the 
question whether " Propraetor," or " Pro-consul," was, in the numerous 
changes of those days, the exact official title of the Roman Governor of 
Cyprus or Corinth. On several of these points he has been triumphantly 
charged with ignorance and error ; and on all these points his minute exacti- 
tude has been completely vindicated or rendered extremely probable. In every 
historical allusion — as, for instance, the characters of Gallio, Felix, Festus, 
Agrippa II., Ananias, the famine in the days of Claudius, the decree to expel 
Jews from Rome, the death of Agrippa I., the rule of Aretas at Damascus, the 
Italian band, &c. — he has been shown to be perfectly faithful to facts. Are we 
to charge him with fraudulent assertions about Paul's relation to Gamaliel on 
the questionable supposition that, after reaching the age of manhood, the pupil 
deviated from his teacher's doctrines ? 2 Are we, on similar grounds, to charge 
Diogenes Laertius with falsehood when he tells us that Antisthenes, the Cynic, 
and Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, were both of them pupils of Socrates ? A re- 
markable anecdote, which will be quoted farther on, has recorded the terrible 
quarrel between the parties of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua, of whom the 
former is called a Shammai te, and the latter a Hillelite ; 3 and yet both of them 
were pupils of the same Rabbi, the celebrated Hillelite, R. Johanan Ben Zaccai. 
Such instances might be indefinitely multiplied. And if so, what becomes of 
Hausrath's criticism P Like many of the Tubingen theories, it crumbles into 
dust. 4 

1 Ha-zaken, as he is usually called. 

2 Turning to Buddseus, Philos. Hebraeorum (1720), I find that he answered this 
objection long ago An interesting anecdote in JBerackoth, f. 16, 2, shows that the 
natural kindness of Gamaliel was too strong for the severity of his own teaching, 

* Jer. Shnhhath, i. 7. 

4 See iixcuraus V., " Gamaliel and the School of Tubingen** 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 65 

3S0Ott 313. 
ST. STEPHEN AND THE HELLENISTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 

TSttov oiiK tffri paSiws cvpetv rrjs oiKov/j.4vrjs Bs ov 7rapa5e8eKTat tovto rb <pv\ov t 
^y (sic) eiriKpaTelrai vir' avrov. — Strabo, ap. Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, § 2. (Cf. Philo, 
Leg. ad Gaium, xxxvi.) 

The gradual change of relation between the Jews and the Christians was an 
inevitable result of the widening boundaries of the Church. Among the 
early converts were " Grecians," as well as " Hebrews," and this fact naturally 
led to most important consequences, on which hinged the historic future of 
the Christian Faith. 

It is not too much to say that any real comprehension of the work of 
St. Paul, and of the course of events in the days after Christ, must depend 
entirely on our insight into the difference between these two classes of Jews. 
And this is a point which has been so cursorily treated that we must here 
pause while we endeavour to see it in its proper light. 

When the successive judgments, first of the Assyrian, then of the Baby- 
lonian captivity, had broken all hopes of secular power and all thoughts of 
secular pride in the hearts of the Jews, a wholly different impulse was given 
to the current of their life. Settled in the countries to which they had been 
transplanted, allowed the full rights of citizenship, finding free scope for their 
individual energies, they rapidly developed that remarkable genius for com- 
merce by which they have been characterised in all succeeding ages. It was 
only a wretched handful of the nation — compared by the Jewish writers to 
the chaff of the wheat — who availed themselves of the free permission of 
Cyrus, and subsequent kings of Persia, to return to their native land. 1 The 
remainder, although they jealously preserved their nationality and their tradi- 
tions, made their homes in every land to which they had been drifted by the 
wave of conquest, and gradually multiplying until, as Josephus tells us, 2 they 
crowded every corner of the habitable globe, formed that great and remark- 
able body which continues to be known to this day as " the Jews of the 
Dispersion." 3 

1 Of the whole nation only 42,360 returned ; and as the separate items of the return- 
ing families given by Ezra and Nehemiah only amount to 30,000, it was precariously 
conjectured by the Jews that the surplus consisted of members of the ten tribes. As a 
body, however, the ten tribes were finally and absolutely absorbed into the nations — not 
improbably of Semitic origin — among whom they were scattered (Jos. Antt. xi. 5, § 2 ; 
2 Esdr. xiii. 45). Such expressions as to 8u>8eKd<t>v\ov of James i. 1 ; Acts xxvi. 7, point 
rather to past reminiscences, to patriotic yearnings, and to the sacredly-treasured genea- 
logical records of a very few families, than to any demonstrable reality. Of the priestly 
families only four courses out of the twenty-four returned (Ezra ii. 36 — 39). 

2 Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, § 2. 

* The word is first found in this sense in Deut. xxviii. 25 ; Ps. cxlvii. 2, " Ha shall 
9 



66 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

This Dispersion of the Chosen People was one of those threo vast and 
world-wide events in which a Christian cannot but see the hand of God so 
ordering the course of history as to prepare the world for the Revelation of 
His Son. (i.) The immense field covered by the conquests of Alexander gave 
to the civilised world a Unity of Language, without which it would have been, 
humanly speaking, impossible for the earliest preachers to have made known 
the good tidings in every land which they traversed, (ii.) The rise of the 
Roman Empire created a Political Unity which reflected in every direction the 
doctrines of the new faith, (hi.) The dispersion of the Jews prepared vast 
multitudes of Greeks and Somans for the Unity of a pure Morality and a 
monotheistic Faith. The Gospel emanated from the capital of Judsea ; it 
was preached in the tongue of Athens ; it was diffused through the empire 
of Pome : the feet of its earliest missionaries traversed, from the Euphrates 
to the Pillars of Hercules, the solid structure of undeviating roads by which 
the Roman legionaries — " those massive hammers of the whole earth " 1 — had 
made straight in the desert a highway for our God. Semite and Aryan had 
been unconscious instruments in the hands of God for the spread of a religion 
which, in its first beginnings, both alike detested and despised. The letters 
of Hebrew and Greek and Latin inscribed above the cross were the prophetic 
and unconscious testimony of three of the world's noblest languages to the 
undying claims of Him who suffered to obliterate the animosities of the 
nations which spoke them, and to unite them all together in the one great 
Family of God. 

This contact of Jew with Greek was fruitful of momentous consequences 
both to the Aryan and the Semitic race. It is true that the enormous dif- 
ferences between the morals, the habits, the tendencies, the religious systems, 
the whole tone of mind and view of life in these two great human families, 
inspired them with feelings of mutual aversion and almost detestation. Out 
of the chaos of struggling interests which followed the death of Alexander, 
there gradually emerged two great kingdoms, the Egyptian and the Syrian, 
ruled respectively by the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. These dynasties had 
inherited the political conceptions of the great Macedonian conqueror, and 
desired to produce a fusion of the heterogeneous elements included in their 
government. Both alike turned their eyes to Palestine, which became the 
theatre of their incessant contentions, and which passed alternately under the 
sway of each. The Ptolemies, continuing the policy of Alexander, did their 
utmost to promote the immigration of Jews into Egypt. The Seleucids, bot 1 
by force and by various political inducements, settled them as largely as the} 
could in their western cities. Alike the Lagidae and the Seleucidse knew the 
value of the Jews as quiet and order-loving citizens. To the shores of the 

gather together the outcasts ('013 ; LXX., ra? Siao-nopis) of Israel." It is also found in 
2 Mace. i. 27, " Gather together those that are scattered from us, deliver them that serve 
among the heathen." They were originally called Bent Galootha (Ezra vi. 16). In John 
▼ii. 35, tiji/ Staa-nopav twi/ 'EAAjjjw means the Jews scattered over the Greek world. Thi 
only other passages where it occurs in the N.T. are James i. 1 ; 1 Pet. i. 1. 
1 Shairp, Mod. Culture, 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AJTD HELLENISM. 67 

Mediterranean flocked an ever-increasing multitude of Greek merchants and 
Greek colonists. " The torrent of Greek immigration soon met the toriyent 
of Jewish emigration. Like two rivers which poured their differently 
coloured waves into the same basin without mixing with one another, these 
two peoples cast themselves on the young Macedonian cities, and there simul- 
taneously established themselves without intermixture, continually separated 
by the irreconcilable diversity of their beliefs and customs, though continually 
flung into connexion by community of business and by the uniform legislation 
wfcich protected their interests." 1 

The effect of this on the Greek was less marked and less memorable than 
its effect on the Jew. Judaism was more Hellenised by the contact than 
Hellenism was Judaised. There can be no more striking proof of this fact 
than the total loss by the " Sons of the Dispersion " of their own mother 
tongue. That the effects on the Pagan world were less beneficial than might 
have been anticipated was, in great measure, the fault of the Jews themselves. 
That sort of obtrusive humility which so often marks a race which has nothing 
to live on but its memories, was mingled with an invincible prejudice, a rooted 
self-esteem, an unconcealed antipathy to those of alien race and religion, which, 
combined as it was with commercial habits by no means always scrupulous, 
and a success by no means always considerate, alienated into disgust the very 
sympathies which it should have striven to win. The language in which the 
Jews are spoken of by the writers of the Empire — a language expressive of 
detestation mingled with curiosity — sufficiently accounts for the outbreaks of 
mob violence, from which in so many ages they have been liable to suffer. 
These outbreaks, if not connived at by the governing authorities, were too 
often condoned. Yet, in spite of this, the influence insensibly exercised by 
the Jews over the heathen among whom they lived was full of important 
consequences for Christianity. "Victi," says Seneca, " victoribus leges dede- 
runt." The old Paganism was, in intellectual circles, to a great extent effetb. 
Great Pan was dead. Except in remote country districts, the gods of Olympus 
were idle names. In Rome the terrors of Tartarus were themes for a school- 
boy's laughter. Religion had sunk into a state machinery. 2 The natural 
consequences followed. Those minds which were too degraded to feel the 
need of a religion were content to wallow, like natural brute beasts, in the 
Stygian pool of a hideous immorality. Others became the votaries of low 
foreign superstitions, 3 or the dupes of every variety of designing charlatans. 
But not a few were attracted into the shadow of the synagogue, and the 
majority of these were women, 4 who, restricted as was their influence, yet 

1 Reuss, Thiol. Chret. I. i. 93; and in Herzog, Cyclop, s.v. "Hellenism." On this 
isopolity see Jos. c. Ap. ii. 4. 

2 See Juv. ii. 149 ; Boissier, La Religion Romaine, i. 374 — 450 and contra Friedlander, 
Siitengesck. Roms. (who goes too far). 

3 Because these presented vaguer, and more shadowy conceptions of the Divine, more 
possible to grasp than gross concrete images (see Hausrath, Neut. Zeitg. ii. 76), and 
because Greek religion was too gay for a sick and suffering world (Apul. Metam. xi. passim). 
See Cat. x. 26 ; Ov. F. iv. 309 ; A. A. i. 78 ; Juv. vi. 489, 523 ; Tac. Ann. xvi. 6, &c. 

4 The important part played by these proselytes (who are also called <re/3d/umH, «v<rcs«tc, 

F 2 



68 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

could not fail to draw the attention of their domestic circles to the belief 
which they had embraced. In every considerable city of the Roman Empire 
the service of the synagogue was held in Greek, and these services were 
perfectly open to any one who liked to be present at them. Greek, too, 
became emphatically the language of Christianity. Multitudes of early con- 
verts had been Jewish proselytes before they became Christian disciples. They 
passed from the synagogue of Hellenists into the Church of Christ. 

The influences exercised by the Dispersion on the Jews themselves were, 
of cou rse, too varied and multitudinous to be summed up under one head ; yet 
wb may trace two consequences which, century after century, worked in 
opposite directions, but each of which was deeply marked. On the one hand 
they became more faithful to their religion ; on the other more cosmopolitan 
in their views. Although they made their home in the heathen countries to 
which they had been removed by conquest, or had wandered in pursuit of 
commerce, it must not be supposed that they were at all ready to forfeit their 
nationality or abandon their traditions. On the contrary, the great majority 
of them clung to both with a more desperate tenacity. In the destruction of 
their independence they had recognised the retribution threatened in that 
long-neglected series of prophecies which had rebuked them for their idola- 
tries. Of all polytheistic tendencies the Jew was cured for ever, and as 
though to repair past centuries of rebellion and indifference — as though to 
earn the fulfilment of that great promise of an Anointed Deliverer which was 
the centre of all their hopes — they devoted themselves with all the ardour of 
their self-conscious pride to keep the minutest observances of their Law and 
ritual. Their faithfulness —a complete contrast to their old apostasies — was 
due to the work of the Sopherim. or Scribes. It was towards Jerusalem that 
they worshipped ; it was to the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem that they looked 
for legal decisions ; it was from the Amoraim and Tanaim of Jerusalem 
that they accepted all solutions of casuistical difficulties; it was from 
Jerusalem that were flashed the fire-signals which announced over many lands 
the true date of the new moons ; it was into the treasury of Jerusalem that 
they poured, not only the stated Temple-tribute of half a shekel, but gifts far 
more costly, which told of their unshaken devotion to the church of their 
fathers. It was in Jerusalem that they maintained a special synagogue, and 
to Jerusalem that they made incessant pilgrimages. 1 The hatred, the sus- 
picion, the contempt created in many countries by the exclusiveness of their 
prejudices, the peculiarity of their institutions, the jealousy of their successes, 
only wedded them more fanatically to the observance of their Levitical rules 
by giving a tinge of martyrdom to the fulfilment of obligations. It became 

evKaft^) may be seen in Acts x. 2; xiii. 43 ; xvi. 14, &c, and passim. Owing to the 
painful and, to Hellenic imagination, revolting rite of circumcision, women were more 
frequently converted to Judaism than men. Josephus (B. J. ii., xx. 2) tells us that 
nearly all the women of Damascus had adopted Judaism ; and even in the first century 
three celebrated ltabbis were sons of heathen mothers who had embraced the faith of 
Moses (Derenbourg, Palest., p. 223). 

1 See Philo, Leyat. 30 ; in Mace. 7 ; Jos. Antt. xvi. 6 ; xviii. 9, § 1 ; Cic. pro Flacc 
txviii. ; Shekalim, 7, 4; Kosh Hashana, 2, 4. 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 69 

with them a point of conscience to maintain the institutions which their 
heathen neighbours attacked with every weapon of raillery and scorn. But 
these very circumstances tended to produce a marked degeneracy of the 
religious spirit. The idolatry, which in old days had fastened on the visible 
symbols of alien deities, only assumed another form when concentrated on 
the dead-letter of documents, and the minute ritualism of service. Gradually, 
among vast masses of the Jewish people, religion sank almost into 
f.jtichism. It lost all power over the heart and conscience, all its tender 
bve, all its inspiring warmth, all its illuminating light. It bound the 
nation hand and foot to the corpse of meaningless traditions. Even the 
ethics of the Mosaic legislation were perverted by a casuistry which was at 
once timid in violating the letter, and audacious in superseding the spirit. 
In the place of moral nobleness and genial benevolence, Judaism in its 
decadence bred only an incapacity for spiritual insight, a self- satisfied ortho- 
doxy, and an offensive pride. It enlisted murder and falsity in defence of 
ignorant Shibboleths and useless forms. The difference between the ideal 
Jew of earlier and later times can only be measured by the difference 
between the moral principles of the Law and the dry precedents of the 
Mishna — by the difference which separates the Pentateuch from the Talmud, 
the Book of Exodus from the Abhoda Zara. 1 

But while it produced these results in many of the Jewish communities, 
there were others, and there were special individuals in all communities, in 
whom the influence of heathen surroundings worked very differently. There 
were many great and beautiful lessons to be learnt from the better aspects 
of the heathen world. If there was a grace that radiated from Jerusalem, 
there were also gifts which brightened Athens. The sense of beauty — the 
exquisiteness of art — the largeness and clearness of insight — the perfection 
of literary form which characterised the Greek of the age of Pericles, had 
left the world an immortal heritage ; and Rome had her own lessons to teach 
of dignity, and law, and endurance, and colonisation, and justice. Commerce 
is eminently cosmopolitan. The Jewish Captivity, with the events which 
followed it, made the Jews a commercial people. This innate tendency of 
the race had been curbed, first by the Mosaic legislation, 2 then by the influence 
of the prophets. But when these restrictions had been providentially re- 
moved, the Jew flung himself with ardour into a career from which he had 
been hitherto ^restrained. So far from regarding as identical the notions of 
" merchant" and " Canaanite," 3 the Eabbis soon began to sing the praises of 

1 " The author of the Pentateuch and the Tanaim moved in different worlds of ideas " 
(Kuenen, hi. 291). 

2 Deut. xvi. 16, 17 ; Lev. xxv. ; Ps. cvii. 23. See Jos. c. Ap. i. 12. The chapter 

begins "With, the remark, ^/uei? toLvvv ovre \wpav oiKoO/mev Tra.pa.kiov out e/x7ropiais xa.Lpofj.ev, ov5e 

rats irpbs aAAovs Sta. tovtlqv e7ujuu£tais. Munk {Palest., p. 393) makes some excellent remarks 
on this subject, showing that commerce would not only have encouraged intercourse with 
the heathen, but would also have disturbed the social equilibrium at which Moses aimed, 
so that it was impossible as long as the Law was rigidly observed (Hos. xii. 8 ; Amos viij. 
4-#, &c.). 

3 Targiun of Jonathan (Zech. xiv. 21), 



70 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

trade. "There can be no worse occupation than agriculture!" said R. Eleazar. 
" All the fanning in the world will not make you so remunerative as com- 
merce," said Rabh *■ as he saw a cornfield bowing its golden ears under the 
summer breeze. 2 So easy is it for a people to get over an archaic legislation 
if it stands in the way of their interests or inclinations ! The Mosaic restric- 
tions upon commerce were, of course, impracticable in dealing with Gentiles, 
and in material successes the Jews found something, at any rate, to make up 
to them for the loss of political independence. The busy intercourse of 
cities wrought a further change in their opinions. They began to see that 
God never meant the nations of the world to stand to each other in the posi- 
tion of frantic antagonism or jealous isolation. A Jerusalem Rabbi, ignorant 
of everything in heaven and earth and under the earth, except his own 
Halacha, might talk of all the rest of the world promiscuously as an 
" elsewhere " of no importance ; 3 but an educated Alexandrian Jew would 
be well aware that the children of heathen lands had received from their 
Father's tenderness a share in the distribution of His gifts. The silent and 
imperceptible influences of life are often the most permanent, and no 
amount of exclusiveness could entirely blind the more intelligent sons of 
the Dispersion to the merits of a richer civilisation. No Jewish boy familiar 
with the sights and sounds of Tarsus or Antioch could remain unaware that 
all wisdom was not exhausted in the trivial discussions of the Rabbis ; that 
there was something valuable to the human race in the Greek science which 
Jewish nescience denounced as thaumaturgy ; that there might be a better 
practice for the reasoning powers than an interminable application of the 
Middoth of Hillel ; in short, that the development of humanity involves 
larger and diviner duties than a virulent championship of the exclusive privi- 
leges of the Jew. 4 

We might naturally have conjectured that these wider sympathies would 
specially be awakened among those Jews who were for the first time brought 
into close contact with the great peoples of the Aryan race. That contact 
was first effected by the conquests of Alexander. He settled 8,000 Jews in 
the Thebais, and the Jews formed a third of the population of his new city of 
Alexandria. Large numbers were brought from Palestine by Ptolemy I., and 
they gradually spread from Egypt, not only over " the parts of Libya about 

1 Rabh was a contemporary of Eabbi (Judah the Holy), and was "Head of the 
Captivity." 

* Yeblmmdth, f . 63, 1. 

3 yM& rrsrwi, " outside the land " (Frankl, Jews in the East, ii. 34). Something like the 
French la-bas. 

4 Many of the Rabbis regarded the Gentiles as little better than so much fuel for the 
fires of Gehenna. R. Jose construes Isa. xxxiii. 12, " And tbe peoples shall be a burning 
like lime." Rabh Bar Shilo explained it "that tlicy should be burnt because of their 
neglect of the Law, which was written upon lime." (See the curious Hayadah in Sotah, 
f . 35, 2.) But the Hellenist would soon learn to feel that — 

"All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' Law, 
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote ; 
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach 
To admiration, taught by Nature's light."— Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 286. 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 7l 

Cyrene," but along the whole Mediterranean coast of Africa. 1 Seleucus 
Ki cator, after the battle of Ipsus, removed them by thousands from Babylonia, 
to such cities as Antioch and Seleucia ; and, when their progress and pros- 
perity were for a time shaken by the senseless persecutions of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, they scattered themselves in every direction until there was hardly 
a seaport or a commercial centre in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, or the 
Islands of the iEgean, in which Jewish communities were not to be found. 
The vast majority of these Jewish settlers adopted the Greek language, and 
forgot that Aramaic dialect which had been since the Captivity the language 
of their nation. 

It is to these Greek- speaking Jews that the term Hellenist mainly and 
properly refers. In the New Testament there are two words, Hellen and 
Hellenistes, of which the first is rendered " Greek," and the second " Greciau." 
The word " Greek " is used as an antithesis either to " barbarians " or to 
" Jews." In the first case it means all nations which spoke the Greek 
language; 2 in the second case it is equivalent to " Gentiles." 3 The meaning 
of the word Hellenist or " Grecian " is wholly different. As far as the form 
is concerned, it means, in the first instance, one who " Grsecises " in language 
or mode of life, and it points to a difference of training and of circumstances, 
not to a difference of race. 4 It is therefore reserved as the proper antithesis, 
not to " Jews," — since vast numbers of the Hellenists were Jews by birth, — ■ 
but to strict " Hebrews." The word occurs but twice in the New Testament, 5 
and in both cases is used of Jews who had embraced Christianity but who 
spoke Greek and used the Septuagint version of the Bible instead of the. 
original Hebrew or the Chaldaic Targuin of any Interpreter. 6 

1 See Philo, c. Fl. ii. 523 ; Jos. Antt. xvi. 7, § 2 ; Dr. Deutsch in Kitto's Cycl, s.v. 
" Dispersion ; " and Canon "Westcott in Smith's JBible Diet. 

2 See Acts xviii. 17 ; 1 Cor. i. 22, 23 ; Eom. i. 14. The emissaries of Abgarus — if such 
they were — who applied to Philip when they wished to see Jesus were " Greeks," not 
" Grecians " (John xii. 20). 

3 Pom. i. 16 ; ii. 9 ; iii. 9 ; 1 Cor. x. 32 ; Gal. ii. 3. &c. Thus in 2 Mace. iv. 13, 
'EAA-qi'icrju.bs is equivalent to dAAo^vAicr/xos ; and in iv. 10, 15 ; vi. 9, to. 'EAAtjviko. y\Q-r\ means 
" Paganism ;" and in Is- .. ix. 12, " Philistines " is rendered by the LXX. "EAArjvas. 

4 Cf. Xen. Anab. \ ii. 3, 12. 

6 Acts vi. 1 ; iy 29. In xi. 20 the true reading is "EAArji/as. 

6 Some of ttr Hebraising Hellenists hated even the Septuagint (Geiger, Urschr. 419, 
439 ; Zunz, Gr cesd. Vort. 95). The various classes of Christians may be tabulated a* 
follows : — 

Christians. 
I 



Circumcised. Uncircumcised. 



I i 1 1 

Hellenists. " Proselytes of '* Proselytes of Heathen 

Righteousness." the Gate." Converts. 



Strict. Liberal Judaic. Liberal. 

uy. "Certain e.g. Peter, (Hala- (Haga- 

from Acts xi 3. chists.) dists.) 

James," Actsix. e.g. PauL 

CteL it. 12o 2d. 



e.g. Nicolas, e.g. Cornelius, e.g. Trophimtm 
Acts vL 5. Acts x. 2. Acta xxi. 24. 



72 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Now this Hellenism expressed many shades of difference, and therefore the 
exact meaning- ol the word Hellenist varies with the circumstances under which 
it is used. The accident of language might make a man, technically speaking, 
a Hellenist, when politically and theologically he was a Hebrew ; and this 
mast have been the condition of those Hellenists who disputed against the 
arguments of St. Paul in his first visit to Jerusalem. 1 On the other hand, the 
name might imply that alienation from the system of Judaism, which in some 
Jews extended into positive apostasy, and into so deep a shame of their 
Jewish origin, as to induce them, not only in the days of Jason and Menelaus, 2 
but even under the Herods, to embrace the practices of the Greeks, and even 
to obliterate the external sign of their nationality. 3 Others again, like the 
astute Herodian princes, were hypocrites, who played fast and loose with 
their religion, content to be scrupulous Jews at Jerusalem, while they could 
be shameless heathen at Berytus or Csesarea. But the vast majority of 
Hellenists lay between these extremes. Contact with the world had widened 
their intelligence and enabled them so far to raise their heads out of the heavy 
fog of Jewish scholasticism as to distinguish between that which was of 
eternal and that which was but of transient significance. Far away from 
Jerusalem, where alone it was possible to observe the Levitical law, it was a 
natural result that they came to regard outward symbols as merely valuable 
for the sake of inward truths. To this class belonged the wisest members of 
the Jewish Dispersion. It is to them that we owe the Septuagint translation, 
the writings of Philo and Josephus, and a large cycle of historical, poetic, and 
apocryphal literature. Egypt was the main centre of this Grseco-Jewish 
activity, and many of the Jews of Alexandria distinguished themselves in the 
art, the learning, and the accomplishments of the Greeks. 4 It is hardly to be 
wondered at that these more intellectual Jews were not content with an 
infructuose Rabbinism. It is not astonishing that they desired to represent 
the facts of their history, and the institutions of their religion, in such an 
aspect as should least waken the contempt of the nations among whom they 
lived. 5 But although this might be done with perfect honesty, it tended, no 
doubt, in some to the adoption of unauthorised additions to their history, and 
unauthorised explanations of their Scriptures — in one word, to that style of 

» Acts ix. 29. 

2 See 2 Mace. iv. 13, seqq., " Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase 
of heathenish manners, through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch, 
and no high priest, . . . that the prie ts, . . . despising the temple, . . . hastened to 
be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus 
called them forth," &c. rnMinn ]V rrobn, "the abominable kingdom of Javan," is an ex- 
pression which stereotypes the hatred for Greek fashons. 

3 eTTto-Traor/abs (1 Cor. vii. 18). The condition of a "XWV (1 Mace. i. 15 ; Jos. Antt. xii. 
5, § 1). (On Judaic Hellenism, see Ewald, Gesch. v. § ii. 4.) 

4 Thus, an Ezekiel wrote a tragedy on Moses ; another, Philo, wrote an Epic on 
Jerusalem ; Theodotus, a tragedy on the Rape of Dina ; Demetrius and Eupolemos wrote 
Becular history. The story of Susanna is a novelette. But the feeling of stricter Jews 
was sternly opposed to these forms of literary activity. In the L tter of Aristeas we are 
told that Theopompus was struck with madness, and Theodektes with blindness, for 
offences in this direction (Hausrath, Neut. Zeity. ii. 130). 

6 Such was the main object of Josephus in his ArUiquUiei, 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 73 

exegesis which, since it deduced anything out of anything, nullified the real 
significance of the sacred records. 1 Nor can we be surprised that this Alex- 
andrian theosophy — these allegoric interpretations — this spirit of toleration 
for the Pagan systems by which they were surrounded — were regarded by the 
stricter Jews as an incipient revolt from Mosaism thinly disguised under a 
hybrid phraseology. 2 Hence arose the antagonism between advanced Hellenists 
and the Hebrews, whose whole patriotic existence had concentrated itself upon 
the Mosaic and Oral Law. The severance between the two elements became 
wider and wider as the Jews watched the manner in which Christianity 
spread in the Gentile world. The consciousness that the rapidity of that 
diffusion was due, not only to the offer of a nobler faith, but also to the 
loosening of an intolerable yoke, only made their exclusiveness more obstinate. 
It was not long before the fall of Jerusalem that there took place in the school 
of R. Hananiah Ben Hiskiah Ben Garon, that memorable meeting at which 
eighteen ordinances were resolved upon, of which it was the exclusive object 
to widen the rift of difference between Jews and Pagans. These ordinances, 
to which the Mishna only alludes, are found in a bardita (" supplemental 
addition ") of R. Simeon Ben Johai in the second century, and they consist of 
prohibitions which render impossible any interchange of social relations 
between Jews and heathen. It was in vain that R. Joshua and the milder 
Hillelites protested against so dangerous a bigotry. The quarrel passed from 
words to blows. The followers of Hillel were attacked with swords and lances, 
and some of them were killed. " That day," says the Jerusalem Talmud, "was 
as disastrous to Israel as the one on which they made the golden calf;" but it 
seemed to be a general opinion that the eighteen resolutions could not be 
rescinded even by Elias himself, because the discussion had been closed by 
bloodshed ; and they were justified to the national conscience by the savage 
massacres which had befallen the Jews atBeth-shan, Csesarea, and Damascus. 3 
The feelings of Jews towards Pagans were analogous to the hatred of 
Hebrews to Hellenists. In later days the Christians absorbed the entire fury 
of that detestation which had once burned in the Jewish heart against 
Hellenism. When a question arose as to the permissibility of burning the 
Gospels and other books of the Christians {Minim), considering how frequently 

1 The views of these liberal Hellenists may be seen represented in the works of the 
pseudo-Aristeas, the pseudo-Aristobulus, and in the verses of Phocylides (Kuenen, 
Religion of Israel, iii. 180). It was the aim of an entire cycle of literature to prove that 
all Greek wisdom was derived from Jewish sources, and the names of Orpheus and the 
Sibyl were frequently given to Jewish forgeries and interpolations (Clem. Alex. Strom. 
v. 4 ; Euseb. Praep. Evang. vii. 14 ; viii. 10 ; xiii. 12). Bel and the Dragon, the Epistle 
of Jeremiah, the letter of pseudo-Heraclitus, &c, belong to this class <>f writings. See 
too Wisd. of Solomon x. — xii. ; Jos. c. Ap. ii. 39 ; Hausrath, JV. Zeitgesch. ii. 100, sq. 
Josephus says that Pythagoras borrowed from Moses (c. Ap. i. 22). 

2 Such Hebraising Hellenists are the author of " the Epistle of Jeremiah," and (on the 
whole) of Wisdom (see vii. 22, seq., xiii. — xix.). "The Liberal Hellenists spiritualised and 
voPttilised the wall of partition between Jews and Pagans," so that, although Philo said 
that the wall should still be kept up, it is not surprising to find that his nephew, the 
Procurator Tiberius Alexander, had abandoned Judaism (Jos. Antt. xx. 5, § 2 ; Kuenen, 
Bel. of Israel, iii.). 

2 Slwbbath, i. 7; Gratz, iii. 414; Derenbourg, Palest., p. 274. 



74 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

they contained the name of God, " May I lose my son," exclaimed Rabbi 
Tarphon, "if I do not fling 1 these books into the fire when they come into my 
hands, name of God and all. A man chased by a murderer, or threatened by 
a serpent's bite, ought rather to take refuge in an idol's temple than in the 
houses of the Minim, for these latter know the truth and deny it, whereas 
idolaters deny God because they know Him not." 1 

Such, then, being the feelings of the Palestinian Jews with regard to every 
approach towards idolatry, the antagonism between them and the more liberal 
Hellenists rose from the very nature of things, and was so deeply rooted that 
we are not surprised to find a trace of it even in the history of the Church ; — 
for the earliest Christians — the Apostles and disciples of Jesus — were almost 
exclusively Hebrews and Israelites, 2 the former being a general, and the latter 
a religious designation. Their feeling towards those who were Hellenists in 
principles as well as in language would be similar to that of other Jews, how- 
ever much it might be softened by Christian love. But the jealousies of two 
sections so widely diverse in their sympathies would be easily kindled; and it is 
entirely in accordance with the independent records of that period that, "when 
the number of the disciples was being multiplied," there should have arisen, 
as a natural consequence, " a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews." 

The special ground of complaint was a real or fancied neglect of the widows 
of Hellenists in the daily ministration of food and assistance. There might 
be some jealousy because all the offices of the little Church were administered 
by Hebrews, who would naturally have been more cognisant of the claims of 
their immediate compatriots. Widows, however, were a class who specially 
required support. We know how full a discussion St. Paul applies to their 
general position even at Corinth, and we have already mentioned that some of 
the wisest regulations attributed to Gamaliel were devoted to ameliorating the 
sufferings to which they were exposed. In the seclusion to which centuries of 
custom had devoted the Oriental woman, the lot of a widow, with none to plead 
her cause, might indeed be bitter. Any inequalities in the treatment of the 
class would awaken a natural resentment, and the more so because previous to 
their conversion these widows would have had a claim on the Corban, or 
Temple treasury. 3 

But the Apostles met these complaints in that spirit of candour and 
generosity which is the best proof how little they were responsible for any 
partiality which may have been shown to the widows of the Hebrews. Sum- 
moning a meeting of the disciples, they pointed out to them that the day had 
now come in which it was inconvenient for the Apostles to have anything 
further to do with the apportionment of charity 4 — a routine task which 

1 Shabbath, 116 a ; Derenbourg, p. 380. 

2 The Hellenic names of Philip and Andrew prove nothing, because at this epoch such 
names were common among the Jews. But they may have had Hellenic connexions. 
(Johnxii. 20.) 

3 2 Mace. iii. 10, " Then the high priest told him (Heliodorus) that there was such 
money laid up for the relief of widows and fatherless children." 

4 Acts. vi. 2, fiLOKovelv rpaire'fais. That rpdne^a has not here its meaning of "bank" 



THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 75 

diverted them from more serious and important duties. They therefore bade 
the meeting elect seven men of blameless character, high spiritual gifts, and 
practical wisdom, to form what we should call a committee of management, 
and relieve the Apostles from the burden, in order that they might devote 
their energies to prayer and pastoral work. The advice was followed, and 
seven were presented to the Apostles as suitable persons. They were admitted 
to the duties of their position with prayer and the laying on of hands, which 
have been thenceforth naturally adopted in every ordination to the office of a 
deacon. 1 

The seven elected were Stephen, Philip, Prochorns, Nicanor, Timon, 
Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch. The fact that every one of 
them bears a Greek name has often been appealed to as a proof of the con- 
ciliatoriness of the Apostles, as though they had elected every one of their 
committee from the very body which had found some reason to complain. 
This, however, would have been hardly just. It would have been to fly into 
an opposite extreme. The frequency with which the Jews of this time adopted 
Greek names prevents us from drawing any conclusion as to their nationality. 
But although we cannot be certain about the conjecture of Gieseler that three 
of them were Hebrews, three of tliem Hellenists, and one a proselyte, it is only 
natural to suppose that the choice of them from different sections of the 
Church would be adopted as a matter of fairness and common sense. And the 
fact that a Gentile like Nicolas should thus have been selected to fill an office 
so honourable and so responsible is one of the many indications which mark 
the gradual dawn of a new conception respecting the Kingdom of God. 

Though two alone 2 of the seven are in any way known to us, yet this 

(Jos. Antt. xii. 1, § 2 ; cf . rpaire^ra^, Matt. xxv. 27 ; rpdrre^av, Luke xix. 23), is clear from 
the context. 

1 The seven officers were not, however, "deacons " in the modern sense of the word, 
nor were they mere almoners. The only special title given to any one of them is 
Evangelist (Acts xxi. 8). Alike their gifts and their functions are loftier than those 
required for deacons in 1 Tim. hi. Deacons in the modern sense find their nearer 
prototypes in the veurepoi and veavto-Koi (Acts v. 5, 10 ; cf . Luke xxii. 26), and in the 
Chazzanim of the synagogue (Luke iv. 20). The seven, as St. Chrysostom observes, 
rather had the duties of presbyters, and must be regarded as a body chosen only for a 
special purpose — rews eh tovto exeiporoi^erjcrav. Another analogy for this appointment was 
furnished by the existing institution of three almoners (Parnasim), who undertook the 
collection and distribution of the "alms of the cup" (see Dr. Ginsburg in Kitto, s.v. 
" Synagogue ") and "alms of the box " in the Jewish synagogues ; and these were always 
chosen by the entire congregation of the synagogue, as the Apostles here suggest should 
be done in the case of the new functionaries. 

2 Nicolas is no exception. If, as early tradition asserted, Luke was himself "a 
proselyte of Antioch " (Euseb. H. E. hi. 4 ; Jer. De Vir. Ulustr. 7), this may have 
suggested the passing reference to him. The evidence which connects him with " the sect 
of the Mcolaitanes : ' (Rev. ii. 6, 15), and the story that they adopted both their name 
and their abominable doctrines from a perversion of his remark that we ought Trapaxprj<r6at. 
rfj a-apid, are insufficient. irapaxpw^h though used of unrestrained indulgence (SuicL), 
has also the sense of 8ia.xpw9a.i-, to mortify (Just. M. Apol. 49). Irenaeus (c. Haer. i. 47), 
followed by many of the Fathers (Hippolytus, R. H. vii. 36 ; Tertullian, De praescr. 
haeret. c. 46), accepts the tradition of his connexion with the sect. Clemens of 
Alexandria, while defending him from the charge of personal immorality, and admitting 
that the meaning of his words (which, to say the least, were unfortunately chosen) had 

been entirely misunderstood (tijv e-y/cpdrenw tow irepi<rTrov8&<TT(ov i)8ov5>v to " irapaxowvOai TJJ 



76 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

election was a crisis in the history of the Church. At the work of Philip we 
shall glance hereafter, but we must now follow the career of Stephen, which, 
brief as it was, marked the beginning of a memorable epoch. For St. Stephen 
must be regarded as the immediate predecessor of him who took the most pro- 
minent part in bringing about his martyrdom ; he must be regarded as having 
been, in a far truer sense than Gamaliel himself, the Teacher of St. Paul. St. 
Paul has, indeed, been called a " colossal St. Stephen ; " but had the life of 
St. Stephen been prolonged — had he not been summoned, it may be, to yet 
loftier spheres of activity — we know not to what further heights of moral 
grandeur he might have attained. We possess but a single speech to show his 
intellect and inspiration, and we are suffered to catch but one glimpse of his 
life. His speech influenced the whole career of the greatest of the Apostles, 
and his death is the earliest martyrdom. 



CHAPTER Yin. 

WORK AND MARTYRDOM OP ST. STEPHEN. 

TlavKov 6 8idd(TKa\os.— Basil Seleuc. Orat. de S. Steph. 

Kcd '[Sot ris &v to Aeyofievov o~a<pws et rfyv aocplav rov ~2,Te<pdvov, « r))V Tlerpav 
y\a>TTav, el t)\v TlavAov pv/m^p ivt/o^jcreie, ira>s ovdhv avrovs ecpepev oi>8ev {xpicTTaro, ov 
§t)IaS)v Bvfxbs, ov -rvpdvvwv iizavaffTacrzis, ov 8ai/j.6pcov eViySoi/Ar;, ov dduarot. KaQruxepivoi. 
aAA' &o~irep irora/j.ol 7roAAc3 t&j po'ifa <p^p6[ievoi ovru irdura Trapaavpovres aTrrjeo~av. — 
S. Chkys. in Joan. Horn. li. Opp. viii. 30. 

" This farther only have I to say, my lords, that like as St. Paul was present and 
consenting to the death of the proto-martyr St. Stephen, and yet they be now twain 
holy saints in heaven, . . . so I verily trust we may hereafter meet in heaven 
merrily together, to our everlasting salvation." — Last Words of Sir T. More to his 
Judges, 

The appointment of the Seven, partly because of their zeal and power, and 
partly because of the greater freedom secured for the Apostles, led to marked 
successes in the progress of the Church. Not only was the number of 
disciples in Jerusalem greatly multiplied, but even a large number of the 
priests 1 became obedient to the faith. Up to this time the acceptance of the 

vapid" eSiSao-zcei, SProm. iii. iv. 26, ed. Pott., p. 523), yet tells a dubious, and probably 
mistaken, story about his conduct when charged with jealousy of his wife. This story 
is repeated by Eusebius {H. E. iii. 29), and other Fathers. For further information on 
the subject, and on the identification by Cocceius of Nicolas with Balaam in Rev. ii., see 
Gieseler, Ecc. Hist. i. 86, E.T. ; Mansel, Gnostic Her., p. 72; Derenbourg, p. 363. 

1 Cf. John xii. 42. Commentators have resorted to extraordinary shifts to get rid of 
this simple statement, which, as I have shown in the text, involves no improbability. 
Some would adopt the wholly worthless v. 1. lovBaCuv found in a few cursive MSS. and 
the Philoxenian Syriac. Others accept Beza's conjectural emendation, n-oAus re oxAos ko.1 
lepeW (sc. rii/es). Others, again, follow Heinsius and Eisner in the suggestion that 
SxAos t«i> iepeW means "priests of the common order," "plebeian priests," what the Jews 
might have called yisn ""QV or " people-of-the-land priests," as distinguished from the 
Thalmldl fiachachdmim, or " learned priests ; " but there is no trace that any such dis- 
tinction existed, although it is in itself all but certain that none of these converts came 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 77 

Gospel, so far from involving any rupture with Judaism, was consistent with 
a most scrupulous devotion to its observances. It must be borne in mind that 
the priests in Jerusalem, and a few other cities, were a multitudinous body, 1 
and that it was only the narrow aristocratic clique of a few alien families who 
were Sadducees in theology and Herodians in politics. Many of the lower 
ranks of the priesthood were doubtless Pharisees, and as the Pharisees were 
devoted to the doctrine of the Resurrection, there was nothing inconsistent 
with their traditions in admitting the Messiahship of a Risen Saviour. Such 
a belief would at this time, and indeed long afterwards, have made little 
difference in their general position, although if they were true believers it 
would make a vast difference in their inward life. The simplicity, the fervour, 
the unity, the spiritual gifts of the little company of G-alilasans, would be 
likely to attract the serious and thoughtful. They would be won by these 
graces far more than by irresistible logic, or by the appeals of powerful elo- 
quence. The mission of the Apostles at this time was, as has been well 
observed, no mere apostolate of rhetoric, nor would they for a moment pretend 
to be other than they were — illiterate men, untrained in the schools of tech- 
nical theology and rabbinic wisdom. Had they been otherwise, the argument 
for the truth of Christianity, which is derived from the extraordinary rapidity 
of its dissemination, would have lost half its force. The weapons of the 
Apostolic warfare were not carnal. Converts were won, not by learning or 
argument, but by the power of a new testimony and the spirit of a new life. 

Up to this period the name of Stephen has not occurred in Christian 
history, and as the tradition that he had been one of the seventy disciples is 
valueless, 2 we know notliing of the circumstances of his conversion to Chris- 
tianity. His recognition, however, of the glorified figure, which he saw in his 
ecstatic vision, as the figure of Him who on earth had called Himself " the Son 
of Man," makes it probable that he was one of those who had enjoyed the 
advantage of hearing the living Jesus, and of drawing from its very fountain- 
head the river of the water of life. 3 We would fain know more of one who, 
in so brief a space of time, played a part so nobly wise. But it was with 
Stephen as it has been with myriads of others whose names have been written 
in the Book of Life ; they have been unknown among men, or known only 
during one brief epoch, or for one great deed. For a moment, but for a 
moment only, the First Martyr steps into the full light of history. Our 
insight into his greatness is derived almost solely from the record of a single 
speech and a single day — the last speech he ever uttered — the last day of his 
mortal life. 

from the families of the lordly and supercilious Boethusim, Kamhits, &c. But neither 
here nor in i. 15, 5xA.o? bvofidrmv, has oxAos a contemptuous sense. 

i 4,289 had returned with Ezra (ii. 36—39). 

2 Epiphan. Haer. xl., p. 50. 

2 That he was a Hellenist is not merely a precarious inference from the Greek form of 
his name, which may merely have been a rendering of the Aramaic Kelil, but is implied 
by the narrative itself, and is rendered certain by the character of his speech ; but 
whether he was trained at Alexandria, or was a Boman freedman (Plumptre on Acts 
?L 5), and what had brought him to Jerusalem, we cannot tell. 



78 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAXTL. 

It was the faith of Stephen, together with his loving energy and blameless 
sanctity, which led to the choice of him as one of the Seven. No sooner was 
he elected than he became the most prominent of them all. The grace which 
shone in his colleagues shone yet more brightly in him, 1 and he stood on a 
level with the Apostles in the power of working wonders among the pecple. 
Many a man, who would otherwise have died unknown, has revealed to others 
his inherent greatness on being entrusted with authority. The immense part 
played by Stephen in the history of the Church was due to the development 
of powers which might have remained latent but for the duties laid on him 
by his new position. The distribution of alms seems to have been a part only 
of the task assigned him. Like Philip, he was an Evangelist as well as a 
Deacon, and the speech which he delivered before the Sanhedrin, showing as 
it does the logical force and concentrated fire of a great orator and a 
practised controversialist, may explain the stir which was caused by his 
preaching. 

The scenes of that preaching were the Hellenistic synagogues of Jerusalem. 
To an almoner in a city where so many were poor, and to a Hellenist of 
unusual eloquence, opportunities would constantly recur in which he was not 
only permitted, but urged, to explain the tenets of the new society. Hitherto 
that society was in full communion with the Jewish Church. Stephen alone 
was charged with utterances of a disloyal tendency against the tenets of 
Pharisaism, and this is a proof how different was his preaching from that 
of the Twelve, and how much earlier he had arrived at the true appreciation 
of the words of Jesus respecting the extent and nature of His Kingdom. 
That which, in the mind of a Peter, was still but a grain of mustard seed, 
sown in the soil of Judaism, had already grown, in the soul of a Stephen, 
into a mighty tree. The Twelve were still lingering in the portals of the 
synagogue. For them the new wine of the kingdom of heaven had not yet 
burst the old wine-skins. As yet they were only regarded as the heads of a 
Jewish sect, 2 and although they believed that their faith would soon be the 
faith of all the world, there is no trace that, up to this time, they ever dreamed 
of the abrogation of Mosaism, or the free admission of uncircumcised Gentiles 
into a full equality of spiritual privileges. A proselyte of righteousness — one 
who, like Nicolas of Antioch, had accepted the sign of circumcision — might, 
indeed, be held worthy of honour ; but one who was only a " proselyte of the 
gate," 3 one who held back from the seal of the covenant made to Abraham, 
would not be regarded as a full Christian any more than he would be regarded 
as a full Jew. 

Hence, up to this time, the Christians were looked on with no disfavour 
by that Pharisaic party which regarded the Sadducees as intriguing apostates. 
They were even inclined to make use of the Resurrection which the Christians 
proclaimed, as a convenient means of harassing their rivals. Nor was it they 

1 xap tT °s (***> A, B, D, &c), not irurrews, is the true reading in Acts vi. 8. 

2 Acts xxiv. 5 ; xxviii. 22, aipeo-is. 

* The name did not arise till later, but ia here adopted for convenience' sake. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 79 

who had been guilty of the murder of Jesus. They had not, indeed, stirred 
one finger for His deliverance, and it is probable that many of them — all those 
hypocrites of whom both Jesus and John had spoken as a viper brood — had 
looked with satisfaction on the crime by which then political opponents had 
silenced their common enemy. Tet they did not fear that His blood would be 
brought on them, or that the Apostles would ever hurl on them or their 
practices His terrible denunciations. Though the Christians had their private 
meetings on the first day of the week, their special tenets, their sacramental 
institutions, and their common meal, there was nothing reprehensible in these 
cbser ranees, and there was something attractive even to Pharisees in their 
faithful simplicity and enthusiastic communism. 1 In all respects they were 
" devout according to the Law." They would have shrunk with horror from 
any violation of the rules which separated clean from unclean meats ; they not 
only observed the prescribed feasts of the Pentateuch and its single fast, but 
even adapted the fasts which had been sanctioned by the tradition of the oral 
Law ; they had their children duly circumcised ; they approved and practised 
the vows of the Nazarites ; they never omitted to be on their knees in the 
Temple, or with their faces turned towards it, at the three stated hours 
of prayer. 2 It needs but a glance at the symbolism of the Apocalypse to see 
how dear to them were the names, the reminiscences, the Levitical ceremonial, 
the Temple worship of their Hebrew fellow-citizens. Not many years later, 
the " many myriads of Jews who believed were all zealous of the Law," and 
would have thought it a disgrace to do otherwise than " to walk orderly." 3 
The position, therefore, which they held was simply that of one synagogue 
more, in a city which, according to the Rabbis, could already boast that it 
possessed as many as 480. They might have been called, and it is probable 
that they were called, by way of geographical distinction, " the Synagogue of 
the Nazarenes." 

But this acceptance with the people could only be temporary and deceptive. 
If, indeed, the early believers had never advanced beyond this stand-point, 
Christianity might have been regarded to the last as nothing more than a 
phase of Pharisaism, heretical for its acceptance of a crucified Messiah, 
but worthy of honour for the scrupulosity of its religious life. But had 
Christianity never been more than this, then the olive branch would have died 
with the oleaster on which it was engrafted. It was as necessary for the 
Church as for the world that this hollow semblance of uuison between 
religions which, in their distinctive differences, were essentially antagonistic, 
should be rudely dissipated. It was necessary that all Christians, whether 

1 The Jews would have regarded them at that time as Chaberim, a body of people 
associated, quite harmlessly, for a particular object. 

2 Called mrro, shacrith, at 9; nmo, mincliah, at 3.30; and inso, meartb, at dark 
(Acts ii. 1 ; iii. 1 ; x. 30). 

3 Acts xxi. 20, 24. See for the facts in the previous paragraphs, Acts x. 9 5 14, 30 ; 
xiii. 2, 3 ; xviii. 18, 21 ; xx. 6, 16 ; xxii. 3 ; Kom. xiv. 5 ; Gal. iv. 10 ; v. 2 ; Phil. iii. 2 ; 
Rev. ii. 9 ; iii. 9 ; vii. 15 ; xi. 19, &c. ; Eeuss. Thiol. Chret. i. 291, who quotes Sulpio 
Sever, ii. 31, " Christum Deum sub legis observatione credebant." 



80 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Jews or Gentiles, should see how impossible it was to put a new patch on an 
old garment. 

This truth had been preached by Jesus to His Apostles, but, like many other 
of His words, it lay long dormant in their minds. After some of His deepest 
utterances, in full consciousness that He could not at. once be understood, He 
had said, " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." And as they themselves 
frankly confess, the Apostles had not always been among those " who had eara 
to hear." Plain and reiterated as had been the prophecies which He had 
addressed to them respecting His own crucifixion and resurrection, the first of 
these events had plunged them into despair and horror, the second had burst 
upon them with a shock of surprise. He who commanded the light to shine 
out of darkness had, indeed, shined in their hearts " to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ;" 1 but still they 
were well aware that they had this treasure "in earthen vessels." To 
attribute to them an equality of endowments, or an entire unanimity of 
opinion, is to contradict their plainest statements. To deny that their know- 
ledge gradually widened is to ignore God's method of revelation, and to 
set aside the evidence of facts. To the last they " knew in part, and they 
prophesied in part." 2 Why was James the Lord's brother so highly respected 
by the people as tradition tells us that he was ? Why was Paul regarded by 
them with such deadly hatred ? Because St. Paul recognised more fully than St. 
James the future universal destiny of a Christianity separated from Judaic in- 
stitutions. The Crucifixion had, in fact, been the protest of the Jew against 
an isopolity of faith. " From that moment the fate of the nation was decided. 
Her religion was to kill her. But when the Temple burst into flames, that re- 
ligion had already spread its wings and gone out to conquer an entire world." 3 

Now, as might have been expected, and as was evidently designed by their 
Divine Master, the last point on which the Galilaean Apostles attained to 
clearness of view and consistency of action was the fact that the Mosaic Law 
was to be superseded, even for the Jew, by a wider revelation. It is probable 
that this truth, in all its fulness, was never finally apprehended by all the 
Apostles. It is doubtful whether, humanly speaking, it would ever have been 
grasped by any of them if their powers of insight had not been quickened, in 
God's appointed method, by the fresh lessons which came to them through the 
intellect and faith of men who had been brought up in larger views. The 
obliteration of natural distinctions is no part of the divine method. The 
inspiration of God never destroys the individuality of those holy souls which 
it has made into sons of God and prophets. There are, as St. Paul so 
earnestly tried to impress upon the infant Churches, diversities of gifts, 
diversities of ministrations, diversities of operations, though it is the same 
Spirit, the same Lord, the same God, who worketh all things in all. 4 The 
Hellenistic training of a Stephen and a Saul prepared them for the acceptance 

» 2 Cor. iv. G, 7. » 1 Cor. xi'i. 9. :i Kuenen, Mel. of Isr. iii. 281. 

* 1 Cor. xii. 4—6. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OP ST. STEPHEN. 81 

of lessons which nothing short of an express miracle could have made 
immediately intelligible to a Peter and a James. 

Now the relation of the Law to the Gospel had been exactly one of those 
subjects on which Jesus, in accordance with a divine purpose, had spoken with 
a certain reserve. His mission had been to found a kingdom, not to promulgate 
a theology ; He had died not to formulate a system, but to redeem a race. His 
work had been not to construct the dogmas of formal creeds, but to purify the 
soul of man, by placing him in immediate relation to the Father in Heaven. 
It required many years for Jewish converts to understand the meaning of the 
saying that " He came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil." Its meaning could 
indeed only become clear in the light of other sayings of which they overlooked 
the force. The Apostles had seen Him obedient to the Law ; they had seen 
Him worship in the Temple and the Synagogues, and had accompanied Him in 
His journeys to the Feasts. He had never told them in so many words that the 
glory of the Law, like the light which lingered on the face of Moses, was to be 
done away. They had failed to comprehend the ultimate tendency and signifi- 
cance of His words and actions respecting the Sabbath, 1 respecting outward 
observances, 2 respecting divorce, 3 respecting the future universality of spiritual 
worship. 4 They remembered, doubtless, what He had said about the perma- 
nence of every yod and horn of a letter in the Law, 5 but they had not remarked 
that the assertion of the pre-eminence of moral over ceremonial duties is one 
unknown to the Law itself. Nor had they seen that His fulfilment of the Law 
had consisted in its spiritualisation ; that He had not only extended to infini- 
tude the range of its obligations, but had derived their authority from deeper 
principles, and surrounded their fulfilment with diviner sanctions. Nor, again, 
had they observed how much was involved in the emphatic quotation by Christ 
of that passage of Hosea, " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." 6 They were 
not yet ripe for the conviction that to attach primary importance to Mosaic 
regulations after they had been admitted into the kingdom of Heaven, was to 
fix their eyes upon a waning star while the dawn was gradually broadening into 
boundless day. 

About the early ministry of Stephen we are told comparatively little in the 
Acts, but its immense importance has become more clear in the light of subse- 
quent history. It is probable that he himself can never have formed the 
remotest conception of the vast results — results among millions of Christians 
through centuries of progress — which in God's Providence should arise from 
the first clear statement of those truths which he was the first to perceive. 
Had he done so he would have been still more thankful for the ability with 
which he was inspired to support them, and for the holy courage which pre- 
vented him from quailing for an instant under the storm of violence and hatred 
which his words awoke. 

What it was which took him to the synagogues of Jewish Hellenists we do 

i Mark ii. 27 ; John v. 17. 3 Matt. ix. 13 ; xii. 7. 3 Matt. xix. 3, 6, 8 ; v. 32. 

* John iv. 22. * Matt. v. 18. « Matt. ix. 13 i xii. 7. 

a 



82 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

not know. It may have been the same missionary zeal which afterwards 
carried to so many regions the young man of Tarsus who at this time was 
among his ablest opponents. All that we are told is that " there arose some 
of the synagogue which is called the synagogue of the Libertines and Cyrenians, 
and Alexandrians, and those of Cilicia and Asia disputing with Stephen." 
The form of the sentence is so obscure that it is impossible to tell whether we 
are meant to understand that the opponents of Stephen were the members of 
one synagogue which united these widely-scattered elements ; of five separate 
synagogues ; of three synagogues — namely, that of the Freedmen, that of the 
African, and that of the Asiatic Hellenists ; or of two distinct synagogues, of 
which one was frequented by the Hellenists of Rome, Greece, and Alexandria ; 
the other by those of Cilicia and Proconsular Asia. The number of synagogues 
in Jerusalem was (as I have already mentioned) so large that there is no diffi- 
culty in believing that each of these bodies had their own separate place of 
religious meeting, 1 just as at this day in Jerusalem there are separate syna- 
gogues for the Spanish Sephardim, the Dutch Anshe hod, and the German and 
Polish Ashkenazim. 2 The freedmen may have been the descendants of those 
Jews whom Pompey had sent captive to Italy, and Jews were to be counted by 
myriads in Greece, in Alexandria, and in the cities of Asia. But to us the 
most interesting of all these Greek-speaking Jews was Saul of Tarsus, who, 
beyond all reasonable doubt, was a member of the synagogue of the Cilicians,3 
and who in that case must not only have taken his part in the disputes which 
followed the exhortations of the fervid deacon, 4 but as a scholar of Gamaliel 
and a zealous Pharisee, must have occupied a prominent position as an uncom- 
promising champion of the traditions of the fathers. 

Though the Saul of this period must have differed widely from that Paul, 
the slave of Jesus Christ, whom we know so well, yet the main features of his 
personality must have been the same. He could not have failed to recognise 
the moral beauty, the dauntless courage, the burning passion latent in the 
tenderness of Stephen's character. The white ashes of a religion which had 
smouldered into formalism lay thickly scattered over his own heart, but the fire 
of a genuine sincerity burned below. Trained as he had been for years in 
Rabbinic minutiae, he had not yet so far grown old in a deadening system as to 
mistake the painted cere-cloths of the mummy for the grace and flush of healthy 
life. While he listened to St. Stephen, he must surely have felt the contrast 
between a dead theology and a living faith ; between a kindling inspiration and 
a barren exegesis ; between a minute analysis of unimportant ceremonials and 
a preaching that stirred the inmost depths of the troubled heart. Even the 

1 The assertion of the Talmud (cf. Sanhedr. f. 58, 1) that there were 480 synagogues 
in Jerusalem is indeed valueless, because the remarks of the Rabbis about Jerusalem, 
Bethyr, and indeed Palestine generally, are mere hyperbole ; but, as Eenan remarks {Lea 
Apdtres, p. 109), it does not seem at all impossible to those who are familiar with the 
innumerable mosques of Mahommedan cities. We are informed in the Talmud that each 
synagogue had not only a school for the teaching of Scripture, but also for the teaching 
of traditions (niircnb Tinbn m, Megillah, f. 73, 4). 

2 See Frankl, Jews in the East, ii. 21, E. T. 

* He may have been a IAherti/rms also. 4 Acts vi. 9, av^Toinn* 



WORK AND MAETTEDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 83 

rage which is often intensified by the unconscious rise of an irresistible 
conviction could not wholly prevent him from perceiving that these 
preachers of a gospel which he disdained as an execrable superstition, had 
found "in Christ" the secret of a light and joy, and love and peace, com- 
pared with which his own condition was that of one who was chained indis- 
solubly to a corpse. 

We catch but a single glimpse of these furious controversies. Their imme- 
diate effect was the signal triumph of St. Stephen in argument. The Hellen- 
ists were unable to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spake. 
Disdainful Eabbinists were at once amazed and disgusted to find that he with 
whom they now had to deal was no rude provincial, no illiterate am ha-arets, 
no humble hediot, like the fishermen and tax-gatherers of Galilee ; but one 
who had been trained in the culture of heathen cities as well as in the learning 
of Jewish communities — a disputant who could meet them with their own 
weapons, and speak Greek as tluently as themselves. Steeped in centuries of 
prejudice, engrained with traditions of which the truth had never been ques- 
tioned, they must have imagined that they would win an easy victory, and 
convince a man of intelligence how degrading it was for him to accept a faith 
on which, from the full height of their own ignorance, they complacently looked 
down. How great must have been their discomfiture to find that what they 
had now to face was not a mere personal testimony which they could con- 
temptuously set aside, but arguments based on premisses which they them- 
selves admitted, enforced by methods which they recognised, and illustrated by 
a learning which they could not surpass ! How bitter must have been their 
rage when they heard doctrines subversive of their most cherished principles 
maintained with a wisdom which differed not only in degree, but even in kind, 
from the loftiest attainments of their foremost Rabbis — even of those whose 
merits had been rewarded by the flattering titles of " Rooters of Mountains " 
and u Glories of the Law !" 

At first the only discussion likely to arise would be as to the Messiahship 
of Jesus, the meaning of His death, the fact of His Resurrection. These 
would be points on which the ordinary Jew would have regarded argument as 
superfluous condescension. To him the stumbling-block of the Cross would 
have been insurmountable. In all ages the Messianic hope had been pro- 
minent in the minds of the most enlightened Jews, but during the Exile and 
the Restoration it had become the central faith of their religion. It was this 
belief which, more than any other, kindled their patriotism, consoled the> 
sorrows, and inspired their obedience. If a Shammai used to spend the whole 
week in meditating how he could most rigidly observe the Sabbath — if the 
Pharisees regarded it as the main function of their existence to raise a hedge 
around the Law — the inspiring motive was a belief that if only for one day 
Israel were entirely faithful, the Messiah would come. And what a coming I 
How should the Prince of the House of David smite the nations with the 
sword of his mouth ! How should He break them in pieces like a potter's 
vessel! How should He exalt the children of Israel into kings of the earth 
«2 



84 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

and feed them with the flesh of Behemoth, and Leviathan, and the bird Bat 
Juchne, and pour at their feet the treasures of the sea! And to say that 
Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah — to suppose that all the splendid 
prophecies of patriarchs, and seers, and kings, from the Divine Yoice which 
spoke to Adam in Paradise, to the last utterance of the Angel Malachi — all 
pointed to, all centred in, One who had been the carpenter of Nazareth, and 
whom they had seen crucified between two brigands — to say that their very 
Messiah had just been "hung" 1 by Gentile tyrants at the instance of their 
own priests ; — this, to most of the hearers in the synagogue, would have 
seemed wicked if it had not seemed too absurd. "Was there not one sufficient 
and decisive answer to it all in the one verse of the Law — " Cursed by God is 
he that hangeth on a tree P" 2 

Tet this was the thesis which such a man as Stephen — no ignorant 
Galilsean, but a learned Hellenist — undertook to prove, and did prove with 
such power as to produce silence if not assent, and hatred if not conviction. 
For with all their adoration of the letter, the Rabbis and Pharisees had but 
half read their Scriptures, or had read them only to use as an engine of 
religious intolerance, and to pick out the views which most blended with their 
personal preconceptions. They had laid it down as a principle of interpreta- 
tion that the entire books of the Canon prophesied of nothing else but 
the days of the Messiah. How, under these circumstances, they could 
possibly miss the conception of a suffering as well as of a triumphant 
Messiah, 3 might well amaze us, if there had not been proof in all ages that 
men may entirely overlook the statements and pervert the meaning of their 
own sacred books, because, when they read those books, the veil of obstinate 
prejudice is lying upon their hearts. But when the view of ancient prophecy, 
which proved that it behoved Christ thus to suffer and to enter into His 
glory, 4 was forcibly presented to them by the insight and eloquence of one 
who was their equal in learning and their superior in illumination, we can 
understand the difficulties to which they were reduced. How, for instance, 
could they elude the force of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to which their 
Rabbis freely accorded a Messianic interpretation? The Messianic applica- 
tion of what is there said about the Servant of Jehovah, and the deep humi- 
liation borne for the sake of others, is not only found in the Targum of 
Jonathan and in many Rabbinic allusions, down even to the Book Zoliar, but 
seems to have remained entirely undisputed until the mediaeval Rabbis found 

2 Deut. xxi. 23, tceKarqpaixevo? vnb tou ©eov. The later view of this. "He that is 
hanged is an insult to God " arose from the fact that Jewish patriot a in the Jewish "War 
were crucified by scores. St. Paul, in quoting the verse, omits the vwb ®eoi (Gal. ii. 13 ; 
and Lightfoot, p. 133). 

3 Of the notion of a suffering Messiah, Ben Joseph, as distinguished from the 
triumphant son of David (Rashi on Isa. xxiv. 18 ; Succah, 52, 1, 2, where reference is 
made to Zech. xii. 10, and Ps. ii., &c. ; see Otho, Lex. Bab. s. v. Messiah), there is no 
trace in Jewish literature till long afterwards. (St. Paul's witness from Moses and the 
Prophets— ci Traffyrbs 6 Xp«rrb«, Acts xxvi. 23— only woke a sneer from Agrippa II. 

• Luke xxiv. 26. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OP ST. STEPHEN. 85 

themselves inconvenienced by it in their controversies with Christians. 1 Yet 
this was but an isolated prophecy, and the Christians could refer to passage 
after passage which, on the very principles of their adversaries, not only 
justified them in accepting as the Christ One whom the rulers of the Jews 
had crucified, but even distinctly foreshadowed the mission of His Fore- 
runner ; His ministry on the shores of Gennesareth ; His humble entry into 
Jerusalem ; His rejection by His own people ; the disbelief of His announce- 
ments ; the treachery of one of His own followers ; the mean price paid for 
His blood ; His death as a malefactor ; even the bitter and stupefying drinks 
that had been offered to Him ; and the lots cast upon His clothes — no less 
than His victory over the grave by Resurrection, on the third day, from the 
dead, and His final exaltation at the right hand of God. 2 How tremendous 
the cogency of such arguments would be to the hearers of Stephen cannot be 
shown more strikingly than by the use made of them by St. Paul after the 
conversion which they doubtless helped to bring about. It must have been 
from St. Stephen that he heard them first, and they became so convincing to 
him that he constantly employs the same or analogous arguments in his own 
reasonings with his unconverted countrymen. 3 

It is clear that, in the course of argument, Stephen was led to adduce some 
of those deep sayings as to the purpose of the life of Christ which the keen 
insight of hate had rendered more intelligible to the enemies of our Lord than 
they had been in the first instance to His friends. Many of those priests and 
Pharisees who had been baptised into the Church of Christ with the notion 
that their new belief was compatible with an unchanged loyalty to Judaism, 
had shown less understanding of the sayings of their Master, and less appre- 
ciation of the grandeur of His mission, than the Sadducees whose hatred had 
handed Him over to the secular arm. It did lie within the natural interpreta- 
tion of Christ's language that the Law of Moses, which the Jews at once 
idolised and evaded, was destined to be disannulled ; not, indeed, those moral 
sanctions of it which were eternal in obligation, but the complicated system 
wherein those moral commandments were so deeply imbedded. The Jewish 
race were right to reverence Moses as an instrument in the hands of God to 
lay the deepest foundations of a national life. As a Lawgiver whose Decalogue 
is so comprehensive in its brevity as to transcend all other codes — as the sole 
Lawgiver who laid his prohibition against the beginnings of evil, by daring to 
forbid an evil thought — as one who established for his people a monotheistic 
faith, a significant worship, and an undefinable hope — he deserved the grati- 
tude and reverence of mankind. That this under- official of an obscure sect of 

1 Proofs of this statement may be found in Dr. A. "Wunsche's Die Leiden des Messias, 
and several quotations from his book may be found in the Speaker's Commentary, ad loc. 

2 See Is. xl. 3 ; Mark i. 3 ; Mai. iii. 1 ; Matt. xi. 10 ; Is. viii. 14 ; ix. 1 ; Matt. iv. 14 ; 
Is. bri. 1 ; Luke iv. 18 ; Ps. lxxviii. 2 ; Matt. xiii. 35 ; Ps. cxviii. 22 ; Luke ii. 34 ; Acts 
iv. 11 ; xiii. 41 ; Ps. xli. 9 ; Zech. xi. 12 ; John xiii. 18 ; Matt. xxvi. 15 ; xxvii. 9, 10 ; 
Zech. xii. 10 ; John xix. 37 ; Isa. liii. 9 ; Ps. xvi. 10 ; Matt. xii. 40 ; Acts ii. 27 ; Ps. ex. 
1 ; Acts ii. 33 ; Heb. i. 13, &c. (See Davison, On Prophecy, passim ; Hausrath, p. U2, 
seqq.) 

* Eph. ii. 20 ; Rom. ix. 34 ? &o. 



86 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

yesterday should dare to move his tongue against that awful name, and 
prophesy the abolition of institutions of which some had been delivered to their 
fathers of old from the burning crags of Sinai, and others had been handed 
down from the lips of the mighty teacher through the long series of priests 
and prophets, was to them something worse than folly and presumption — it 
was a blasphemy and a crime ! 

And how did he dare to speak one word against, or hint one doubt as to the 
permanent glory of, the Temple ? The glowing descriptions of the Talmud 
respecting its colossal size and royal splendour are but echoes of the intense 
love which breathes throughout the Psalms. In the heart of Saul any word 
which might sound like a slight to " the place where God's honour dwelt " 
would excite a peculiar indignation. "When the conflagration seized its roofs 
of cedar- wood and melted its golden tables, every Jew in the city was fired 
with a rage which made him fight with superhuman strength — 

" Through their torn veins reviving fury ran, 
And life's last anger warmed the dying man." 

Among those frenzied combatants was a body of Tarsian youths who gladly 
devoted their lives to the rescue of Jerusalem. "What they felt at that 
supreme moment may show us what such a zealot as Saul of Tarsus would feel, 
when he heard one who called himself a Jew use language which sounded like 
disparagement of " the glory of the whole earth." 

Foiled in argument, the Hellenists of the synagogues adopted the usual 
resource of defeated controversialists who have the upper hand. They appealed 
to violence for the suppression of reason. They first stirred up the people — 
whose inflammable ignorance made them the ready tools of any agitator — and 
through them aroused the attention of the Jewish authorities. Their plot was 
soon ripe. There was no need of the midnight secrecy which had marked the 
arrest of Jesus. There was no need to secure the services of the Captain of tho 
Temple to arrest Stephen at twilight, as he had arrested Peter and John. 
There was no need even to suppress all semblance of violence, lest the people 
should stone them for their unauthorised interference. The circumstances of 
the day enabled them to assume unwonted boldness, because they were at the 
moment enjoying a sort of interregnum from Roman authority. The approval 
of the multitude had been alienated by the first rumour of defective patriotism. 
When every rank of Jewish society had been stirred to fury by false witnesses 
whom these Hellenists had suborned, they seized a favourable moment, sud- 
denly came upon Stephen, 1 either while he was teaching in a synagogue, or 
while he was transacting the duties of an almoner, and led him away — 
apparently without a moment's pause — into the presence of the assembled 
Sanhedrin. Everything was ready ; everything seemed to point to a foregone 
conclusion. The false witnesses were at hand, and confronted their victim 
with the charge of incessant harangues against " this Holy Place " — the 
expression seems to show that the Sanhedrin were for this time sitting in their 

1 Aots vi 12, inurrdvTes ; cf . xvii 5. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OP ST. STEPHEN. 87 

famous '' Hall of Squares," — and against the Law. 1 In support of this general 
accusation, they testified that they had heard him say that Jesus — "this 
Nazarene," 2 as they indignantly add to distinguish Him from others who bore 
that common name — " shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs 
which Moses handed down to us." It is evident that these false witnesses 
made some attempt to base their accusation upon truth. There was good 
policy in this, as false witnesses in all ages have been cunning enough to see. 
Half truths are often the most absolute of lies, because 

" A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies ; 
For a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, 
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight." 

It is certain that if Stephen had not used the very expressions with which they 
charged him, he had used others not unlike them. It is his immortal glory to 
have remembered the words of Jesus, and to have interpreted them aright. 
Against the moral Law — the great Ten "Words of Sinai, or any of those 
precepts of exquisite humanity and tenderness which lie scattered amid the 
ceremonial observances — he is not even falsely accused of having uttered a 
word. But against the permanent validity of the ceremonial Law he may 
have spoken with freedom ; for, as we have seen, its destined abrogation was 
involved in the very slight importance which Jesus had attached to it. And 
for the Oral Law it is probable that Stephen, whose training would have 
rendered impossible any minute fulfilment of its regulations, neither felt nor 
professed respect. The expression used by the witnesses against him seems to 
show that it was mainly, though not perhaps exclusively, of this Oral Law that 
he had been thinking. 3 It was not, perhaps, any doubt as to its authenticity 
which made him teach that Jesus should change its customs, for in those days 
the critical spirit was not sufficiently developed to give rise to any challenge of a 
current assertion ; but he had foreseen the future nullity of these " traditions of 
the fathers," partly from their own inherent worthlessness, and partly because 
he may have heard, or had repeated to him, the stern denunciation which the 
worst of these traditions had drawn from the lips of Christ Himself. 4 

But though Stephen must have seen that the witnesses were really false 
witnesses, because they misrepresented the tone and the true significance 
of the language which he had used — although, too, he was conscious how 
dangerous was his position as one accused of blasphemy against Moses, 
against the Temple, against the traditions, and against God — it never 
occurred to him to escape his danger by a technicality or a compromise. 
To throw discredit even upon the Oral Law would not be without danger 
in the presence of an assembly whose members owed to its traditions no 
little of the authority which they enjoyed. 5 But Stephen did not at all 
intend to confine his argument to this narrow range. Rather the conviction 

' Acts vi. 13, ov iraverai pi]fj.ara. \a\u>v. * Acts vi. 14, 'Ir)<rovs, 6 Nafjtopotos oi3to«. 

* Acts vi. 14, to. eO-q a rrapeSuiicev T7ju.1v Mwvcrijs. (Cf. JOS. Antt. xfii. 10, § 6, and 16, § 2.) 

« Matt. xv. 2—6 ; Mark vii. 3, 5, 8, 9, 13. 

• Maimon, Pref, to the Yad Sachasakah ; McCaul, Old Paths, p. 335, 



B8 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

came upon him that now was the time to speak out — that this was the 
destined moment in which, even if need be to the death, he was to bear 
witness to the inner meaning of the Kingdom of his Lord. That conviction 
— an inspiration from on high — gave unwonted grandeur and heavenliness 
to his look, his words, his attitude. His whole bearing was ennobled, his 
whole being was transfigured by a consciousness which illuminated his 
very countenance. It is probable that the unanimous tradition of the 
Church is correct in representing him as youthful and beautiful ; but now 
there was something about him far more beautiful than youth oi beauty 
could bestow. In the spiritual light which radiated from him he seemed 
to be overshadowed by the Shechinah, which had so long vanished from 
between the wings of the Temple cherubim. While the witnesses had 
been delivering their testimony, no one had observed the sudden brightness 
which seemed to be stealing over him ; but when the charge was finished, 
and every eye was turned from the accusers to a fixed gaze on the accused, 1 
all who were seated in the Sanhedrin — and one of the number, in all 
probability, was £aul of Tarsus — " saw his face as it had been the face 
of an angel." 

In the sudden hush that followed, the voice of the High Priest Jonathan 
was heard putting to the accused the customary and formal question — 

" Are these things so ? " 2 

In reply to that question began the speech which is one of the earliest, 
as it is one of the most interesting, documents of the Christian Church. 
Although it was delivered before the Sanhedrin, there can be little doubt 
that it was delivered in Greek, which, in the bilingual condition of Palestine 
— and, indeed, of the civilised world in general — at that time, would be 
perfectly understood by the members of the Sanhedrin, and which was 
perhaps the only language which Stephen could speak with fluency. 3 The 
quotations from the Old Testament follow the Septuagint, even where it 
differs from the Hebrew, and the individuality which characterises almost 
every sentence of the speech forbids us to look on it as a mere conjectural 
paraphrase. There is no difficulty in accounting for its preservation. Apart 
from the fact that two secretaries were always present at the judicial 
proceedings of the Sanhedrin, 4 there are words and utterances which, at 
certain times, are branded indelibly upon the memory of their hearers ; and 
since we can trace the deep impression made by this speech on the mind of 

1 Acts vi. 15, aTt-i/iVai/Tes eis avrbv an-ai/re?. 

2 St. Chrysostom sees in the apparent mildness of the question an indication that the 
High Priest and the Sanhedrin were awed by the supernatural brightness of the martyr's 

look — opas (Js /mera e7rieiKei'a<r rj cpcoTTjcn.? icai ovSev re'cos (jyopTLicbv exovcra ', (Homil. XV. in Act.). 

But the question appears to have been a regular formula of interrogation. Ii was, in 
fact, the "Guilty or Not Guilty?" of the Jewish Supreme Court. 

8 Against this view are urged — (1) the unlikelihood that St. Stephen would have 
pleaded in Greek before the Sanhedrin ; (2) the use of the Hebraism bvpavol in Acts vii. 
f>o". Jiut as to 1, if even Philo knew no Hebrew, Stephen may have known none ; and, 
2, the word oi>pavol points to a special Jewish belief, independent of language. 

1 See Jahn, Archaeol. Bibl. § 248. He quotes no authority, and I at first felt some 
doubt about the assertion, but I find it so stated in the Mishna, Scmhedr. h. 2. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 89 

St. Paul, we find little difficulty in adopting the conjecture that its preserva- 
tion was due to him. The Ilagadoth in which it abounds, the variations 
from historical accuracy, the free citation of passages from the Old Testa- 
ment, the roughness of style, above all the concentrated force which makes 
it lend itself so readily to differing interpretations, are characteristics which 
leave on our minds no shadow of doubt that whoever may have been the 
reporter, we have here at least an outline of Stephen's speech. And this 
speech marked a crisis in the annals of Christianity. It led to consequences that 
changed the Church from a Judaic sect at Jerusalem, into the Church of the 
Gentiles and of the world. It marks the commencing severance of two insti- 
tutions which had not yet discovered that they were mutually irreconcilable. 

Since the charge brought against St. Stephen was partly false and 
partly true, it was his object to rebut what was false, and justify himself 
against all blame for what was true. Hence apology and demonstration 
are subtly blended throughout his appeal, but the apology is only secondary, 
and the demonstration is mainly meant to rouse the dormant consciences 
of his hearers. Charged with blasphemous words, he contents himself 
with the incidental refutation of this charge by the entire tenor of the 
language which he employs. After his courteous request for attention, his 
very first words are to speak of God under one of His most awful titles of 
majesty, as the God of the Shechinah. On the history of Moses he dwells 
witli all the enthusiasm of patriotic admiration. To the Temple he alludes 
with entire reverence. Of Sinai and the living oracles he uses language 
as full of solemnity as the most devoted Rabbi could desire. But while 
he thus shows how impossible it must have been for him to have uttered 
the language of a blasphemer, he is all the while aiming at the establish- 
ment of facts far deeper than the proof of his own innocence. The 
consummate art of his speech consists in the circumstance that while he 
seems to be engaged in a calm, historical review, to which any Jewish 
patriot might listen with delight and pride, he is step by step leading up 
to conclusions which told with irresistible force against the opinions of his 
judges. "While he only seems to be reviewing the various migrations of 
Abraham, and the chequered fortunes of the Patriarchs, he is really showing 
that the covenants of God with His chosen people, having been made in Ur 
and Haran and Egypt, were all parts of one progressive purpose, which 
was so little dependent on ceremonials or places as to have been anterior 
not only to the existence of the Tabernacle and Temple, not only to the 
possession of the Holy Land, but even to the rite of circumcision itself. 1 

1 What fruit the argument bore in the mind of St. Paul we may see in the emphasis 
with which he dwells on " that faith of our father Abraham which he had being yet un- 
circumcised " (Rom. iv. 12). How necessary it was to point this out will be seen from the 
opinions of succeeding Rabbis. "Abraham," says Rabbi — as " Juda the Holy," the 
compiler of the Mishna, is called, k6.t e£jxnv — "was not called perfect until he was cir- 
cumcised, and by the merit of circumcision a covenant was made with him respecting the 
giving of the land " {Joreh Deah, 260, ap. McCaul, Old Paths, p. 451 ; Nedarim, f . 31, 2). 
It is superfluous to add that the latter statement is a flat contradiction of Gen. rv. 18. 



90 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

While sketching the career of Joseph, he is pointing allusively to the 
similar rejection of a deliverer greater than Joseph. While passing in 
review the triple periods of forty years which made up the life of Moses, 
he is again sketching the ministry of Christ, and silently pointing to the 
fact that the Hebrew race had at every stage been false alike to Moses and 
to God. This is why he narrates the way in which, on the first appearance 
of Moses to help his suffering countrymen, they rudely spurned his 
interference ; and how in spite of their rejection he was chosen to lead 
them out of the house of bondage. In defiance of this special commission 
— and it is well worth notice how, in order to conciliate their deeper 
attention, this palmary point in his favour is not triumphantly paraded, 
but quietly introduced as an incident in his historic summary — Moses had 
himself taught them to regard his own legislation as provisional, by 
bidding them listen to a Prophet like unto himself who should come 
hereafter. But the history of Moses, whom they trusted, was fatal to 
their pretence of allegiance. Even when he was on Sinai they had been 
disloyal to him, and spoken of him as " this Moses," and as one who had 
gone they knew not where. 1 And, false to Moses, they had been yet more 
false to God. The Levitical sacrifices had been abandoned from the very 
time of their institution, for sacrifices to the host of heaven; and the 
tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of Remphan, 2 had been dearer to them 
than the Tabernacle of Witness and the Shechinah of God. At last a 
Jesus — for, in order that he might be heard to due purpose, Stephen 
suppresses the name of that Jesus of whom his thoughts were full — led 
them and their Tabernacle into the land of which he dispossessed the 
Gentiles. That Tabernacle, after an obscure and dishonoured history, had 
passed away, and it may perhaps be intimated that this was due to their 
indifference and neglect. David — their own David — had indeed desired to 
replace it by another, but the actual building of the House was carried out 
by the less faithful Solomon. 3 But even at the very time the House was 
built it had been implied in the Prayer of David, and in the dedication 
prayer of Solomon, 4 that " the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with 
hands." And to guard against the dangerous superstition into which the 
reverence paid to material places is apt to degenerate — to obviate the trust 
in lying words which thought it sufficient to exclaim, " The Temple of the 
Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these" — the 
great Prophet had cried, in God's name, 6 "Heaven is my throne, and earth 
is my footstool ; what house will ye build for me, saith the Lord, or what 
is the place of my abiding ? Did not my hand make all these things ? M 

1 Perhaps there is a passing allusion to the expression, "Jesus, this Nazarene," which 
they had just heard from the lips of the false witnesses. 

2 The LXX. reading for the Hebrew Chiun. 

8 It must remain doubtful whether any contrast is intended between the ctkjji/w/jh 
(v. Suid, s.v.) designed by David, and the oW built by Solomon. 

* 1 Kings viii. 27 ; 1 Chron. xxix. 11 ; quoted by St. Paul, Acts xvii. 24. 
» Iaa. lxvi. 1, 2. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 91 

Tlie inference from this — that the day must come, of which Jesus had 
prophesied to the woman of Samaria, in which neither in Gerizim nor 
yet in Jerusalem should men worship the Father, constituted a perfect 
defence against the charge that anything which he had said could be 
regarded as a blasphemy against the Temple. 

Thus far he had fulfilled all the objects of his speech, and had shown that 
injurious words had been as far as possible from his thoughts. It had become 
clear also from his summary of the national story that the principles which he 
had advocated were in accordance with the teaching of those past ages ; that 
the rejection of Christ by the rulers of His nation was no argument against 
His claims ; that the Temple could not have been meant to be the object of an 
endless honour; lastly, that if he had said that Jesus should change the 
customs which Moses had delivered, Moses hirnself had indicated that in 
God's due time his entire dispensation was destined to pass away. And he 
had stated the grounds from which these conclusions followed, rather than 
urged upon them the inferences themselves. He had done this in deference 
to their passions and prejudices, and in the hope of bringing the truth gently 
into their hearts. He might have continued the story through centuries of 
weak or apostate kings, stained with the blood of rejected prophets, down to 
the great retribution of the exile ; and he might have shown how, after the 
exile, the obsolete idolatry of the gods of wood and stone had only been 
superseded by the subtler and more self-complacent idolatry of formalism and 
letter-worship ; how the Book had been honoured to the oblivion of the truths 
which it enshrined ; how in the tithing of mint and anise and cummin there 
had been a f orgetf ulness of the weightier matters of the Law ; how the smoke 
of dead sacrifices had been thought of more avail than deeds of living mercy ; 
how circumcision and Sabbatism had been elevated above faith and purity; 
how the long series of crimes against God's messengers had been consummated 
in the murder of the Lord of glory. A truth which is only suggested, often 
comes home to the heart with more force than one which is put in words, and 
it may have been his original design to guide rather than to refute. But if so, 
the faces of his audience showed that his object had failed. They were listening 
with stolid self-complacency to a narrative of which the significant incidents only 
enabled them to glory over their fathers. It was, I think, something in the aspect 
of his audience — some sudden conviction that to such invincible obstinacy his 
words were addressed in vain — which made him suddenly stop short in his review 
of history, and hurl in their faces the gathered thunder of his wrath and scorn. 

" Stiff-necked ! " he exclaimed, " and uncircu incised in your heart and in 
your ears, ye are ever in conflict with the Holy Spirit ; as your fathers, so ye ! 
Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute ? and they killed those 
who announced before respecting the coming of the Just, of whom ye now 
proved yourselves betrayers and murderers ; ye who received the Law at the 
ordinance of angels, 1 and kept it not ! " 2 

l Acts vii. 52 ; leg. *Y«W0e, A, B, C, D, E. 

* Acts vii. 53, eAo/3eTf Toy VQfiov el$ Swayas ayye'Acov ; Gal. ill. 19, 6 voj/.os Siara-yels Si ayyekwv ', 



92 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

A denunciation so scathing and so fearless, from the lips of a prisoner 
whose life depended on their will, might well have startled them ; and this 
strong burst of righteous indignation against those whom he had addressed as 
" brethren and fathers," can only be accounted for by the long-pent feelings of 
one whose patience has been exhausted. But he could hardly have addressed 
them in words more calculated to kindle their fury. The very terms in which 
he characterised their bearing, being borrowed from their own Law and 
Prophets, added force to the previous epitome of their history ; 1 and to call 
them uncircumcised in heart and ears was to reject with scorn the idle fancies 
that circumcision alone was enough to save them from God's wrath, and that 
uncircumcision was worse than crime. 2 To convict them of being the true 
sons of their fathers, and to brand consciences, already ulcerated by a sense of 
guilt, with a murder worse than the worst murder of the prophets, was not 
only to sweep away the prestige of an authority which the people so blindly 
accepted, but it was to arraign his very judges and turn upon them the tables 
of accusation. And this he did, not only in the matter of their crucifixion of 
the Messiah, but also in the matter of disobedience to that Law ordained by 
angels of which they were at that very moment professing to vindicate the 
sanctity and the permanence. 

It would be difficult in the entire range of literature to find a speech more 
skilful, more pregnant, more convincing ; and it becomes truly astonishing when 
we remember that it seems to have been delivered on the spur of the moment. 3 

But the members of the Sanhedrin were roused to fury by the undaunted 
audacity of Stephen's final invective. The most excitable of Western nations 
can hardly imagine the raging passion which maddens a crowd of Eastern 
fanatics. 4 Barely able to continue the semblance of a judicial procedure, they 

Deut. xxxiii. 2; LXX., « Sefiwv avrov ayyeXoi fier avrou ; p g . lxvii. 18 ; Heb. ii. 2. In Ps. 
lxviii. 12 they read, onto, "angels," for +ha, "kings." (Shabbath, f. 88, 2.) 

1 Deut. ix. 6, 13 ; x. 16 ; xxx. 6 ; Neh. ix. 16 ; Ezek. xliv. 7 ; Jer. ix. 26. 

2 Rabbi [Juda the Holy] said "that circumcision is equivalent to all the Command- 
ments which are in the Law " {Nedarim, f. 32, 1). 

3 The impression which it made on the heart of St. Paul is nowhere noticed by St. 
Luke, or by the Apostle himself ; but the traces of that impression are a series of coinci- 
dences which confirm the genuineness of the speech. In his earliest recorded speech at 
Antioch he adopts the same historic method so admirably suited to insinuate truth 
without shocking prejudice ; he quotes the same texts in the same striking phraseology 
and application (compare Acts vii. 48, 51, with Acts xvii. 24, Rom. ii. 29) ; alludes to the 
same tradition (Acts vii. 53, Gal. iii. 19) ; uses the same style of address (Acts vii. 2, 
xxii. 1) ; and gives the same marked significance to the faith of Abraham (Rom. iv. 9, 
Gal. iii. 7), and to God's dealings with him before the covenant of circumcision (Acts vii. 
5—8, Rom. iv. 10 — 19). Nor can we doubt that 2 Tim. iv. 16 was an echo of the last 
prayer of Stephen, breathed partly on his own behalf. There are at least seven Hagadoth 
in the speech of Stephen — Acts vii. 2 (call of Abraham) ; 4 (death of Terah) ; 14 (seventy- 
five souls) ; 16 (burial of Patriarchs at Shechem) ; 22 (Egyptian training of Moses) ; 23 
(forty years) ; 42 (desert idolatry) ; 53 (angels at Sinai). As for the slight instances of 
<r<f>d\ij.a nvrnxoviKov in 6, 7, 14, 16, they are mere" obiter dictn, auctoris aliud agentis." 
The attempt to square them rigidly with the Old Testament has led to much dishonest 
exegesis. The speech of St. Stephen has been called "a compendium of the Old Testa- 
ment drawn up in fragments of the Septuagint " (Greenfield. Apol. for the LXX. t 103). 
" He had regard to the meaning, not to the words " (Jerome). 

* Acts vii. 54, hieirpiovro ra.lt KapSiats olvtoiv, Kal efipvxov tovs bSovras in' a.vr6v. 



WORK AND MARTYRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 93 

expressed the agony of hatred which was sawing their hearts asunder, by out- 
ward signs which are almost unknown to modern civilisation — by that grinding 
and gnashing of the teeth only possible to human beings in whom " the ape 
and the tiger " are not yet quite dead. To reason with men whose passions 
had thus degraded them to the level of wild beasts would have been worse 
than useless. The flame of holy anger in the breast of Stephen had died awaj 
as suddenly as the lightning. It was a righteous anger ; it was aimed not at 
them but at their infatuation ; it was intended not to insult but to awaken. 1 
But he saw at a glance that it had failed, and that all was now over. In one 
instant his thoughts had passed away to that heaven from which his inspiration 
had come. From those hateful faces, rendered demoniac by evil passion, his 
earnest gaze was turned upward and heavenward. There, in ecstasy of vision, 
he saw the Shechinah — the Glory of God— the Jesus" standing "as though to aid 
and receive him "at the right hand of God." Transported beyond all thought 
of peril by that divine epiphany, he exclaimed as though he wished his enemies 
to share his vision : " Lo ! I behold the heavens parted asunder, 2 and the Son 
of Man standing at the right hand of God." At such a moment he would not 
pause to consider, he would not even be able to consider, the words he spoke ; 
but whether it was that he recalled the Messianic title by which Jesus had so 
often described himself on earth, or that he remembered that this title had 
been used by the Lord when He had prophesied to this very Sanhedrin that 
hereafter they should see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power — 
certain it is that this is the only passage of the New Testament where Jesus is 
called the Son of Man by lips other than His own. 3 

But those high words were too much for the feelings of his audience. 
Stopping their ears as though to shut out a polluting blasphemy, they rose in 
a mass from both sides of the semi-circular range in which they sat, and with 
one wild yell 4 rushed upon Stephen. There was no question any longer of a 
legal decision. In their rage they took the law into their own hands, and then 
and there dragged him off to be stoned outside the city gate. 6 

We can judge how fierce must have been the rage which turned a solemn 
Sanhedrin into a mob of murderers. It was true that they were at this 
moment under Sadducean influence, and that this influence, as at the Trial of 
Christ, was mainly wielded by the family of Hanan, who were the most 
merciless members of that least merciful sect. If, as there is reason to believe, 
the martyrdom took place A.D. 37, it was most probably during the brief 
presidency of the High Priest Jonathan, son of Hanan. Unhappy family of 
the man whom Josephus pronounces to have been so exceptionally blest ! The 
hoary father, and his son-in-law Caiaphas, imbrued their hands in the blood of 
Jesus ; Jonathan during his few months' term of office was the Nasi of the 
Sanhedrin which murdered Stephen ; Theophilus, another son, was the High 

1 " Non fratri irascitur qui peccato fratris irascitur " (Aug.). 

8 Acts vii. 56, loq., SiYivotynevovs, a, A, B, C. 3 See, however, Rev. i. 13; xiv. 14, 

4 Acts vii. 57, Kpafai/res (fxavrj fj.eyd\ri. 

• See Excursus VI., "Capital Punishments." 



94 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Priest who, during the utmost virulence of the first persecution gave Saul his 
inquisitorial commission to Damascus ; Matthias, another son, must, from the 
date of his elevation, have been one of those leading Jews whom Herod Agrippa 
tried to conciliate by the murder of James the son of Zebedee ; and another 
Hanan, the youngest son of the " viper brood " brought about with illegal 
violence the murder of James the brother of the Lord. 1 Thus all these judicial 
murders — so rare at this epoch — were aimed at the followers of Jesus, and all oi 
them directed or sanctioned by the cunning, avaricious, unscrupulous members 
of a single family of Saddueean priests. 2 

Stephen, then, was hurried away to execution with a total disregard of the 
ordinary observances. His thoughts were evidently occupied with the sad scene 
of Calvary ; it would come home to him with all the greater vividness because 
he passed in all probability through that very gate through which Jesus, four 
short years before, had borne His cross. It was almost in the words of his 
Master 3 that when the horrid butchery began — for the precautions to render 
death speedy seem to have been neglected in the blind rage of his murderers 
— he exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 4 And when bruised and 
bleeding he was just able to drag himself to his knees it was again in the spirit 
of that Lord that he prayed for his murderers, and even the cry of his anguish 
rang forth in the forgiving utterance — showing how little malice there had 
been in the stern words he had used before — " Lord, lay not to their charge 
this sin." 5 With that cry he passed from the wrath of men to the peace of 
God. The historian ends the bloody tragedy with one weighty and beautiful 
word, " He fell asleep." 6 

To fulfil their dreadful task, the witnesses had taken off their garments ; 7 
and they laid them " at the feet of a young man whose name was Saul." 

It is the first allusion in history to a name, destined from that day forward 
to be memorable for ever in the annals of the world. And how sad an 
allusion ! He stands, not indeed actively engaged in the work of death ; but 
keeping the clothes, consenting to the violence, of those who, in this brutal 

1 Jos. Antt. xviii. 4, 3 ; 5, 3 ; xix. 6, 2 ; xx. 9, 1. 

2 Every epithet I have used is more than justified by what we know of this family 
from the New Testament, from Josephus, and, above all, from the Talmud. Seo 
Excursus VII., "The Power of the Sanhedrin to Inflict Death." 

3 Luke xxiii. 34, 46. 

4 eniKaXovixevov means_^ calling on Jesus." There is no need for the ingenious con- 
jecture of Bentley that ©N is lost by homoeoteleuton of the ON. 

5 This — not as in the Received text — is the proper order of the words (n, A, B, C, D). 
" Saevire videbatur Stephanus : lingua ferox, cor lene " (Aug. Serm. 315). " Si Stephanua 
non orasset ecclesia Paulum non habuisset. " With the expression itself comp. Rev. xiv. 13. 
Perhaps in the word crrrjtnjs we may see an allusion to the Jewish notion that a man's sins 
actually followed and stood by him in the world to come (1 Tim. v. 24 ; Sotah, f . 3, 2). 

• So in a beautiful epigram of the Anthology, we find the lines, lepbv vwvov kohjuuku' 
Ovrivxeiv fxrj Xeye tou? aya6ov<;. It is the Ncshikah of the Jews (Deut. xxxiv. 8). That the 
solemn rhythmical epitrite e/coinxrj0T) is not wholly unintentional seems to be clear from the 
similar weighty 'mcuKvtm with which, as Bishop Wordsworth points out, the Acts of the 
Apostles ends. St. Luke is evidently fond of paronomasia, as well as St. Paul (cf. 
(taT7)fia)0T)o-at/ ari/aao-toji/ai, Acts v. 41). This is the third recorded death in the Christian 
community : the first had been a suicide, the second a judgment, the third a martyrdom. 

7 This custom is not alluded to in the Mishna or Gemara. 



SAUL THE PERSECUTOR. 95 

manner, dimmed in blood the light upon a face which had been radiant as that 
of an angel with faith and love. 

Stephen was dead, and it might well have seemed that all the truth which 
was to be the glory and the strength of Christianity had died with him. But 
the deliverance of the Gentiles, and their free redemption by the blood of 
Christ, were truths too glorious to be quenched. The truth may be suppressed 
for a time, even for a long time, but it always starts up ag'ain from its apparent 
grave. Era Dolcino was torn to pieces, and Savonarola and Huss were burnt, 
but the Reformation was not prevented. Stephen sank in his blood, but his 
place was taken by the young man who stood there to incite his murderers. 
Four years after Jesus had died upon the cross of infamy, Stephen was stoned 
for being His disciple and His worshipper ; thirty years after the death of 
Stephen, his deadliest opponent died also for the same holy faith. 



33oo& 31301. 

THE CONVERSION. 
CHAPTER IX. 

SAUL THE PERSECUTOR. 

IIotI Kevrpov Se roi AaKriCe/uev 

re\e9ei 6\i<rdr]pos ol/xos. — Pind. Pyth. ii. 173. 

"At a young man's feet." The expression is vague, but there is good reason 
to believe that Saul was now not less than thirty years old. 1 The reverence 
for age, strong among all Orientals, was specially strong among the Jews, and 
they never entrusted authority to those who had not attained to full years of 
discretion. We may regard it as certain that even a scholar of Gamaliel, so 
full of genius and of zeal as Saul, would not have been appointed a commis- 
sioner of the Sanhedrin to carry out a responsible inquisition earlier than the 
age of thirty ; and if we attach a literal meaning to the expression, " When 
they were being condemned to death, I gave a vote against them," 2 this 
implies that Saul was a member of the Sanhedrin. If so, he was at this time, 
by the very condition of that dignity, a married man. 3 

1 Josephus uses veavCas of Agrippa I. when he must have been at least forty (Antt. 
xviii. 6, 7 ; v. supra, p. 7). 

2 Acts XXvi. 10, avaipovfievow re avrwv Karrjveyica ij>rj0ov. 

3 Selden, De Synedr. ii. 7, 7. In the Mishna the only qualifications mentioned for 
membership of the Sanhedrin are that a man must not be a dicer, usurer, pigeon-flyer, or 
dealer in the produce of the Sabbatical year (Sanhedr. iii. 3) ; but in the Gemara, and in 
later Jewish writers, we find that, besides the qualification mentioned in Exod. xviii. 21, 
and Deut. i. 13 — 16, a candidate must be free from every physical blemish, stainless in 
character, learned in science, acquainted with more than one language, and with a family 



98 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

But if the regulation that a Sanhedrist must be a married man was 
intended to secure the spirit of gentleness, 1 the rule had failed of its purpose 
in the case of Saul. In the terrible persecution of the Christians which 
ensued — a persecution far more severe than the former attacks of the Sad- 
ducees on the Apostles — he was the heart and soul of the endeavour to stamp 
out the Christian faith. Not content with the flagging fanaticism of the 
Sanhedrin, he was at once the prime mover and the chief executor of religious 
vengeance. The charge which had cost St. Stephen his life must have been 
partially valid against others of the Hellenistic Christians, and although their 
views might be more liberal than those of the Galilsean disciples, yet the bonds 
of affection between the two branches of the Church were still so close that 
the fate of one section could not be dissevered from that of the other. The 
Jews were not naturally fond of persecution. The Sanhedrin of this period 
had incurred the charge of disgraceful laxity. The Sicarii were not sup- 
pressed ; the red heifer was slain no longer ; 2 the ordeal of the bitter water 
had been done away, because the crime of adultery had greatly increased. 3 
Rabbi Joshua Ben Korcha, when R. Elieser had arrested some thieves, 
reproached him with the words, " How long will you hand over the people of 
God to destruction ? Leave the thorns to be plucked up by the Lord of the 
vineyard." 4 But to the seducer (mesUh), the blasphemer (megadeph), and 
the idolater, there was neither leniency nor compassion. 6 By the unanimous 
testimony of the Jews themselves, Christians could not be charged with the 
crime of idolatry; 6 but it was easy to bring them under the penalty of stoning, 
which was attached to the former crimes. The minor punishments of flagel- 
lation and excommunication seem to have been in the power, not only of the 
Sanhedrin, but even of each local synagogue. Whatever may have been the 
legal powers of these bodies, whatever licences the temporary relaxation of 
Roman supervision may have permitted, 7 they were used and abused to the 
utmost by the youthful zealot. The wisdom of the toleration which Gamaliel 
himself had recommended appears in the fact that the great persecution, 
which broke up the Church at Jerusalem, was in every way valuable to the 
new religion. It dissipated the Judaism which would have endangered the 

of his own, because such were supposed to be less inclined to cruelty, and more likely to 
sympathise with domestic affections. (LTorajolh, i. 4 ; Sanhedr. f. 17, 1, 36, b.; Menacholh, 
f. 65, 1; Maimon. Sanhedr. ii. ; Otho, Lex Babb. s. v.) Whatever may be thought of 
the other qualifications, it is probable that this one, at any rate, was insisted on, and it 
adds force to our impression that St. Paul had once been a married man (1 Cor. vii. 8 ; 
v. swpra, p. 45, sq. See Ewald, Sendschr. d. Ap. Paul, p. 161 ; Gesch. d. Apost. Zeitalt. 
p. 371). 

1 See Surenhus. Mishna, iv. Praef. 2 Sotah, f. 47, 1. 

3 Maimon. in Sotah, c. 3. They quoted Hos. iv. 14 in favour of this abolition of Num 
v. 18 ; cf. Matt. xii. 39 ; xvi. 4. 

4 Babhu Metzia, f. 82, 2; Otho, Lex Rabb., s. v. Synedrium. 
6 Deut. xiii. 8, 9 ; Sanhedr. f. 29, 1 ; 32, 3. 

6 There is not one word about the Cluistians in the tract Abhdda Za/ra, or on "alien 
worship." 

7 Marcellus, who was at this time an ad interim governor, held the rank, not of Pro- 
curator, oy<M">V, but only of e;rifAtAT}T»}s (Job. Antt. xviii. 4, § 2). 



SATJL THE PERSECUTOR. 97 

spread of Christianity, and showed that the disciples had a loftier mission 
than to dwindle down into a Galilsean synagogue. The sacred fire., which 
might have burnt low on the hearth of the upper chamber at Jerusalem, was 
kindled into fresh heat and splendour when its brands were scattered over all 
Judaea and Samaria, and uncireunicised Gentiles were admitted by baptism 
into the fold of Christ. 

The solemn burial of Stephen by holy men — whether Hellenist Chris- 
tians or Jewish proselytes — the beating of the breast, the wringing of the 
hands with which they lamented him, 1 produced no change in the purpose 
of Saul. The sight of that dreadful execution, the dying agonies and 
crushed remains of one who had stood before the Sanhedrin lite an angel in 
the beauty of holiness, could hardly have failed to produce an impression on 
a heart so naturally tender. But if it was a torture to witness the agony of 
others, and to be the chief agent in its infliction, then that very torture became 
a more meritorious service for the Law. If his own blameless scrupulosity 
in all that affected legal righteousness was beginning to be secretly tainted 
with heretical uncertainties, he would feel it all the more incumbent on him 
to wash away those doubts in blood. Like Cardinal Pole, when Paul IT. 
began to impugn his orthodoxy, he must have felt himself half driven to 
persecution, in order to prove his soundness in the faith. 

The part which he played at this time in the horrid work of persecution 
has, I fear, been always underrated. It is only when we collect the separate 
passages — they are no less than eight in number — in which allusion is made 
to this sad period — it is only when we weigh the terrible significance of 
the expressions used — that we feel the load of remorse which must have 
lain upon him, and the taunts to which he was liable from malignant ene- 
mies. He "made havoc of" — literally, "he was ravaging" — the Church. 2 
No stronger metaphor could well have been used. It occurs nowhere else 
in the New Testament, but in the Septuagint, and in classical Greek, is 
applied to the wild boars which uproot a vineyard. 3 Xot content with the 
visitation of the synagogues, he got authority for an inquisitorial visit from 
house to house, and even from the sacred retirement of the Christian home 
he dragged not only men, but women, to judgment and to prison. 4 So 
thorough was his search, and so deadly were its effects, that, in referring 
to it, the Christians of Damascus can only speak of Saul as " he that 
devastated in Jerusalem them that call on this name," 5 using the strong 
word which is strictly applicable to an invading army which scathes a con- 
quered country with fire and sword. So much St. Luke tells us, in giving 
a reason for the total scattering of the Church, and the subsequent bless- 

1 Acts viii. 2, Ko-n-e-rbs fiiya?. The word is found in the LXX ., G-en. L 10, &c., but here 
alone in the New Testament. 

2 Acts vih. 3, 'ekufiaivero rqv eKK\r](riav. 

3 Ps. lxxix. 14; Callim. Hymn in D-ian. 156. erues epya <rves 4>vra kv/xaCvovrai.. 

4 These hostile measures are summed up in the oo-a ko.ko. e-oiTjo-e rols ayiovs of Ananias, 
who says that the rumour had reached him from many sources (Acts ix. 13). 

5 Acts ix. 21, 6 iropOrjaas. 

H 



98 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

ings which sprang from their preaching the Word in wider districts. The 
Apostles, he adds, remained. What was the special reason for this we do 
not know ; but as the Lord's direct permission to the seventy to fly before 
persecution 1 would have sanctioned their consulting their own safety, it 
may have been because Jesus had bidden them stay in Jerusalem till 
the end of twelve years. 2 If, as St. Ohrysostom imagines, they stayed to 
support the courage of others, how was it that the shepherds escaped while 
the flock was being destroyed ? Or are we to infer that the main fury 
of the persecution fell upon those Hellenists who shared the views of 
the first martyr, and that the Apostles were saved from molestation by 
the blameless Mosaism of which one of the leading brethren — no less a 
person than James, the Lord's brother — was so conspicuous an example ? 
Be that as it may, at any rate they did not fall victims to the rage which 
was so fatal to many of their companions. 

In two of his speeches and four of his letters does St. Paul revert to this 
crime of an erring obstinacy. Twice to the Galatians does he use the same 
strong metaphor which was applied to his conduct by the Damascene believers. 3 
He tells the Corinthians 4 that he was " the least of the Apostles, not 
meet to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of God." 
He reminds the Philippians 5 that his old Hebraic zeal as a Pharisee had 
shown itself by his " persecuting the Church." And even when the shadows 
of a troubled old age were beginning to close around him, keen in the sense 
that he was utterly forgiven through Him who " came into the world to save 
sinners, of whom I am chief," he cannot forget the bitter thought that, 
though in ignorance, he had once been " a blasphemer, and persecutor, and 
injurious." 6 And when he is speaking to those who knew the worst — in his 
speech to the raging mob of Jerusalem, as he stood on the steps of the Tower 
of Antonia — he adds one fact more which casts a lurid light on the annals of 
the persecution. He shows there that the blood of Stephen was not the only 
blood that had been shed — not the only blood of which the stains had 
incarnadined his conscience. He tells the mob not only of the binding and 
imprisonment of women as well as men, but also that he " persecuted this 
way unto the death." 7 Lastly, in his speech at Csesarea, he adds what is 
perhaps the darkest touch of all, for he says that, armed with the High 
Priest's authority, he not only fulfilled unwittingly the prophecy of Christ 8 
by scourging the Christians " often " and " in every synagogue," but that, 
when it came to the question of death, he gave hiy vote against them, and that 
lie did his best to compel them to blaspheme. 9 I say " did his best," because 

i Matt. x. 23. 

2 A brief visit to Samaria "to confirm the churches" (Acts viii. 14) would not 
militate against this command. 

3 Gal. i. 13, where he also says that he persecuted them beyond measure (ko# 

bmf ffcU. xv d 9. 23 ' * Phil. iii. 6. • 1 Tim. i. 13. 7 Acts xxii. 4. 

s Matt. x. 17 ; Mark xiii. 9. 

9 Acts xxvi. 11, rivayKafrv fiKacr^ri^elv. There IS a possibility that in the axpi Aava-rov 

of the previous passage, and the Karr^ey/co. \\rr\Qov of this, St. Paul may allude to hii 



fcATJL THE PERSECUTOR. »» 

the tense he uses implies effort, but not necessarily success. Pliny, in a 
passage of his famous letter to Trajan from Bithynia, 1 says that, in question- 
ing those who, in anonymous letters, were accused of being " Christians," 
he thought it sufficient to test them by making them offer wine and incense 
to the statues of the gods and the bust of the emperor, and to blaspheme 
the name of Christ ; and, if they were willing to do this, he dismissed them 
without further inquiry, because he had been informed that to no one of these 
things could a genuine Christian ever be impelled. 

We do not know that in all the sufferings of the Apostle any attempt was 
ever made to compel him to blaspheme. "With all the other persecutions 
which he made the Christian suffer he became in his future life too sadly 
familiar. To the last dregs of lonely and unpitied martyrdom he drank the 
bitter cup of merciless persecution. Five times — in days when he was no 
longer the haughty Rabbi, the self-righteous Pharisee, the fierce legate of the 
Sanhedrin armed with unlimited authority for the suppression of heresy, but 
was himself the scorned, hunted, hated, half-starved missionary of that which 
was branded as an apostate sect — five times, from the authority of some ruler 
of the synagogue, did he receive forty stripes save one. He, too, was stoned, 
and betrayed, and many times imprisoned, and had the vote of death recorded 
against him ; and in all this he recognised the just and merciful flame that 
purged away the dross of a once misguided soul — the light affliction which he 
had deserved, but which was not comparable to the far more eternal weight of 
glory. In all this he may have even rejoiced that he was bearing for Christ's 
sake that which he had made others bear, and passing through the same 
f urnaee which he had once heated sevenfold for them. But I doubt whether 
any one of these sufferings, or all of them put together, ever wrung his soul 
with the same degree of anguish as that which lay in the thought that he had 
used all the force of his character and all the tyranny of his intolerance to 
break the bruised reed and to quench the smoking flax — that he had endea- 
voured, by the infamous power of terror and anguish, to compel some gentle 
heart to blaspheme its Lord. 

The great persecution with which St. Paul was thus identified — and which, 
from these frequent allusions, as well as from the intensity of the language 
employed, seems to me to have been more terrible than is usually admitted — 
did not spend its fury for some months. In Jerusalem it was entirely success- 
ful. There were no more preachings or wonders in Solomon's Porch ; no more 
throngs that gathered in the streets to wait the passing shadow of Peter and 
John ; no more assembled multitudes in the house of Mary, the mother of St. 
Mark. If the Christians met, they met in mournful secrecy and diminished 
numbers, and the Love-feasts, if held at all, must have been held as in the 

own endeavour (cf. Gal. vi. 12) to have them capitally punished, without implying that 
the vote was carried. I have translated the avaipovfjuevcov so as to admit of this meaning, 
which, perhaps, acquires a shade of additional probability from Heb. xii. 4, "Ye have not 
yet resisted unto blood," if that Epistle was specially addressed to Palestinian Jews. 

1 Plin. Ep. x. 97 .... " praeterea maledicere Christo ; quorum nihil cogi posse dp 
cuntwi qui sunt revera Christ' 

h2 L.ofC. 



100 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

early days before the Ascension, with doors closed, for fear of the Jews. 
Some of the Christians had suffered cruelly for their religion ; the faithless 
members of the Church had doubtless apostatised ; the majority had fled at 
once before the storm. 1 

It is, perhaps, to indicate the continuance of this active hostility that St. 
Luke here inserts the narrative of Philip's preaching as a fitting prelude to 
the work of the Apostle of the Gentiles. At this narrative we shall glance 
hereafter ; but now we must follow the career of Saul the Inquisitor, and see 
the marvellous event which, by one lightning flash, made him "a fusile 
Apostle" — which in one day transformed Saul the persecutor into Paul the 
slave of Jesus Christ. 

His work in Jerusalem was over. The brethren who remained had either 
eluded his search-warrant, or been rescued from his power. But the young 
zealot was not the man to do anything by halves. If he had smitten one head 
of the hydra, 2 it had grown up in new places. If he had torn up the heresy 
by the roots from the Holy City, the winged seeds had alighted on other 
fertile ground, and the rank weed was still luxuriant elsewhere ; so that, in his 
outrageous madness — it is his own expression 3 — he began to pursue them 
even to foreign cities. Damascus, he had heard, was now the worst nest of 
this hateful delusion, and fortunately in that city he could find scope for 
action ; for the vast multitude of Jews which it contained acknowledged 
allegiance to the Sanhedrin. To the High Priest, therefore, he went — unsated 
by all his previous cruelties, and in a frame of mind so hot with rage that 
again it can only be described by the unparalleled phrase that he was " breathing 
threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord." 4 The High Priest — 
in all probability Theophilus, who was promoted by Yitellius at the Pentecost 
of A.D. 37 6 — was a Sadducee, and a son of the hated house of Hanan. Yet it 
was with Saul, and not with Theophilus, that the demand originated, to pursue 
the heresy to Damascus. 6 Not sorry to find so thorough an instrument in one 
who belonged to a different school from his own — not sorry that the guilty 
responsibility for " this man's blood " should be shared by Sadducees witli the 
followers of Hillel — Theophilus gave the letters which authorised Saul to set 
up his court at Damascus, and to bring from thence in chains all whom he 
could find, both men and women, to await such mercy as Stephen's murder 
might lead them to hope for at the hands of the supreme tribunal. 7 In ordinary 

1 This is implied in the ev e/ceiVjj rfj V e 'p<?, and in the aorist Siea-n-dpricrav of Acts viii. 1. 

2 Domitian and Maximin struck medals of Hercules and the Hydra with the inscrip- 
tion "Deleta religione Christiana quae orbem turbabat.' 

3 Acts XXvi 11, nepicr<T5><; ejUL/xatvo^ei/o? auTOis. 

4 Acts ix. 1, efjLTTveuu anetK^ Kal <f>6vov. 

5 Jos. Antt. xviii. 5, § 3. 

6 Acts ix. 2, "If he should find any of the way." The word Xpi<rrtavi<r/ui6? was 
invented later (infra, p. 167). The Jewish writers similarly speak of the "derek 
ha-Notserim," or " way of the Nazarenes." 

7 The repeated allusions to the punishment of women shows not only the keenness of 
the search, but also the large part played by Christian women in the spread of that 
religion which first elevated their condition from the degradation of the harem and the 
narrowness of the gynaeceum. These wo men-martyrs of the great persecution were the 



THE CONVERSION OP SAUL. 101 

times when that Jewish autonomy, which always meant Jewish intolerance, 
was repressed within stern limits by the Roman government — it would have been 
impossible to carry out so cruel a commission. This might have been urged 
as an insuperable difficulty if an incidental expression in 2 Cor. xi. 32 had not 
furnished a clue in explanation of the circumstances. From this it appears 
that at this time the city was more or less in the hands of Aretas or Hareth, 
the powerf ul Emir of Petra. 1 Now there are notices in the Talmud which 
prove that Hareth stood in friendly relations to the Jewish High Priest, 2 and 
we can see how many circumstances thus concurred to create for Saul an 
exceptional opportunity to bring the Christians of Damascus under the 
authority of the Sanhedrim Kever again might he find so favourable an 
opportunity of eradicating the heresy of these hated Nazarenes. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CONVERSION OP SAUL. 

• • • Kare\i]<pdr]u virb rod Xpurrov 'i^cou. — Phil. iii. 12. 

" Opf ert freudig aus was ihr besessen 
Was ihr einst gewesen, was ihr seyd ; 
Und in einem seligen Vergessen 

Schwinde die Vergangenheit." — Schiller. 

Armed with his credentials Saiu started from Jerusalem for his journey of 
nearly 150 miles. That journey would probably be performed exactly as it is 
now performed with horses and mules, which are indispensable to the traveller 
along those rough, bad roads, and up and down those steep and fatiguing 
hills. Saul, it must be remembered, was travelling in a manner very different 
from that of our Lord and his humble followers. They who, in preaching the 
Gospel to the poor, assumed no higher earthly dignity than that of the 
carpenter of Nazareth and the fishermen of Galilee, would go on foot with 
staff and scrip from village to village, like the other " people of the land " 
whom long-robed Scribes despised. Saul was in a very different position, 
and the little retinue which was assigned him would treat him with all the 
deference due to a Pharisee and a Rabbi — a legate a latere of Theophilus, the 
powerful High Priest. 

But, however performed, the journey could not occupy less than a week, 
and even the fiery zeal of the persecutor would scarcely enable him to get rid 

true predecessors of those Saints Catherine, and Barbara, and Lucia, and Agnes, and 
Dorothea, and Caecilia, and Felicitas, who leave the light of their names on the annals 
of Christian heroism. 

1 See Excursus VIII. : "Damascus under Hareth." 

2 A story is told that on one occasion the High Priest Simeon Ben Kamhith was in- 
capacitated from performing the duties of the Day of Atonement, because, while 
familiarly talking with Hareth on the previous evening, a drop of the Emir's saliva had 
fallen on the High Priest's dress (cf . Mddah, f . 33, 2.) 



102 THE LITE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

of the habitual leisureliness of Eastern travelling. And thus, as they made 
their way along the difficult and narrow roads, Saul would be doomed to a 
week of necessary reflection. Hitherto, ever since those hot disputes in the 
synagogues of Cilician Hellenists, he had been living in a whirl of business 
which could have left him but little time for quiet thought. That active 
inquisition, those domiciliary visits, those incessant trials, that perpetual 
presiding over the scourgings, imprisonments, perhaps even actual stonings of 
men and women, into which he had been plunged, must have absorbed his 
whole energies, and left him no inclination to face the difficult questions, or to 
lay the secret misgivings which had begun to rise in his mind. 1 Pride — the 
pride of system, the pride of nature, the rank pride of the self-styled 
theologian, the exclusive national Pharisaic pride in which he had been 
trained — forbade him to examine seriously whether he might not after all be 
in the wrong. "Without humility there can be no sincerity ; without sincerity, 
no attainment of the truth. Saul felt that he could not and would not let 
hiinself be convinced ; he could not and would not admit that much of the 
learning of his thirty years of life was a mass of worthless cobwebs, and that 
all the righteousness with which he had striven to hasten the coming of the 
Messiah was as filthy rags. He could not and would not admit the possibility 
that people like Peter and Stephen could be right, while people like himself 
and the Sanhedrin could be mistaken; or that the Messiah could be a 
Nazarene who had been crucified as a malefactor; or that after looking for 
Him so many generations, and making their whole religious life turn on His 
expected Advent, Israel should have been found sleeping, and have murdered 
Him when at last He came. If haunting doubts could for a moment thrust 
themselves into his thoughts, the vehement self-assertion of contempt would 
sweep them out, and they would be expiated by fresh zeal against the seductive 
glamour of the heresy which thus dared to insinuate itself like a serpent into 
the very hearts of its avengers. "What could it be but diabolic influence which 
made the words and the arguments of these blasphemers of the Law and the 
Temple fasten involuntarily upon his mind and memory ? Never would he 
too be seduced into the position of a mesith / Never would he degrade him- 
self to the ignorant level of people who knew not the Law and were accursed ! 

1 See Rom. vii. 8, 9, 10. This picture of St. Paul's mental condition is no mere ima- 
ginative touch ; from all such, both in this work and in my Life of Christ, I have 
studiously abstained. It springs as a direct and inevitable conclusion from his own 
epistles and the reproof of Jesus, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goads." 
These words, following the " Why persecutest thou me?" imply, with inimitable brevity, 
"Seest thou not that / am the pursuer and thou the pursued?" What were those 
goads ? There were no conceivable goads for him to resist, except those which were 
wielded by his own conscience. The stings of conscience, the anguish of a constant mis- 
giving, inflicted wounds which should have told him long before that he was advancing in 
a wrong path. They were analogous to the warnings, both inward and outward, which 
"forbade the madness" of the Mesopotamian sorcerer. Balaam, too, was taught by 
experience how terrible a thing it is to "kick against the pricks." The resisted inward 
■truggles of St. Paul are also implied in the "calling of Gal. i. 15, preceding the 
"revelation." See Monod, Cinq Discours, p. 168; Stier, Ueden d, Apost. ii. 299; De 
Presaense, Trois Prem. Sticks, i. 434.) 



THE CONVERSION OP SATTL. 103 

But the ghosts of these obstinate questionings would not always be so 
laid. As long as he had work to do he could crush by passion and energy 
such obtruding fancies. But when his work was done — when there were in 
Jerusalem no more Hellenists to persecute — when even the Galilseans had fled 
or been silenced, or been slain — then such doubts would again thicken round 
him, and he would hear the approach of them like the sound of a stealthy 
footfall on the turf. Was it not this that kindled his excessive madness — this 
that made him still breathe out threats and blood ? Was not this a part of 
the motive which had driven him to the wily Sadducee with the demand for 
a fresh commission ? Would not this work for the Law protect him from the 
perplexing complications of a will that plunged and struggled to resist the 
agonising goad- thrusts of a ruinous misgiving ? 

But now that he was journeying day after day towards Damascus, how 
could he save himself from his own thoughts ? He could not converse with 
the attendants who were to execute his decisions. They were mere sub- 
ordinates — mere apparitors of the Sanhedrin — members, perhaps, of the 
Temple guard— ignorant Levites, whose function it would be to drag with 
them on his return the miserable gang of trembling heretics. We may be 
sure that the vacuity of thought in which most men live was for Saul a thing 
impossible. He could not help meditating as the sages bade the religious Jew 
to meditate, on the precepts and promises of his own Law. For the first time 
perhaps since he had encountered Stephen he had the uninterrupted leisure to 
face the whole question calmly and seriously, in the solitude of thoughts 
which could no longer be sophisticated by the applause of Pharisaic partisans. 
He was forced to go up into the dark tribunal of his own conscience, and set 
himself before himself. More terrible by far was the solemnity, more im- 
partial the judgment of that stern session, than those either of the Jewish 
Sanhedrin, or of that other Areopagus in which he would one day stand. If 
there be in the character any seriousness at all ; if the cancer of conceit or 
vice have not eaten out all of the heart that is not frivolous and base, then 
how many a man's intellectual conclusions, how many a man's moral life has 
been completely changed — and for how many would they not at this moment 
be completely changed — by the necessity for serious reflection during a few 
days of unbroken leisure ? 

And so we may be quite sure that day after day, as he rode on under the 
morning sunlight or the bright stars of an Eastern night, the thoughts of 
Saul would be overwhelmingly engaged. They would wander back over the 
past; they would glance sadly at the future. Those were happy years in 
Tarsus ; happy walks in childhood beside " the silver Cydnus ; " happy hours 
in the school of Gamaliel, where there first dawned upon his soul the glories 
of Moses and Solomon, of the Law and the Temple, of the Priesthood and 
the chosen race. Those were golden days when he listened to the promised 
triumphs of the Messiah, and was told how near was that day when the Holy 
Land should be exalted as the Lady of kingdoms, and the vaunted strength 
of Rome, which now lay so heavy on his subjugated people, be shattered like 



104 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

a potsherd ! But had not something of the splendour faded from these more 
, youthful dreams ? What had the righteousness of the Law done for him ? 
/ He had lived, as far as men were concerned, an honourable life. He had been 
exceedingly zealous, exceedingly blameless in the traditions of the fathers ; 
but what inward joy had he derived from them? — what enlightenment? — 
what deliverance from that law of his members, which, do what he would, 
still worked fatally against the law in his mind? His sins of pride and 
passion, and frailty — would not a jealous God avenge them ? Was there any 
exemption at all from the Law's curse of " death ? " Was there any deliver- 
ance at all from this ceaseless trouble of a nature dissatisfied with itself, and 
therefore wavering like a wave of the troubled sea ? \ 

Would the deliverance be secured by the coming of the Messiah ? That 
advent for the nation would be triumph and victory; would it be for the 
individual also, peace of conscience, justification, release from heavy bondage, 
forgiveness of past sins, strength in present weakness ? 

And then it must have flashed across him that these Nazarenes, at any 
rate, whom he had been hunting and slaying, said that it would. For them 
the Messiah had come, and certainly they had found peace. It was true that 
their Messiah was despised and rejected ; but was not that the very thing 
which had been said of the Servant of Jehovah in that prophecy to which 
they always appealed, and which also said that which his troubled conscience 
needed most : — 

" Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows : yet we did 
esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for 
our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our 
peace was upon him ; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep 
have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord 
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." 1 

This passage certainly gave a very different aspect to the conception 
of the Messiah from any which he had been taught to contemplate. Tet 
the Rabbis had said that all prophecies were Messianic. Jesus had been 
crucified. A crucified Messiah was a horrible thought ; but was it worse than 
a Messiah who should be a leper ? Yet here the ideal servant of Jehovah was 
called a leper. 2 And if His physical condition turned out to be meaner than 
Israel had always expected, yet surely the moral conception, the spiritual con- 
ception, as he had heard it from these hated Galilseans, was infinitely lovelier! 
They spoke — and oh, undeniably those were blessed words! — of a Messiah 
through whom they obtained forgiveness of sins. If this were true, what 
infinite comfort it brought! how it ended the hopelessness of the weary 
struggle ! The Law, indeed, promised life to perfect obedience. 3 But who 
ever had attained, who could attain, to that perfect obedience ? 4 Did he see 
it in the Gentile world, who, though they had not the Law of Moses had 

1 Isa. liii. 4 — 6. 

' Iga. lii. 14, liii. 4, ''stricken" Heb., cf. Lev. xiii. 13, Sanhedx. f. 98, 

3 Lev. xviii. 5 ; GaL iii. 12. 4 Bom. X. 6, 



THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 105 

their own law of nature ? — Did he see it in the Jewish world ? — alas, what a 
depth of disappointment was involved in the very question ! Was Hanan, 
was Caiaphas, was Theophilus, was Ishmael Ben Phabi a specimen of the 
righteousness of the Law ? And if, as was too true, Israel had not attained 
— if he himself had not attained — to the law of righteousness, what hope was 
there? 1 Oh, the blessedness of him whose unrighteousness was forgiven, 
whose sin was covered! Oh, the blessedness of him to whom the Lord 
would not impute sin ! Oh, to have the infinite G-od who seemed so far away 
brought near, and to see His face not darkened by the cloud, not glaring 
through the pillar of fire, but as a man seeth the face of his friend ! Oh, 
that a Man were a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, 
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land ! 2 

And so, again and again, he would realise with a sense of remorse that he 
was yearning for, that he was gliding into, the very doctrines which he was 
persecuting to the death. For to these ISTazarenes their Son of Man was indeed 
the image of the Invisible God. Could he be right in thus striving to stamp 
out a faith so pure, so ennobling ? For whether it was heresy or not, that it 
was pure and ennobling he could not fail to acknowledge. That face of Stephen 
which he had seen bathed as with a light from heaven until it had been dimmed 
in blood, must have haunted him then, as we know it did for long years after- 
wards. Would the Mosaic law have inspired so heavenly an enthusiasm ? 
would it have breathed into the sufferers so infinite a serenity, so bright a 
hope ? And where in all the Holy Pentateuch could he find utterances so 
tender, lessons so divine, love so unspeakable, motives which so mastered and 
entranced the soul, as these had found in the words and in the love of their 
Lord ? Those beatitudes which he had heard them speak of, the deeds of 
healing tenderness which so many attested, the parables so full of divine illu- 
mination — the moral and spiritual truths of a Teacher who, though His nation 
had crucified Him, had spoken as never man spake — oh, Who was this who 
had inspired simple fishermen and ignorant publicans with a wisdom unattain- 
able by a Hillel or a Gamaliel ? Who was this to whom His followers turned 
their last gaze and uttered their last prayer in death ; who seemed to breathe 
upon them from the parted heavens a glory as of the Shechinah, a peace that 
passed all understanding ? Who was this who, as they declared, had risen 
from the dead ; whose body certainly had vanished from the rock-hewn sepulchre 
in which it had been laid ; whom these good GaliJseans— these men who would 
rather die than lie — witnessed that they had seen, that they had heard, that He 
had appeared to them in the garden, in the upper chamber, on the public road, 
to four of them upon the misty lake, to more than five hundred of them at once 
upon the Galilsean hill ? Could that have been a right path which led him to 

1 Rom. ix. 31. When Rabbi Eleazar was sick, and Akibha rejoiced because be feared 
that Eleazar had been receiving his good things in this life, "Akibha," exclaimed the 
sufferer, " is there anything in the whole Law which I have failed to fulfil ? " " Rabbi," 
replied Akibha, "thou hast taught me 'There is not a just man upcn earth that doeth 
good, and sinneth not."' Eccles. vii. 20. (Sanhedr. f. 101, 1.) 

2 Isa. Tram, 2. 



106 



THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUIi. 



persecute these ? could it be God's will which had driven him so fiercely along 
a road that was stained in blood ? could he be required to pass through those 
scenes of horror in which he had haled the wife and the mother to prison, and 
seen the coarse menials of the synagogue remorselessly scourge men whose 




MAP SHOWING) THE KOADS FROM JERUSALEM TO DAMASCUS. 



life was love and humility and holiness ? Had he after all been mistaking 
pride for faithfulness, and rage for zeal ? Had he been murdering the saints 
that were upon the earth, and them that excelled in virtue ? Was Gamaliel 
right in suggesting the possibility that in meddling with these men they 
might haply be fighting against God ? 

So day by day, his mind filled more and more with distracting doubts, his 
imagination haunted by sights of cruelty which, in spite of all zeal, harrowed 



THE CONVERSION OP SAUL. 107 

np his soul, he journeyed on the road to Damascus. Under ordinary circum- 
stances he might have felt an interest in the towns and scenes through which 
he passed — in Bethel and Shiloh — in the soft green fields that lie around the 
base of Mount Gerizim — in Jacob's tomb and Jacob's well — in Bethshean, 
with its memories of the miserable end of that old king of his tribe whose 
name he bore — in the blue glimpses of the Lake of Galilee with its numberless 
memorials of that Prophet of Xazareth whose followers he was trying to 
destroy. But during these days, if I judge rightly, his one desire was to 
press on, and by vehement action to get rid of painful thought. 

And now the journey was nearly over. Hermon had long been gleaming 
before them, and the chain of Antilibanus. They had been traversing 
a bare, bleak, glaring, undulating plain, and had reached the village of 
Kaukab. or M the Star." At that point a vision of surpassing beauty bursts 
upon the eye of the weary traveller. Thanks to the " golden Abana " 
and the winding Pharpar, which flow on either side of the ridge, the 
wilderness blossoms like the rose. Instead of brown and stony wastes, 
we begin to pass under the flickering shadows of ancient olive-trees. Below, 
out of a soft sea of verdure — amid masses of the foliage of walnuts and 
pomegranates and palms, steeped in the rich haze of sunshine — rise the white 
terraced roofs and glittering cupolas of the immemorial city of which the 
beauty has been compared in every age to the beauty of a Paradise of God. 
There amid its gardens of rose, and groves of delicious fruit, with the gleam 
of waters that flowed through it. flooded with the gold of breathless morn, lay 
the eye of the East. 1 To that land of streams, to that city of fountains, 
to that Paradise of God, Saul was hastening — not on messages of mercy, not 
to add to the happiness and beauty of the world — but to scourge and to slay 
and to imprison, those perhaps of all its inhabitants who were the meekest, 
the gentlest, the most pure of heart. And Saul, with all his tenacity of 
purpose, was a man of almost emotional tenderness of character. 2 Though 
zeal and passion might hurry him into acts of cruelty, they could not 
crush within him the instincts of sympathy, and the horror of suffering 
and blood. Can we doubt that at the sight of the lovely glittering city — like 
(if I may again quote the Eastern metaphor) "a handful of pearls in its 
goblet of emerald " — he felt one more terrible recoil from his unhallowed 
task, one yet fiercer thrust from the wounding goad of a reproachful 
conscience ? 

It was high noon — and in a Syrian noon the sun shines fiercely overhead in 
an intolerable blaze of boundless light — the cloudless sky glows like molten 
brass ; the white earth under the feet glares like iron in the furnace ; the 
whole air, as we breathe it, seems to quiver as though it were pervaded with 
subtle flames. That Saul and his comrades should at such a moment have 
still been pressing forward on their journey would seem to argue a troubled 
impatience, an impassioned haste. Generally at that time of day the traveller 

1 See Porter's Syria, p. 435. 

8 See Adolphe Monod's sermon, Les JLarmes de St. Pq,id, 



108 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

will be resting in his khan, or lying under the shelter of his tent. But it was 
Saul who would regulate the movements of his little company ; and Saul was 
pressing on. 

Then suddenly all was ended — the eager haste, the agonising struggle, the 
deadly mission, the mad infatuation, the feverish desire to quench doubt 
in persecution. Round them suddenly from heaven there lightened a great 
light. 1 It was not Saul alone who was conscious of it. It seemed as though 
the whole atmosphere had caught fire, and they were suddenly wrapped 
in sheets of blinding splendour. It might be imagined that nothing can 
out- dazzle the glare of a Syrian sun at noon ; but this light was more vivid 
than its brightness, more penetrating than its flame. And with the light 
came to those who journeyed with Saul an awful but unintelligible sound. 
As though by some universal flash from heaven they were all struck to earth 
together, and when the others had arisen and had partially recovered from 
their terror, Saul was still prostrate there. They were conscious that some- 
thing awful had happened. Had we been able to ask them what it was, it is 
more than doubtful whether they could have said. Had it been suggested to 
them that it was some overwhelming sudden burst of thunder, some 
inexpressibly vivid gleam of electric flame— some blinding, suffocating, 
maddening breath of the sirocco — some rare phenomenon unexperienced 
before or since — they might not have known. The vision was not for them. 
They saw the light above the noonday — they heard, and heard with terror, 
the unknown sound which shattered the dead hush of noon ; but they were not 
converted by this epiphany. To the Jew the whole earth was full of God's 
visible ministrants. The winds were His spirits, the naming fires His 
messengers ; the thunder was the voice of the Lord shaking the cedars, yea, 
shaking the cedars of Libanus. The bath-Jcol might come to him in sounds 
which none but he could understand : others might say it thundered when to 
him an angel spake. 2 

But that which happened was not meant for those who journeyed with 
Saul : 3 it was meant for him ; and of that which he saw and which he heard 
he confessedly could be the only witness. They could only say that a light 
had shone from heaven, but to Saul it was a light from Him who is the 
light of the City of God — a ray from the light which no man can approach 
unto. 4 

And about that which he saw and heard he never wavered. It was the 
secret of his inmost being ; it was the most unalterable conviction of his soul : 

1 Acts ix. 3, Trepnjo-Tpaif/ei/, " lightened round." The word is again used in xxii. 6, but 
1b not found in the LXX., and is unknown to classical Greek. 

2 John xii. 29. 

3 Acts ix. 7, ela-T-qKeia-av ju.rj8eVa GeuypovvTes. Cf. Dan. x. 7, "I Daniel alone saw the 
vision ; for the men that were with me saw not the vision ; but a great quaking fell 
upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves." So in Shemdth Mabba, sect. 2, f. 104. 
3, it is said that others were with Moses, but that he alone saw the burning bush (Exod. 
iii. 2). Similarly Itashi, at the beginning of his commentary on Leviticus, says that 
when God called Moses the voice was heard by him alone. 

* 1 Tim. vi. 14—16 ; 2 Cor. xii. L 



THE CONVERSION OF SATTL. 109 

it was the very crisis and most intense moment of his life. Others might hint 
at explanations or whisper doubt: 1 Saul knew. At that instant God had 
shown him His secret and His covenant. God had found him ; had flung him 
to the ground in the career of victorious outrage, to lead him henceforth 
in triumph, a willing spectacle to angels and to men. 2 God had spoken 
to him, had struck him into darkness out of the noonday, only that He might 
kindle a noon in the midnight of his heart. From that moment Saul 
was converted. A change total, utter, final had passed over him, had 
transformed him. God had called him, had revealed His Son in him, 3 had 
given him grace and power to become an Apostle to the Gentiles, had sent 
him forth to preach the faith which he had once destroyed, had shone in his 
heart to give " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus Christ." 4 

And the means of this mighty change all lay in this one fact : — at that 
awful moment he had seen the Lord Jesus Christ. 5 / To him the persecutor — to 
him as to the abortive-born of the Apostolic family 6 — the risen, the glorified 
Jesus had appeared. He had "been apprehended by Christ." On that 
appearance all his faith was founded ; on that pledge of resurrection — of im- 
mortality to himself, and to the dead who die in Christ — all his hopes were 
anchored. 7 If that belief were unsubstantial, then all his life and all his labours 
were a delusion and a snare — he was a wretch more to be pitied than the 
wretchedest of the children of the world.X But if an angel from heaven 
preached a different doctrine it was false, for he had been taught by the reve- 
lation of Jesus Christ, and if this hope were vain, then to him 

" The pillared firmament was rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble." 

The strength of this conviction became the leading force in Paul's future 
life. He tells us that when the blaze of glory lightened round him he was 
struck to the earth, and there he remained till the voice bade him rise, and 
when he rose his eyes were blinded ; — he opened them on darkness. Had he 
been asked about the long controversies which have arisen in modern days, as 
to whether the appearance of the Risen Christ to him was objective or sub- 
jective, I am far from sure that he would even have understood them. 8 He 
nses indeed of this very event the term " vision." " I was not disobedient," 
he says to King Agrippa, " to the heavenly vision." 9 But the word used for 

: We trace a sort of hesitating sneer in the Clementine Homilies, xvii. 13, "He who 
believes a vision .... may indeed be deceived by an evil demon, .... which 
really is nothing, and if he asks who it is that appears " (with an allusion to ris el, Kvpte, 
ix. 5), "it can answer what it will ; " — with very much more to the same effect. 

2 2 Cor. ii. 14. 3 Acts xx ii. 21 ; xxvi. 17, 18 ; Gal. i. 15, 16. 

4 2 Cor. iv. 6. 5 1 Cor. ix. 1 ; xv. 8 ; v. supra, p. 73 seq. 

6 1 Cor. xv. 8. 7 1 Cor. xv. 10-29. 8 See 2 Cor. xii. 1. 

9 Acts xxvi. 19. rfj ovpavCw oTrrao-Ca. When Zacharias came out of the Temple speech- 
less, the people recognised tha't he had seen an hnTaaia (Luke i. 22). The women returning 
*rom the tomb say they have seen an 671-70.0-10. ayyikw (Luke xxiv. 23). The word, then, is 
peculiar to Luke and the Acts, as are so many words. It is, however, the word used in 



110 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

vision means " a waking vision," and in what conceivable respect could St. 
Paul have been more overpoweringly convinced that he had in very truth seen, 
and heard, and received a revelation and a mission from the Risen Christ ? Is 
the essential miracle rendered less miraculous by a questioning of that objec- 
tivity to which the language seems decidedly to point ? Are the eye and the 
ear the only organs by which definite certainties can be conveyed to the human 
soul ? are not rather these organs the poorest, the weakest, the most likely to 
be deceived ? To the eyes of St. Paul's companions, God spoke by the blind- 
ing light ; to their ears by the awful sound ; but to the soul of His chosen 
servant He was visible indeed in the excellent glory, and He spoke in the 
Hebrew tongue; but whether the vision and the voice came through the dull 
organs of sense or in presentations infinitely more intense, more vivid, more 
real, more unutterably convincing to the spirit by which only things spiritual 
are discerned — this is a question to which those only will attach importance to 
whom the soul is nothing but the material organism — who know of no indu- 
bitable channels of intercourse between man and his Maker save those that 
come clogged with the imperfections of mortal sense — and who cannot imagine 
anything real except that which they can grasp with both hands. One fact 
remains upon any hypothesis — and that is, that the conversion of St. Paul was 
in the highest sense of the word a miracle, and one of which the spiritual con- 
sequences have affected every subsequent age of the history of mankind. 1 

For though there may be trivial variations, obviously reconcilable, and ab- 
solutely unimportant, in the thrice-repeated accounts of this event, yet in the 
narration of the main fact there is no shadow of variation, and no possibility of 
doubt. 2 And the main fact as St. Paul always related and referred to it was this 
■ — that, after several days' journey, when they were now near Damascus, some 
awful incident which impressed them all alike as an infolding fire and a super- 
natural sound arrested their progress, and in that light, as he lay prostrate on 

the passage of the Corinthians just quoted, and the b-n-raa-La there leaves him no certainty 
as to whether it was corporeal or spiritual. The LXX. use it (Dan. ix. 23, &c. ) to render 
HiOO, which is used of a night vision in Gen. xlvi. 2. Phavorinus distinctly says that 
opa/u-a, whether by day or by night, is distinct from Ivvttvlov "dream," and it seems as if 
St. Luke, at any rate, meant by onraaCa something more objective than he meant by 
bpana (Acts is. 10 — 12 ; xi. 5 ; xii. 9 ; xvi. 9 ; xviii. 9) or l/corao-i? (Acts xi. 5 ; xxii. 17). 
'Opaa-is, in the N. T., only occurs in Rev. iv. 3; ix. 17 ; and in a quotation, Acts 
ii. 17. 

1 At such moments the spirit only lives, and the *foxh, the animal life, is hardly 
adequate as an opyavov Kriimicbv to apprehend such revelations. See Augustine, De Genesi 
ad Litt. xii. 3. "La chose essentielle est que nous ne perdions pas de vue le grand prin- 
cipe evangelique d'un contact direct de l'esprit de Dieu avec celui de l'homme, contact qui 
echappe a l'analyse du raisonnement . . . . Le mysticisme evangelique en revelant au 
sens chretien un monde de miracles inccssants, lui epargne la peine de se preoccuper du 
petit nombre de ceux qu' analysent contradictoirement le rationalisme critique et le 
rationalisme orthodoxe " (Reuss, Hist. Apostolique, p. 114). "Christ stood before me," 
said St. Teresa. " / saiv Him with the eyes of the soul more distinctly than I could have 
teen Him with the eyes of the body " ( Vida, vii. 11). 

2 It is superfluous to repeat the reconciliation of these small apparent contradictions, 
because they are all reconciled and accounted for in the narrative of the text. Had they 
been of the smallest importance, had they been such as one moment of common sense 
could fail to solve, a writer so careful as St. Luke would not have left them side by side. 



THE CONVEESION OF SAUL. Ill 

the earth. Saul saw a mortal shape 1 and heard a human voice syaing to him, 

■ Shaul, Shaul '* — for it is remarkable how the vividness of that impression is 
incidentally preserved in each form of the narrative 2 — " why persecutes! thou 
AEe ? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads." 3 But at that awful mo- 
ment Saul did not recognise the speaker, whom on earth he had never seen. 

■ Who art Thou, Lord r " he said. And He — " I am Jesus of Xazareth whom 
thou persecutest." 

•• Jesus of Xazareth '." Why did the glorified speaker here adopt the name 
of His obscurity on earth ? Why. as St. Chrysostom asks, did He not say. " I 
am the Son of God ; the Word that was in the beginning ; He that sitteth at 
the right hand of the Father ; He who is in the form of God ; He who stretched 
out the heaven ; He who made the earth ; He who levelled the sea ; He who 
created the angels ; He who is everywhere and filleth all things ; He who was 
pre-esistent and was begotten P M Why did He not utter those awful titles. but* 
" I am Jesus of Xazareth whom thou persecutest " — from the earthly city, 
from the earthly home ? Because His persecutor knew Him not ; for had he 
known Him he would not have persecuted Him. He knew not that He had 
been begotten of the Father, but that He was from Xazareth he knew. Had 
He then said to him, " I am the Son of God. the Word that was in the begin- 
ning. He who made the heaven/' Saul might have said, " That is not He whom 
I am persecuting." Had He uttered to him those vast, and bright, and lofty 
titles, Saul might have said, " This is not the crucified." But that he may 
know that he is persecuting Him who was made flesh, 4 who took the form of a 
servant, who died, who was buried, naming Himself from the earthly place, 
He says. " I am Jesus of Xazareth whom thou persecutest." This, then, was 
the Messiah whom he had hated and despised — this was He who had been the 
Heavenly Shepherd of his soul ; — He who to guide back his wandering foot- 
steps into the straight furrow had held in Has hand that unseen goad against 
which, like some stubborn ox, he had struggled and kicked in vain. 

And when the Yoice of that speaker from out of the unapproachable 

1 This, though not in the Acts asserted in so many words in the direct narrative, 
seems to be most obviously implied in the i^ftrjv croC of xxvi. 1G, in the contrast of the 

fuj£eia tfecopovrre? of ix. 7, in the 'Itjo-ov? 6 b4>6ei<; croi kv rrj bS(Z> of ver. 17, in the —cos kv rfj 6S<2 

el&ev 7w ict'piov of verse 27, and in the already quoted references (1 Cor. ix. 1 ; xv. 8)'. 
The remark of Chrysostom, *al ixrjv ovk. ZoOr) aAAa Sia. -pay^druv &<b(hi, is meant to be 
perfectly sincere and honest, but when compared with the above passage, seems to show 
i .n the great orator's usual care and discrimination. 
- Elsewhere he is always called SovAo?, but here Saov'A.. 

3 This addition is genuine in Acts xxvi. 14 ; and 6 ~Sa.Cu>p<uos certainly in vxii. 8. Of 
the many illustrations quoted by Wetstein, and copied from him by subsequent commen- 
tators, the most apposite and interesting are iEsch. Again. 1633, Prom. 323, Eur. Baceh. 
791, Ter. Phorra. i. 22, 7. It is, however, remarkable that though ox-goads were 
commonly used in the East, not one single Eastern or Semitic parallel can be adduced. 
The reference to Deut. xxxii. 15 is wholly beside the mark, though goads are alluded to 
in Judg. hi. 31 : Ecclus. xxxviii. 25. St Paul wotdd have been natttrally familiar with 
the common Greek proverbs, and those only will be startled that a Greek proverb should 
be addressed to him by his glorified Lord, who can never be brought to understand the 
simple principle that Inspiration must always speak (as even the Eabbis saw) ' ; in the 
tongue of the sons of men. ''' 

4 Chrysostom adds, rbv per' avrov cwayao-rpacbevra, but this I believe to be a mistake. 



112 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

brightness had, as it were, smitten him to the very earth with remorse by tho 
sense of this awful truth, — " But rise," it continued, and " stand upon thy 
feet, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." 

This is the form in which the words are, with trivial differences, given ir 
St. Luke's narrative, and in St. Paul's speech from the steps of Antonia. In 
his speech before Agrippa, it might seem as if more had been spoken then. 
But in this instance again it may be doubted whether, after the first appalling 
question, " Shaul, Shaiil, why persecutest fchou Me ? " which remained branded 
so vividly upon his heart, Paul could himself have said how much of the revela- 
tion which henceforth transfigured his life was derived from the actual moment 
when he lay blinded and trembling on the ground, and how much from the 
subsequent hours of deep external darkness and brightening inward light. In 
the annals of human lives there have been other spiritual crises analogous to 
this in their startling suddenness, in their absolute finality. To many the 
resurrection from the death of sin is a slow and life-long process ; but others 
pass with one thrill of conviction, with one spasm of energy, from death to 
life, from the power of Satan unto God. Such moments crowd eternity intc 
an hour, and stretch an hour into eternity. 

" At such high, hours 
Of inspiration from the Living God 
Thought is not." 

When God's awful warnings burn before the soul in letters of flame, it can read 
them indeed, and know their meaning to the very uttermost, but it does not 
know, and it does not care, whether it was Perez or Upharsin that was written 
on the wall. The utterances of the Eternal Sibyl are inscribed on records 
scattered and multitudinous as are the forest leaves. As the anatomist may 
dissect every joint and lay bare every nerve of the organism, yet be infinitely 
distant from any discovery of the principle of life, so the critic and grammarian 
may decipher the dim syllables and wrangle about the disputed discrepancies, 
but it is not theirs to interpret. If we would in truth understand such 
spiritual experiences, the records of them must be read by a light that never 
was on land or sea. 

Saul rose another man : he had fallen in death, he rose in life ; he had 
fallen in the midst of things temporal, he rose in awful consciousness of the 
things eternal ; he had fallen a proud, intolerant, persecuting Jew, he rose a 
humble, broken-hearted, penitent Christian. In that moment a new element 
had been added to his being. Henceforth — to use his own deep and dominant 
expression — he was " in Christ." God had found him ; Jesus had spoken to 
him, and in one flash changed him from a raging Pharisee into a true disciple 
— from the murderer of the saints into the Apostle of the Gentiles. It was a 
new birth, a new creation. As we read the story of it, if we have one touch of 
reverence within our souls, shall we not take off our shoes from off our feet, 
for the place whereon we stand is holy ground P 

Saul rose, and all was dark. The dazzling vision had passed away, and 



THE CONVERSION OP SAUL. 113 

with it also the glittering city, the fragrant gardens, the burning noon. Amazed 
and startled, his attendants took him by the hand and led him to Damascus. 
He had meant to enter the city in all the importance of a Commissioner from 
the Sanhedrin, to be received with distinction, not only as himself a great "pupil 
of the wise," but even as the representative of all authority which the Jews 
held most sacred. And he had meant to leave the city, perhaps, amid 
multitudes of his applauding countrymen, accompanied by a captive train of 
he knew not how many dejected Nazarenes. How different were his actual 
entrance and his actual exit ! He is led through the city gate, stricken, dejected, 
trembling, no longer breathing threats and slaughter, but longing only to be 
the learner and the suppliant, and the lowest brother among those whom he 
had intended to destroy. He was ignominiously let out of the city, alone, in 
imminent peril of arrest or assassination, through a window, in a basket, down 
the wall. 

They led him to the house of Judas, in that long street which leads through 
the city and is still called Straight ; and there, in remorse, in blindness, in 
bodily suffering, in mental agitation, unable or unwilling to eat or drink, the 
glare of that revealing light ever before his darkened eyes, the sound 
of that reproachful voice ever in his ringing ears, Saul lay for three days. 
None can ever tell what things in those three days passed through his 
soul; what revelations of the past, what lessons for the present, what 
guidance for the future. His old life, his old self, had been torn up by 
the very roots, and though now he was a new creature, the crisis can never 
pass over any one without agonies and energies — without earthquake and 
eclipse. At last the tumult of his being found relief in prayer; and, in a 
vision full of peace, he saw one of those brethren for a visit from whom 
he seems hitherto to have yearned in vain, come to him and heal him. This 
brother was Ananias, a Christian, but a Christian held in respect by all 
the Jews, and therefore a fit envoy to come among the Pharisaic adherents 
by whom we cannot but suppose that Saul was still surrounded. It was 
not without shrinking that Ananias had been led to make this visit. He 
had heard of Saul's ravages at Jerusalem, and his fierce designs against 
the brethren at Damascus ; nay, even of the letters of authority from the 
High Priest which were still in his hand. He had heard, too, of what had 
befallen him on the way, but it had not wholly conquered his not unnatural 
distrust. A divine injunction aided the charity of one who, as a Christian, 
felt the duty of believing all things, and hoping all things. The Lord, 
appearing to hink in a dream, told him that the zeal which had burned so 
fiercely in the cause of Sadducees should henceforth be a fiery angel of the 
Cross, — that this pitiless persecutor should be a chosen vessel to carry the 
name of Christ before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. " For 
I will show him," said the vision, "how much he must suffer for My 
name." 1 The good Ananias, hesitated no longer. He entered into the houso 

1 " Fortia agere Romanum est ; fortia pati Christianuin " (Corn, a Lap.). 
X 



114 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

of Judas, arid while his very presence seemed to breathe peace, he addressed the 
sufferer by the dear title of brother, and laying his hands upon the clouded 
eyes, bade him rise, and see, and be rilled with the Holy Ghost. " Be baptised," 
he added, " and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." The 
words of blessing and trust were to the troubled nerves and aching heart of 
the sufferer a healing in themselves. Immediately " there fell from his eyes as 
it had been scales." 1 He rose, and saw, and took food and was strengthened, 
and received from the hands of his humble brother that sacrament by which 
he was admitted into the full privileges of the new faith. He became a member 
of the Church of Christ, the extirpation of which had been for months the 
most passionate desire and the most active purpose of his life. 

Fruitful indeed must have been the conversation which he held with 
Ananias, and doubtless with other brethren, in the delicious calm that fol- 
lowed this heart-shaking moment of conviction. In those days Ananias must 
more and more have confirmed him in the high destiny which the voice of 
revelation had also marked out to himself. "What became of his commission ; 
what he did with the High Priest's letters ; how his subordinates demeaned 
themselves ; what alarming reports they took back to Jerusalem ; with what 
eyes he was regarded by the Judaic synagogues of Damascus, — we do not 
know ; but we do know that in those days, whether they were few or many, it 
became more and more clear to him that " God had chosen him to know His 
will, and see that Just One, and hear the voice of His mouth, and be His 
witness unto all men of what he had seen and heard." 2 

And here let me pause to say that it is impossible to exaggerate the im- 
portance of St. Paul's conversion as one of the evidences of Christianity. 
That he should have passed, by one flash of conviction, not only from dark- 
ness to light, but from one direction of life to the very opposite, is not only 
characteristic of the man, but evidential of the power and significance of 
Christianity. That the same man who, just before, was persecuting Chris- 
tianity with the most violent hatred, should come all at once to believe in Him 
whose followers he had been seeking to destroy, and that in this faith he 
should become a " new creature " — what is this but a victory which Chris- 
tianity owed to nothing but the spell of its own inherent power ? Of all 
who have been converted to the faith of Christ, there is not one in whose case 
the Christian principle broke so immediately through everything opposed to 
it, and asserted so absolutely its triumphant superiority. Henceforth to Paul 
Christianity was summed up in the one word Christ. And to what does 
he testify respecting Jesus ? To almost every single primarily important 
fact respecting His Incarnation, Life, Sufferings, Betrayal, Last Supper, Trial, 
Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Heavenly Exaltation. 3 We com- 

1 There is a remarkable parallel in Tob. xi. 13, nai kkeniaQi) anh t5>v ko.v9<ov tS»p b4>6a\iiu>p 

«vtov Ta A.ev/caiju.aTa. 

2 Acts xxii. 14, 15. 

3 See, among other passages, Rom. viii. 3, 11 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; Rom. ix. 5 ; 2 Cor. i. 5 ; 
Col. L 20; xi. 3; 1 Cor. i. 23 ; ii. 2 ; v. 7 ; x. 16 ; Gal. vi. 19 ; Eph. ii. 13 j Rom. v. 6: 



THE RETIREMENT OF ST. PAUL. 115 



plain that nearly twc thousand years have passed away, and that the bright- 
ness of historic - 1 eve-its is apt to fade, and even their very outline to be 
obliterated, as thbj^ink into the " dark backward and abysm of time." Well, 
but are we more keen-sighted, more hostile, more eager to disprove the evi- 
dence, than the consummate legalist, the admired rabbi, the commissioner of 
the Sanhedrin, the leading intellect in the schools — learned as Hillel, patriotic 
as Judas of Gaulon, burning with zeal for the Law as intense as that of 
Shammai ? He was not separated from the events, as we are, by centuries of 
t ime. He was not liable to be blinded, as we are, by the dazzling glamour of 
a victorious Christendom. He had mingled daily with men who had watched 
from Bethlehem to Golgotha the life of the Crucified, — not only with His simple- 
hearted followers, but with His learned and powerful enemies. He had talked 
with the priests who had consigned Him to the cross ; he had put to death 
the followers who had wept beside His tomb. He had to face the unutterable 
horror which, to any orthodox Jew, was involved in the thought of a Messiah 
who " had hung upon a tree." He had heard again and again the proofs 
which satisfied an Annas and a Gamaliel that Jesus was a deceiver of the 
people. 1 The events on which the Apostles relied, in proof of His divinity, 
had taken place in the full blaze of contemporary knowledge. He had not to 
deal with uncertainties of criticism or assaults on authenticity. He could 
question, not ancient documents, but living men ; he could analyse, not frag- 
mentary records, but existing evidence. He had thousands of means close at 
hand whereby to test the reality or unreality of the Resurrection in which, up 
to this time, he had so passionately and contemptuously disbelieved. In 
accepting this half-crushed and wholly execrated faith he had everything in 
the world to lose — he had nothing conceivable to gain ; and yet, in spite of 
all — overwhelmed by a conviction which he felt to be irresistible — Saul, the 
Pharisee, became a witness of the Resurrection, a preacher of the Cross. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE RETIREMENT OP ST. PAUL. 

" Thou shalt have joy in sadness soon, 
The pure calm hope be thine, 
That brightens like the eastern moon, 
When day's wild lights decline." — Keble. 

Saul was now a " Nazarene," but many a year of thought and training had to 
elapse before he was prepared for the great mission of his life. 

If, indeed, the Acts of the Apostles were our only source of information 
respecting him, we should have been compelled to suppose that he instantly 

vi. 4, 9 ; viii. 11 ; xiv. 15 ; xv. 3 ; 1 Cor. xv. passim ; Bom. x. 6 ; CoL iii. 1 ; Eph. ii. d ; 
I Tim. iii. 16, &c. 

i John vii. 12, 47 ; ix. 16 ; x. 20. 

I 2 



116 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. TAU^. 

plunged into the work of teaching. " He was with the disciples in Damascus 
certain days," says St. Luke ; " and immediately in tho 'synagogues he began 
to preach Jesus, that He is the Son of God ; " 1 and he piKS&feds to narrate the 
amazement of the Jews, the growing power of Saul's demonstrations, and, 
after an indefinite period had elapsed, the plot of the Jews against him, and 
his escape from Damascus. 

But St. Luke never gives, nor professes to give, a complete biography. 
During the time that he was the companion of the Apostle his details, indeed, 
are numerous and exact ; but if even in this later part of his career he never 
mentions Titus, or once alludes to the fact that St. Paul wrote a single epistle, 
we cannot be surprised that his notices of the Apostle's earlier career are frag- 
mentary, either because he knew no more, or because, in his brief space, he 
suppresses all circumstances that did not bear on his immediate purpose. 

Accordingly, if we turn to the biographic retrospect in the Epistle to the 
Galatians, in which St. Paul refers to this period to prove the independence of 
his apostolate, we find that in the Acts the events of three years have been 
compressed into as many verses, and that, instead of immediately beginning to 
preach at Damascus, he immediately retired into Arabia. 2 For "when," he 
says, " He who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His 
grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among 
the Gentiles, immediately I did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor 
went I up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me, but I went 
away into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus." 

No one, I think, who reads this passage attentively can deny that it gives 
the impression of an intentional retirement from human intercourse. A multi- 
tude of writers have assumed that St. Paul first preached at Damascus, then 
retired to Arabia, and then returned, with increased zeal and power, to preach 
in Damascus once more. Not only is St. Paul's own language unfavourable 
to such a view, but it seems to exclude it. What would all psychological 

i Acts ix. 19, 20. 

2 I understand the ev0«os of Gal. i. 16 as immediately succeeding St. Paul's conversion; 
the eu0e'ws of Acts ix. 20 as immediately succeeding his return to Damascus. The re- 
tirement into Arabia must be interpreted as a lacuna either at the middle of Acts ix. 19, 
or at the end of that verse, or after verse 21. The reasons why I unhesitatingly 
assume the first of these alternatives are given in the text. There is nothing to be said 
for supposing with Kuinoel and Olshausen that it was subsequent to the escape from 
Damascus, which seems directly to contradict, or at any rate to render superfluous, the 
na\iv of Gal i. 17. We may be quite sure that St. Paul did not talk promiscuously about 
this period of his life. No man, even with familiar friends, will make the most solemn 
crises of his life a subject of common conversation ; and Paul was by no means a man to 
wear his heart upon his sleeve. How many hundreds who read this passage will by a 
moment's thought become aware that apart from written memoranda, and possibly even 
with their aid, there is no one living who could write his own biography with any approach 
to accuracy ? What reason is there for supposing that it would have been otherwise 
with St. Paul? What reason is there for the supposition that he entrusted St. Luke with 
all the important facts which had occurred to him, when we see that what St. Luke was 
able to record about him neither portrayed one-fourth of his character nor preserved a 
memorial of one tithe of his sufferings? And it is to be observed that in Acts xxii. 16, 17, 
where it had no bearing on his immediate subject, St. Paul himself omits all reference to 
thin retirement into Arabia. 



THE RETIREMENT OP ST. PAUL. 117 

considerations lead us to think likely in the case of one circumstanced as Sanl 
of Tarsus was after his sudden and strange conversion? The least likely 
course —the one which would place him at the greatest distance from all deep 
and earnest spirits who have passed through a similar crisis — would be for him 
to have plunged at once into the arena of controversy, and to have passed* 
without pause or breathing-space, from the position of a leading persecutor 
into that of a prominent champion. In the case of men of shallow nature, or 
superficial convictions, such a proceeding is possible ; but we cannot imagine it 
of St. Paul. It is not thus with souls which have been arrested in mid-career 
6y the heart-searching voice of God. Just as an eagle which has been drenched 
and battered by some fierce storm will alight to plume its ruffled wings, so 
when a great soul has " passed through fire and through water " it needs some 
safe and quiet place in which to rest. The lifelong convictions of any man 
may be reversed in an instant, and that sudden reversion often causes a 
marvellous change ; but it is never in an instant that the whole nature and 
character of a man are transformed from what they were before. It is difficult 
to conceive of any change more total, any rift of difference more deep, than 
that which separated Saul the persecutor from Paul the Apostle ; and we are 
sure that — like Moses, like Elijah, like our Lord Himself, like almost every 
great soul in ancient or modern times to whom has been entrusted the task of 
swaying the destinies by moulding the convictions of mankind — like Sakya 
Mouni, like Mahomet in the cave of Hira, like St. Francis of Assisi in his 
sickness, like Luther in the monastery of Erfurdt — he would need a quiet 
period in which to elaborate his thoughts, to still the tumult of his emotions, 
to commune in secrecy and in silence with his own soul. It was necessary for 
frim to understand the Scriptures ; to co-ordinate his old with his new beliefs. 
It is hardly too much to say that if Saul — ignorant as yet of many essential 
truths of Christianity, alien as yet from the experience of its deepest power — 
had begun at once to argue with and to preach to others, he could hardly have 
done the work he did. To suppose that the truths of which afterwards he 
became the appointed teacher were all revealed to him as by one flash of light 
in all their fulness, is to suppose that which is alien to God's dealings with the 
human soul, and which utterly contradicts the phenomena of that long series 
of Epistles in which we watch the progress of his thoughts. Even on grounds 
of historic probability, it seems unlikely that Saul should at once have been 
able to substitute a propaganda for an inquisition. Under such circumstances 
it would have been difficult for the brethren to trust, and still more difficult 
for the Jews to tolerate him. The latter would have treated him as a shame- 
less renegade, 1 the former would have mistrusted him as a secret spy. 

"We might, perhaps, have expected that Saul would have stayed quietly 
among the Christians at Damascus, mingling unobtrusively in their meetings, 
listening to them, learning of them, taking at their love-feasts the humblest 
place. We can hardly suppose that he cherished, in these first days of his 

1 They would have called him a 1D1D, one who had abandoned his religious conviction!. 



118 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAXTI.. 

Christian career, the developed purpose of preaching an independent Gospel. 
Assailed, as he subsequently was, on all sides, but thwarted most of all by the 
espionage of false brethren, and the calumnies of those who desired to throw 
doubt on his inspired authority, it was indeed a providential circumstance that 
the events which followed his conversion were such as to separate him as far 
as possible from the appearance of discipleship to human instructors. As a 
Pharisee he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel ; as a Christian he called no man 
his master. He asserts, with reiterated earnestness, that his teaching as well 
as his authority, " his Gospel " no less than his Apostleship, had been received 
immediately from God. Indeed, the main object of that intensely interesting 
and characteristic narrative which occupies the two first chapters of the Epistle 
to the Galatians is to establish the declaration which he felt it necessary to 
make so strongly, that "the Gospel preached by him was not a human gospel, 
and that he did not even receive it from any human being, nor was he taught 
it, but through revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Had he not been able to assure 
his converts of this — had he not been able to appeal to visions and revelations 
of the Lord — he might have furnished another instance of one whose opinions 
have been crushed and silenced by the empty authority of names. It was from 
no personal feeling of emulation — a feeling of which a soul so passionately in 
earnest as his is profoundly incapable — but it was from the duty of ensuring 
attention to the truths he preached that he felt it to be so necessary to con- 
vince the churches which he had founded how deep would be their folly if 
they allowed themselves to be seduced from the liberty of his Gospel by the re- 
trograde mission of the evangelists of bondage. It was indispensable for the 
dissemination of the truth that he should be listened to as an Apostle " neither 
of man, nor by any man, but by Jesus Christ, and God, who raised him from 
the dead." Had his Apostleship emanated from (airb) the Twelve, or been 
conferred on him by the consecrating act of (8m) any one of them, 2 then they 
might be supposed to have a certain superior commission, a certain coercive 
power. If, as far as he was concerned, they had no such power, it was because 
he had received his commission directly from his Lord. And to this indepen- 
dence of knowledge he often refers. He tells the Thessalonians, " by the 
Word of the Lord," 3 that those who were still alive at the Second Advent 
should not be befo.tsliand with — should gain no advantage or priority over — 
those that slept. He tells the Ephesians 4 that it was by revelation that God 
" made known to him the mystery which in other generations was not made 
known to the sons of men — namely, that the Gentiles are co-heirs and co- 
members and co-partakers 6 of the promise in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel 
of which he became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God, winch 
was given him according to the mighty working of His power." He tells the 
Colossians ° that ho became a minister of the Church " in accordance with the 
stewardship of God given to him for them, that he might fully preach the 

1 Gal. i. 11, 12. 2 Gal. i. 1, ov/c our' avOpunoiv ov8e Sl a.v6pti>trov. 

* 1 Thess. iv. 15, kv \6y<» KvpCov. 4 Eph. iii. 3—6. 

* avy/cArjpoeo/ua *a! awcrw/oia. /cat avjafAeVoxa. 8 OoL i. 25. 



THE KETIREMEITT OF ST. PATTL. 119 

Word of God. the mystery hidden from the ages and the generations." From 
these and from other passages it seems clear that -what St. Paul meant to 
represent as special snbjects of the revelation which he had received were 
partly distinct views of what rale onght to be followed by Christians in special 
instances, partly great facts abont the resurrection. 1 partly the direct vision of 
a Saviour not only risen from the dead, but exalted at the right hand of God; 
but especially the central and peculiar fact of his reaching " the mystery of 
Christ " — the truth once secret, but now revealed — the deliverance which He 
had wrought, the justification by faith which He had rendered possible, and, 
most of all, the free offer of this great salvation to the Gentiles, without the 
necessity of their incurring the yoke of bondage, which even the Jew had 
found to be heavier than he could bear. 2 

It can hardly, therefore, be doubted that after his recovery from the shock 
of conviction with which his soul must long have continued to tremble, Paul 
only spent a few quiet days with Ananias, and any other brethren who would 
hold out to him the right hand of friendship. He might talk with them of 
the life which Jesus had lived on earth. He might hear- from them those 
reminiscences of the 

"Sinless years 
"Which breathed beneath the Syrian blue," 

of which the most precious were afterwards recorded by the four Evangelists. 
In listening to these he would have been fed with "the spiritual guileless 
milk." 3 Nor can we doubt that in those days more than ever he would 
refrain his soul and keep it low — that his soul was even as a weaned child. 
But of the mystery which he was afterwards to preach — of that which 
emphatically he called "his Gospel" 4 — neither Ananias (who was himself a 
rigid Jew, nor any of the disciples, could tell him anything. That was 
taught him by God alone. It came to him by the illuminating power of the 
Spirit of Christ, in revelations which accompanied each step in that Divine 
process of education which constituted his life. 

But he could not in any case have stayed long in Damascus. His position 
there was for the present untenable. Alike the terror with which his arrival 
must have been expected by the brethren, and the expectation which it had 
aroused among the Jews, would make him the centre of hatred and suspicion, 
of rumour and curiosity. He may even have been in danger of arrest by the 
very subordinates to whom his sudden change of purpose must have seemed 
to delegate his commission. But a stronger motive for retirement than all 
this would be the yearning for solitude ; the intense desire, and even the 
overpowering necessity, to be for a time alone with God. He was a stricken 
deer, and was impelled as by a strong instinct to leave the herd. In solitude 
% man may trace to their hidden source the fatal errors of the past : he may 

1 See 1 Cor. xv. 22 ; 1 Thess. iv. 15. 

2 See CoL iv. 3 ; Eph. iii. 3 ; vi. 19 ; Bom. xvi. 25. 

• 1 Pet. 11. 2, to Xoyncbv aSokov yaXa. 

* 1 Cor. ix. 17 ; GaL ii. 2, 7 ; 2 Thess. H. 14; 2 Tim. id. 8. 



120 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL 

pray for that light from heaven — no longer flaming with more than noonday 
fierceness, but shining quietly in dark places — which shall enable him to 
understand the many mysteries of life ; he may wait the healing of his deep 
wounds by the same tender hand that in mercy has inflicted them ; he may 

" Sit on the desert stone 
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone ; 
And a gentle voice comes through the wild, 
Like a father consoling his fretful child, 
That banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, 
Saying, ' Man is distant, but God is near.' " 

And so Saul went to Arabia — a word which must, I think, be understood in 
its popular and primary sense to mean the Sinaitic peninsula. 1 

He who had been a persecutor in honour of Moses, would henceforth be 
himself represented as a renegade from Moses. The most zealous of the 
living servants of Mosaism was to be the man who should prove most 
convincingly that Mosaism was to vanish away. Was it not natural, then, 
that he should long to visit the holy ground where the bush had glowed 
in unconsuming fire, and the granite crags had trembled at the voice which 
uttered the fiery law ? Would the shadow of good things look so much of a 
shadow if he visited the very spot where the great Lawgiver and the great 
Prophet had held high communings with God ? Could he indeed be sure that 
he had come unto the Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the 
heavenly Jerusalem, and to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant, until he 
had visited the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, where 
amid blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and 
the voice of words, Moses himself had exceedingly feared and quaked ? 

How long he stayed, we do not know. It has usually been assumed that 
his stay was brief ; to me it seems far more probable that it occupied no small 
portion of those " three years " 2 which he tells us elapsed before he visited 
Jerusalem. Few have doubted that those " three years " are to be dated from 
his conversion. It seems clear that after his conversion he stayed but a few 
days (v/J-epou Tivh) with the disciples; that then — at the earliest practicable 
moment— he retired into Arabia; that after his return he began to preach, 
and that this ministry in Damascus was interrupted after a certain period 
(rnj.zpa.1 iKavai) by the conspiracy of the Jews. The latter expression is translated 
" many days ,; in the Acts ; but though the continuance of his preaching may 
have occupied days which in comparison with his first brief stay might have 
been called " many," the phrase itself is so vague that it might be used of 
almost any period from a fortnight to three years. 3 As to the general 
correctness of this conclusion I can feel no doubt ; the only point which must 
always remain dubious is whether the phrase "three years" means three 
complete years, or whether it means one full year, and a part, however short, 
of two other years. From the chronology of St. Paul's life we can attain no 

* See Excursus IX., " Saul in Arabia." 2 Gal. i. 18. 

1 It actually is used of three years in 1 Kings ii. 38. 



THE RETIREMENT OP ST. PATTL. 121 

certainty on this point, though such lights as we have are slightly in favour of 
the longer rather than of the shorter period. 

Very much depends upon the question whether physical infirmity, and 
prostration of health, were in part the cause of this retirement and inactivity. 
And here again we are on uncertain ground, because this at once opens the 
often discussed problem as to the nature of the affliction to which St. Paul so 
pathetically alludes as his " stake in the flesh." I am led to touch upon that 
question here, because I believe that this dreadful affliction, whatever it may 
have been, had its origin at this very time. 1 The melancholy through which, 
like a fire at midnight, his enthusiasm burns its way — the deep despondency 
which sounds like an undertone even amid the bursts of exultation which 
triumph over it, seem to me to have been in no small measure due to this. It 
gave to St. Paul that painful self- consciousness which is in itself a daily trial to 
any man who, in spite of an innate love for retirement, is thrust against his 
will into publicity and conflict. It seems to break the wings of his spirit, so 
that sometimes he drops as it were quite suddenly to the earth, checked and 
beaten down in the very midst of his loftiest and strongest flights. 

No one can even cursorily read St. Paul's Epistles without observing 
that he was aware of something in his aspect or his personality which 
distressed him with an agony of humiliation — something which seems to 
force him, against every natural instinct of his disposition, into language 
which sounds to himself like a boastfulness which was abhorrent to him, 
but which he finds to be more necessary to himself than to other men. It 
is as though he felt that his appearance was against him. Whenever he 
has ceased to be carried away by the current of some powerful argument, 
whenever his sorrow at the insidious encroachment of errors against which 
he had flung the whole force of his character has spent itself in words of 
immeasurable indignation— whenever he drops the high language of apos- 
tolical authority and inspired conviction — we hear a sort of wailing, pleading, 
appealing tone in his personal addresses to his converts, which would be 
almost impossible in one whose pride of personal manhood had not been 
abashed by some external defects, to which he might indeed appeal as 
marks at once of the service and the protection of his Saviour, but which 
made him less able to cope face to face with the insults of opponents or 
the ingratitude of friends. His language leaves on us the impression of 
one who was acutely sensitive, and whose sensitiveness of temperament has 
been aggravated by a meanness of presence which is indeed forgotten by 
the friends who know him, but which raises in strangers a prejudice not 
always overcome. Many, indeed, of the brethren in the little churches 
which he founded, had so " grappled him to their souls with hooks of steel," 
that he could speak in letter after letter of their abounding love and 

1 There is nothing to exchicb this in the iSSOri pot of 2 Cor. xii. 7. The affliction 
might not have arrived at its full intensity till that period, which was some years after 
his conversion, about A.D. 43, when St. Paul was at Antioch or Jerusalem or 
Tarsus, 



122 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

tenderness and gratitude towards him 1 — that he can call tliem "my liltle 
children" — that he can assume their intense desire to see him, and can 
grant that desire as an express favour to them ; 2 and that he is even forced 
to soothe those jealousies of affection which were caused by his acceptance 
of aid from one church which he would not accept from others. But he 
is also well aware that he is hated with a perfect virulence of hatred, and 
(which is much more wounding to such a spirit) that with this hatred there 
is a large mixture of unjust contempt. From this contempt even of the 
contemptible, from this hatred even of the hateful, he could not but 
shrink, though he knew that it is often the penalty with which the world 
rewards service, and the tribute which virtue receives from vice. 

It is this which explains the whole style and character of his Epistles. 3 
The charges which his enemies made against him have their foundation 
in facts about his method and address, which made those charges all the 
more dangerous and the more stinging by giving them a certain plausibility. 
They were, in fact, yet another instance of those half-truths which are the 
worst of lies. Thus — adopting the taunts of his adversaries, as he often 
does— he says that he is in presence "humble" among them, 4 and "rude in 
speech," 5 and he quotes their own reproach that "his bodily presence was 
weak, and his speech contemptible." 6 Being confessedly one who strove 
for peace and unity, who endeavoured to meet all men half-way, who 
was ready to be all things to all men if by any means he might save some, 
he has more than once to vindicate his character from those charges of 
insincerity, craftiness, dishonesty, guile, man-pleasing and flattery, 7 which 
are, perhaps, summed up in the general depreciation which he so indignantly 
rebuts that "he walked according to the flesh," 8 or in other words that 
his motives were not spiritual, but low and selfish. He has, too, to defend 
himself from the insinuation that his self-abasements had been needless 
and excessive ; 9 that even his apparent self-denials had only been assumed 
as a cloak for ulterior views ; 10 and that his intercourse was so marked by 
levity of purpose, that there was no trusting to his promises. 11 "Now how 
came St. Paul to be made the butt for such calumnies as these ? Chiefly, 
no doubt, because he was, most sorely against his will, the leader of a party, 
and because there are in all ages souls which delight in lies — men " whose 
throat is an open sepulchre, and the poison of asps is under their lips ; " 
but partly, also, because he regarded tact, concession, conciliatoriness, as 
Divine weapons which God had permitted him to use against powerful 
obstacles ; and partly because it was easy to satirise and misrepresent a 
depression of spirits, a humility of demeanour, which were either the direct 
results of some bodily affliction, or which the consciousness of this affliction 

1 Phil, passim. 2 2 Cor. i. 15, 23. 

3 See Excursus X. : " The Style of St. Paul as illustrative of his Character." 

* 2 Cor. x. 1, 2. 8 2 Cor. x. 2. 

2 Cor. xi. 6, [8k6tt)s kv Aoyw. 9 2 Cor. xi. 7. 

6 2 Cor. x. 10. »° 2 Cor. xii. 16. 

7 2 Cor. ii. 17, iv. 2 ; 1 Thess. ii. 3-6. » 2 Cor. i. 17. 



THE RETIREMENT OP ST. PAUL. 123 

had rendered habitual. We feel at once that this would be natural to the 
bowed and weak figure which Albrecht Diirer has represented ; but that it 
would be impossible to the imposing orator whom Raphael has placed on the 
steps of the Areopagus. , 

And to this he constantly refers. There is hardly a letter in which he 
does not allude to his mental trials, his physical sufferings, his persecutions, 
his infirmities. He tells the Corinthians that his intercourse with them 
had been characterised by physical weakness, fear, and much trembling. 2 
He reminds the Galatians that he had preached among them in consequence 
of an attack of severe sickness. 3 He speaks of the inexorable burden of 
life, and its unceasing moan. 4 The trouble, the perplexity, the persecution, 
tho prostrations which were invariable conditions of his life, seem to him 
like a perpetual carrying about with him in his body of the mortification — 
the putting to death — of Christ ; 5 a perpetual betrayal to death for Christ's 
sake — a perpetual exhibition of the energy of death in his outward life. 6 He 
died daily, he was in deaths oft ; 7 he was being killed all the day long. 8 

And this, too — as well as the fact that he seems to write in Greek and 
think in Syriac — is the key to the peculiarities of St. Paul's language. The 
feeling that he was inadequate for the mighty task which God had specially 
entrusted to him ; the dread lest his personal insignificance should lead any 
of his hearers at once to reject a doctrine announced by a weak, suffering, 
distressed, overburdened man, who, though an ambassador of Christ, bore 
in his own aspect so few of the credentials of an embassy ; the knowledge 
that the fiery spirit which " o'erinformed its tenement of clay " was held, 
like the light of Gideon's pitchers, in a fragile and earthen vessel, 9 seems to 
be so constantly and so oppressively present with him, as to make all words 
too weak for the weight of meaning they have to bear. Hence his language, 
in many passages, bears the traces of almost morbid excitability in its 
passionate alternations of humility with assertions of the real greatness of 
his labours, 10 and of scorn and indignation against fickle weaklings and 
intriguing calumniators with an intense and yearning love. 11 Sometimes his 
heart beats with such quick emotion, his thoughts rush with such confused 
impetuosity, that in anakoluthon after anakoluthon, and parenthesis after 
parenthesis, the whole meaning becomes uncertain. 12 His feeling is so intense 
that his very words catch a life of their own — they become " living creatures 
with hands and feet." 13 Sometimes he is almost contemptuous in his asser- 
tion of the rectitude which makes him indifferent to vulgar criticism, 14 and 
koenly bitter in the sarcasm of his self-depreciation. 15 In one or two 

i Hausrath, p. 51. 2 1 Cor. ii. 3. 3 Gal. iv. 13. 

* 2 Cor. V. 4, oi oi/res Iv t$ cr/ojvei orevafojuev jSapoujuej/oi. 

* 2 Cor. iv. 8 — 10, 0A.(.j36jui.ei/oi . . . aTropovfj.evoL . . . StWKo/uiei/ot . . . Ka/rajSaAAdjaevoi 
i . . iravTOTe ttjv veKpa>cri.v tov 'Itjctow iv to! (TtojoiaTi irepufrepovTes. 

" Id. 11, ael yap 7}/u.eis ot (JcavTes, ets Q6.vo.tov 7rapaSi86ju.e#a. 

7 2 Cor. xi. 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 31. 8 Kom. viii. 36. 

9 2 Cor. iv. 7. 10 1 Cor. xv. 10. " Gal. and 2 Cor. passim. 

W Gal. iv. 12. » Gal. iv. 14 ; 1 Cor. iv. 13 ; Phil. iii. 8. 

** 1 Cor. iv. 3. K 1 Cor. iv. 10 ; x. 15 ; 2 Cor. xi. 16—19 ; xii. 1L 



124 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

instances an enemy might almost apply the word " brutal " to the language 
in which he ridicules, or denounces, or unmasks the impugners of his gospel ; * 
in one or two passages he speaks with a tinge of irony, almost of irritation, 
about those " accounted to be pillars " — the " out-and-out Apostles," who 
even if they were Apostles ten times over added nothing to him : 2 — but the 
storm of passion dies away in a moment; he is sorry even for the most 
necessary and justly-deserved severity, and all ends in expressions of tender- 
ness and, as it were, with a burst of tears. 3 

Now it is true that we recognise in Saul of Tarsus the restlessness, the 
vehemence, the impetuous eagerness which we see in Paul the Apostle ; 
but it is hard to imagine in Saul of Tarsus the nervous shrinking, the 
tremulous sensibility, the profound distrust of his own gifts and powers 
apart from Divine grace, which are so repeatedly manifest in the language of 
Paul, the fettered captive of Jesus Christ. It is hard to imagine that such a 
man as the Apostle became could ever have been the furious inquisitor, 
the intruder even into the sacred retirement of peaceful homes, the eager 
candidate for power to suppress a heresy even in distant cities, which Saul 
was before the vision on the way to Damascus. It is a matter of common 
experience that some physical humiliation, especially if it take the form 
of terrible disfigurement, often acts in this very way upon human character. 4 
It makes the bold shrink ; it makes the arrogant humble ; it makes the 
self-confident timid; it makes those who once loved publicity long to hide 
themselves from the crowd ; it turns every thought of the heart from trust in 
self to humblest submission to the will of God. Even a dangerous illness 
is sometimes sufficient to produce results like these ; but wheu the illness 
leaves its physical marks for life upon the frame, its effects are intensified ; 
it changes a mirthful reveller, like Francis of Assisi, into a squalid ascetic ; 
a favourite of society, like Francis Xavier, into a toilsome missionary ; a gay 
soldier, like Ignatius Loyola, into a rigid devotee. 

1 Gal. iii. 1 ; iv. 17 (in the Greek). 

2 Gal. ii. 6, to>i/ 8okowto>v etvat ti, — bnoiol wore ?i<rav, ovSev ftoi Sia<f>epet \ 9, ol Soicovvres orvAoi 
eti/at ; 11, KaTeyvuHTfJLivos yv. 1 Cor. XV. 9 ; 2 Cor. xi. 5, twi/ vnepkCav a.Trocn6ki>>v. 2 Cor. xii. 11, 
ovSev voTe'pijcra twv vnep\iav axroo-ToAwi/ ei nol ovSev eifil. 

3 Gal. iv. 19 ; 2 Cor. ii. 4 ; Eom. ix. 1 — 3. As bearing on this subject, every one will 
read with interest the verses of Dr. Newman — 

" I dreamed that with a passionate complaint 
I wished me born amid God's deeds of might, 
And envied those who had the presence bright 
Of gifted prophet or strong-hearted saint, 
Whom my heart loves, and fancy strives to paint. 
I turned, when straight a stranger met my sight, 
Came as my guest, and did awhile unite 
His lot with mine, and lived without restraint. 
Courteous he was, and grave ; so meek in mien, 
It seemed untrvje, or told a purpose weak ; 
Yet, in the mood, could he with aptness speak 
Or with stern force, or show of feeling keen, 
Marking deep craft, methought, and hidden pride; 
Then came a voice, ' St. Paul is at thy side I ' " 

4 The kteQn of 2 Cor. xii. 7 shows that the "stake in the flesh" was nothing 
congenital. 



THE BEGINNING OP A LONG MARTYRDOM. 125 

What was the nature of this stake in the flesh, we shall examine fully in a 
separate essay ; ! but that, whatever it may have been, it came to St. Paul as a 
direct consequence of visions and revelations, and as a direct counteraction to 
the inflation and self-importance which such exceptional insight might 
otherwise have caused to such a character as his, he has himself informed us. 
We are, therefore, naturally led to suppose that the first impalement of his 
health by this wounding splinter accompanied, or resulted from, that greatest 
of all his revelations, the appearance to him of the risen Christ as he was 
travelling at noonday nigh unto Damascus. If so, we see yet another 
reason for a retirement from all exertion and publicity, which was as necessary 
for his body as for his soul. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE BEGINNING OP A LONG MARTYRDOM. 

" Be bold as a leopard, swift as an eagle, bounding as a stag, brave as a lion, to 
do the will of thy Father which is in heaven." — Pesachim, f. 112, 2. 

Calmed by retirement, confirmed, it may be, by fresh revelations of the will 
of God, clearer in his conceptions of truth and duty, Saul returned to 
Damascus. We need look for no further motives of his return than such as 
rose from the conviction that he was now sufficiently prepared to do the work 
to which Christ had called him. 

He did not at once begin his mission to the Gentiles. " To the Jew first " 
was the understood rule of the Apostolic teaching, 2 and had been involved in 
the directions given by Christ Himself. 3 Moreover, the Gentiles were 
so unfamiliar with the institution of preaching, their whole idea of worship was 
so alien from every form of doctrinal or moral exhortation, that to begin 
by preaching to them was almost impossible. It was through the Jews that 
the Gentiles were most easily reached. The proselytes, numerous in every 
city, were specially numerous at Damascus, and by their agency it was certain 
that every truth propounded in the Jewish synagogue would, even if only by 
the agency of female proselytes, be rapidly communicated to the Gentile 
agora. 

It was, therefore, to the synagogues that Saul naturally resorted, and 
there that he first began to deliver his message. Since the Christians were 
still in communion with the synagogue and the Temple — since their leader, 
Ananias, was so devout according to the law as to have won the willing 
testimony of all the Jews who lived in Damascus 4 — no obstacle would be placed 
in the way of the youthful Rabbi ; and as he had been a scholar in the most 

1 See Excursus X., " St. Paul's ' Stake in the Flesh.' " 

2 Rom. i. 16 ; Acts iii. 26 ; xiii. 38, 39, 46 ; John iv. 22. 

» Luke xxiv. 47 ; cf. Isa. ii. 2, 3 ; xlix. 6 ; Mic. iv. 2. "> Acts xxii. 12. 



126 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

eminent of Jewish schools, his earliest appearances on the arena ef controversy 
would be awaited with contention and curiosity. We have no reason to 
suppose that the animosity against the Nazarenes, which Saul himself had 
kept alive in Jerusalem, had as yet penetrated to Damascus. News is slow to 
travel in Eastern countries, and those instantaneous waves of opinion which 
flood our modern civilisation were unknown to ancient times. In the capital 
of Syria, Jews and Christians were still living together in mutual toleration, 
if not in mutual esteem. They had been thus living in Jerusalem until the 
spark of hatred had been struck out by the collision of the Hellenists of the 
liberal with those of the narrow school — the Christian Hellenists of the 
Hagadoth with the Jewish Hellenists of the Halacha. To Saul, if not solely, 
yet in great measure, this collision had been due ; and Saul had been on his 
way to stir up the same wrath and strife in Damascus, when he had been 
resistlessly arrested 1 on his unhallowed mission by the vision and the 
reproach of his ascended Lord. 

But the authority, and the letters, had been entrusted to him alone, and 
none but a few hot zealots really desired that pious and respectable persons 
like Ananias — children of Abraham, servants of Moses — should be dragged, 
with a halter round their necks, from peaceful homes, scourged by the people 
with whom they had lived without any serious disagreement, and haled to 
Jerusalem by fanatics who would do their best to procure against them the 
fatal vote which might consign them to the revolting horrors of an almost 
obsolete execution. 

So that each Ruler of a Synagogue over whom Saul might have been 
domineering with all the pride of superior learning, and all the intemperance 
of flaming zeal, might be glad enough to see and hear a man who could no 
longer hold in terror over him the commission of the Sanhedrin, and who had 
now rendered himself liable to the very penalties which, not long before, he 
had been so eager to inflict. 

And had Saul proved to be but an ordinary disputant, the placidity of 
Jewish self-esteem would not have been disturbed, nor would he have ruffled 
the sluggish stream of legal self-satisfaction. He did not speak of circum- 
cision as superfluous ; he said nothing about the evanescence of the Temple 
service, or the substitution for it of a more spiritual worship. He did not 
breathe a word about turning to the Gentiles. The subject of his preaching 
was that " Jesus is the Son of God." 2 At first this preaching excited no 
special indignation. The worshippers in the synagogue only felt a keen 
astonishment 3 that this was the man who had ravaged in Jerusalem those 
who called on "this name," 4 and who had come to Damascus for the express 
purpose of leading them bound to the High Priest. But when once self-love 
is seriously wounded, toleration rarely survives. This was the case with the 
Jews of Damascus. They very soon discovered that it was no mere Ananias 

1 Phil. iii. 12, KaTeAij<£>07jj/ vnb tov Xpiorov 'Iijcrov. 

* •"iTja-ovi/, not Xpicrrw, is here the true reading (», A, B, C, E). 

» Acts ix. 21, e£i'<rravTo. 4 V. supra, p. 61. 



THE BEGINNING OP A LONG MARTYRDOM. 127 

with whom they had to deal. It was, throughout life, Paul's unhappy fate to 
kindle the most virulent animosities, because, though conciliatory and courteous 
by temperament, he yet carried into his arguments that intensity and forth- 
rightness which awaken dormant opposition. A languid controversialist will 
always meet with a languid tolerance. But any controversialist whose honest 
belief in his own doctrines makes him terribly in earnest, may count on a life 
embittered by the anger of those on whom he has forced the disagreeable task 
of re-considering their own assumptions. No one likes to be suddenly 
awakened. The Jews were indignant with one who disturbed the deep 
slumber of decided opinions. Their accredited teachers did not like to be 
deposed from the papacy of infallible ignorance. They began at Damascus to 
feel towards Saul that fierce detestation which dogged him thenceforward to 
the last day of his life. Out of their own Scriptures, by their own methods 
of exegesis, in their own style of dialectics, by the interpretation of prophecies 
of which they did not dispute the validity, he simply confounded them. He 
could now apply the very same principles which in the mouth of Stephen he 
had found it impossible to resist. The result was an unanswerable proof that 
the last ceon of God's earthly dispensations had now dawned, that old things 
had passed away, and all things had become new. 

If arguments are such as cannot be refuted, and yet if those who hear 
them will not yield to them, they inevitably excite a bitter rage. It was so 
with the Jews. Some time had now elapsed since Saul's return from Arabia, 1 
and they saw no immediate chance of getting rid of this dangerous intruder. 
They therefore took refuge in what St. Ohrysostom calls " the syllogism of 
violence." They might at least plead the excuse — and how bitter was the 
remorse which such a plea would excite in Saul's own conscience — that they 
were only treating him in the way in which he himself had treated all who 
held the same opinions. Even-handed justice was thus commending to his 
own lips the ingredients of that poisoned chalice of intolerance which he had 
forced on others. It is a far from improbable conjecture that it was at this 
early period that the Apostle endured one, and perhaps more than one, of 
those five Jewish scourgings which he tells the Corinthians that he had 
suffered at the hands of the Jews. For it is hardly likely that they would 
resort at once to the strongest measures, and the scourgings might be taken 
as a reminder that worse was yet to come. Indeed, there are few more 
striking proofs of the severity of that life which the Apostle so cheerfully — 
nay, even so joyfully — endured, than the fact that in his actual biography not 
one of these five inflictions, terrible as we know that they must have been, is 
so much as mentioned, and that in his Epistles they are only recorded, among 
trials yet more insupportable, in a passing and casual allusion. 2 

But we know from the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem that no such 
pain or danger would have put a stop to his ministry. Like them, he would 
have seen an honour in such disgrace. At last, exasperated beyond all en- 

1 Acts ix. 23, r\ii.£paA IkovoI. 2 See Excursus XI., " On Jewish Scourgings." 



128 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

durance at one whom they hated as a renegade, and whom they could not even 
enjoy the luxury of despising as a heretic, they made a secret plot to kill him. 1 
The conspiracy was made known to Saul, and he was on his guard against it. 
The Jews then took stronger and more open measures. They watched the 
gates night and day to prevent the possibility of his escape. In this they 
were assisted by the Ethnarch, who supplied them with the means of doing it. 
This Ethnarch was either the Arab viceroy of Hareth, or the chief official of the 
Jews themselves, 2 who well might possess this authority under a friendly prince. 

There was thus an imminent danger that Saul would be cut off at the 
very beginning of his career. But this was not to be. The disciples " took 
Saul " 3 — another of the expressions which would tend to show that he was 
exceptionally in need of help — and putting him in a large rope basket, 4 
let him down through the window of a house which abutted on the wall. 6 
It may be that they chose a favourable moment when the patrol had 
passed, and had not yet turned round again. At any rate, the escape was 
full of ignominy ; and it may have been this humiliation, or else the fact of 
its being among the earliest perils which he had undergone, that fixed it 
so indelibly on the memory of St. Paul. Nearly twenty years afterwards 
he mentions it to the Corinthians with special emphasis, after agonies and 
hair-breadth escapes which to us would have seemed far more formidable. 6 

Here, then, closed in shame and danger the first page in this chequered 
and sad career. How he made his way to Jerusalem must be left to con- 
jecture. Doubtless, as he stole through the dark night alone — above all, 
as he passed the very spot where Christ had taken hold of him, and into 
one moment of his life had been crowded a whole eternity — his heart 
would be full of thoughts too deep for words. It has been supposed, from 
the expression of which he makes use in his speech to Agrippa, that 
he may have preached in many synagogues on the days which were occu- 
pied on his journey to Jerusalem. 7 But this seems inconsistent with his 
own statement that he was " unknown by face to the churches of Judaea 
which were in Christ." 8 It is not, however, unlikely that he may some- 
times have availed himself of the guest-chambers which were attached to 
Jewish synagogues; and if such was the case, he might have taught the 
first truths of the Gospel to the Jews without being thrown into close 
contact with Christian communities. 

1 These secret plots were fearfully rife in these days of the Sicarii (Jos. Antt. xx. 8, §5). 

2 2 Cor. xi. 32, 6 eOvdpx^ efipoupei. tt)v ttoKiv ', Acts ix. 24, ot 'lovSaloi Trapen/jpovv Tas fruAas. 

Ethnarch, as well as Alabarch, was a title of Jewish governors in heathen cities. 

3 Acts ix. 25. The reading oi /uaflrjTai avrov, though well attested, can hardly be 
correct. 

4 On o-TTvpis see my Life of Christ, i. 403, 480. In 2 Cor. xi. 33 it is called aapyavq, 
which is defined by Hesych. as n\iyp.a ti e* axoivCov. 

6 Such windows are still to be seen at Damascus. For similar escapes, see Josh. ii. 15 } 
1 Sam. xix. 12. 

6 2 Cor. xi. 32. St. Paul's conversion was about A.D. 37. The Second Epistle to th# 
Corinthians was written A.D. 57, or early in A.D. 58. 

< Acts xxvi. 20. 8 Gal. i. 22, 



SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM 129 

In any case, his journey could not have been much prolonged, for he 
tells us that it was his express object to visit Peter, whose recognition 
must have been invaluable to him, apart from the help and insight which 
he could not but derive from conversing with one who had long lived in 
such intimate friendship with the Lord. 



CHAPTER XIIL 
saul's reception at Jerusalem. 



<* Cogitemus ipsum Pauluni, licet caelesti voce prostratum et instructum, ad 
hominem tamen missum esse, ut sacramenta perciperet."— Aug. Be Doctr. Christy 
Prol. 

To re-visit Jerusalem must have cost the future Apostle no slight effort. How 
deep must have been his remorse as he neared the spot where he had seen 
the corpse of Stephen lying crushed under the stones ! With what awful 
interest must he now have looked on the scene of the Crucifixion, and the 
spot where He who was now risen and glorified had lain in the garden-tomb ! 
How dreadful must have been the revulsion of feeling which rose from the 
utter change of his present relations towards the priests whose belief he 
had abandoned, and the Christians whose Gospel he had embraced ! He 
had left Jerusalem a Rabbi, a Pharisee, a fanatic defender of the Oral Law ; 
he was entering it as one who utterly distrusted the value of legal right- 
eousness, who wholly despised the beggarly elements of tradition. The 
proud man had become unspeakably humble ; the savage persecutor un- 
speakably tender ; the self-satisfied Rabbi had abandoned in one moment 
his pride of nationality, his exclusive scorn, his Pharisaic pre-eminence, to 
take in exchange for them the beatitude of unjust persecution, and to become 
the suffering preacher of an execrated faith. What had he to expect from 
Theophilus, whose letters he had perhaps destroyed ? from the Sanhedrists, 
whose zeal he had fired? from his old fellow- pupils in the lecture-room of 
Gamaliel, who had seen in Saul of Tarsus one who in learning was the glory 
of the school of Hillel, and in zeal the rival of the school of Shammai? 
How would he be treated by these friends of his youth, by these teachers and 
companions of his life, now that proclaiming his system, his learning, his 
convictions, his whole life — and therefore theirs no less than his — to have 
been irremediably wrong, he had become an open adherent of the little Church 
which he once ravaged and destroyed ? 

But amid the natural shrinking with which he could not but anticipate an 
encounter so full of trial, he would doubtless console himself with the thought 
that he would find a brother's welcome among those sweet and gentle spirits 
whose faith he had witnessed, whose love for each other he had envied while 
he hated. How exquisite would be the pleasure of sharing that peace which 



130 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

he had tried to shatter; of urging on others those arguments which had 
been bringing conviction to his own mind even while he was most passionately 
resisting them ; of hearing again and again from holy and gentle lips the 
words of Him whom he had once blasphemed! Saul might well have thought 
that the love, the nobleness, the enthusiasm of his new brethren would more 
than compensate for the influence and admiration which he had voluntarily 
forfeited ; and that to pluck with them the fair fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — 
would be a bliss for which he might cheerfully abandon the whole world 
beside. No wonder that " he essayed to join himself to the disciples." 1 His 
knowledge of human nature might indeed have warned him that " confidence 
is a plant of slow growth " — that such a reception as he yearned for was 
hardly possible. It may be that he counted too much on the change wrought 
in human dispositions by the grace of God. The old Adam is oftentimes too 
strong for young Melancthon. 

For, alas ! a new trial awaited him. Peter, indeed, whom he had expressly 
come to see, at once received him with the large generosity of that impulsive 
heart, and being a married man, offered him hospitality without grudging. 2 
But at first that was all. It speaks no little for the greatness and goodness of 
Peter — it is quite in accordance with that natural nobleness which we should 
expect to find in one whom Jesus Himself had loved and blessed — that he was 
the earliest among the brethren to rise above the influence of suspicion. He 
was at this time the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. As such he had not 
been among those who fled before the storm. He must have known that it was 
at the feet of this young Pharisee that the garments of Stephen's murderers 
had been laid. He must have feared him, perhaps even have hidden himself 
from him, when he forced his way into Christian homes. ISTay, more, the heart 
of Peter must have sorely ached when he saw his little congregation slain, 
scattered, destroyed, and the coenobitic community, the faith of which had been 
so bright, the enthusiasm so contagious, the common love so tender and so 
pure, rudely broken up by the pitiless persecution of a Pupil of the Schools. 
Yet, with the unquestioning trustfulness of a sunny nature — with that spiritual 
insight into character by which a Divine charity not only perceives real worth, 
but even creates worthiness where it did not before exist — Peter opens his door 
to one whom a meaner man might well have excluded as still too possibly a 
wolf amid the fold. 

But of the other leaders of the Church — if there were any at that time in 
Jerusalem — not one came near the new convert, not one so much as spoke to 
him. He was met on every side by cold, distrustful looks. At one stroke he 
had lost all his old friends ; it scorned to be too likely that he would gain no 
new ones in their place. The brethren regarded him with terror and mistrust; 
they did not believe that he was a disciple at all. 3 The facts which accom- 

I Acts ix. 26. 2 Gal. i. 18. 

3 Acts ix. 26, eTreipaTo KoXXaaBau. tois /aa0r)Tai? (the imperfect marks an unsuccessful 

effort) koi r-irres i<j>oflwi/TO olvtw, firi nunevoi/Tes oti latw /xaflqnjs. 



SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM. 131 

panied Ms alleged conversion they may indeed have heard of ; but they had 
occurred three years before. The news of his recent preaching and recent peril 
in Damascus was not likely to have reached them ; but even if it had, it would 
have seemed so strange that they might be pardoned for looking with doubt on 
the persecutor turned brother — for even fearing that the asserted conversion 
might only be a ruse to enable Saul to learn their secrets, and so entrap them 
to their final ruin. And thus at first his intercourse with the brethren in the 
Church of Jerusalem was almost confined to his reception in the house of 
Peter. " Other of the Apostles saw I none," he writes to the Galatians, 
" save James the Lord's brother." But though he saw James, Paul seems to 
have had but little communion with him. All that we know of the first Bishop 
of Jerusalem shows us the immense dissimilarity, the almost antipathetic 
peculiarities which separated the characters of the two men. Even with the 
Lord Himself, if we may follow the plain language of the Gospels, 1 the eldest 
of His brethren seems, during His life on earth, to have had but little commu- 
nion. He accepted indeed His Messianic claims, but he accepted them in the 
Judaic sense, and was displeased at that in His life which was most unmis- 
takably Divine. If he be rightly represented by tradition as a Legalist, a 
Nazarite, almost an Essene, spending his whole fife in prayer in the Temple, 
it was his obedience to Mosaism — scarcely modified in any external particular 
by liis conversion to Christianity — which had gained for him even from the 
Jews the surname of " the Just." If, as seems almost demonstrable, he be 
the author of the Epistle which bears his name, we see how slight was the ex- 
tent to which his spiritual life had been penetrated by those special aspects 
of the one great truth which were to Paul the very breath and life of Chris- 
tianity. In that Epistle we find a stern and noble morality which raises it 
infinitely above the reproach of being " a mere Epistle of straw ;" 2 but we 
nevertheless do not find one direct word about the Incarnation, or the Cruci- 
fixion, or the Atonement, or Justification by Faith, or Sanctification by the 
Spirit, or the Resurrection of the Dead. The notion that it was written to 
counteract either the teaching of St. Paul, or the dangerous consequences 
which might sometimes be deduced from that teaching, is indeed most 
extremely questionable ; and all that we can say of that supposition is, that it 
is not quite so monstrous a chimera as that which has been invented by the 
German theologians, who see St. Paul and his followers indignantly though 
covertly denounced in the Balaam and Jezebel of the Churches of Pergamoa 
and Thyatira, 3 and the Mcolaitans of the Church of Ephesus, 4 and the 
" synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie,' 5 of the 
Church of Philadelphia. 5 And yet no one can read the Epistle of James side 
by side with any Epistle of St. Paul's without perceiving how wide were the 
differences between the two Apostles. St. James was a man eminently inflex* 

1 Matt. xii. 46 ; Mark iii. 31 ; Luke viii. 19 ; John vii. 5. 

2 "Ein recht strohern Epistel, denn sie doch kein evangelisch Art an ihn hat" 
(Luther, Praef. i\T. T. t 1522) j but he afterwards modified his opinion. 

* Rev. ii. 20. * Rev. ii. 6. * Rev. iii. ft. 

* 2 



132 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

ible ; St. Paul knew indeed how to yield, but then the very points which he 
was least inclined to yield were those which most commanded the sympathy of 
James. What we know of Peter is exactly in accordance with the kind readi- 
ness with which he received the suspected and friendless Hellenist. What we 
know of James would have led us a priori to assume that his relations with 
Paul would never get beyond the formal character which they wear in the Acts 
of the Apostles, and still more in the Epistle to the Galatians. But let it not 
be assumed that because there was little apparent sympathy and co-operation 
between St. Paul and St. James, and because they dwell on apparently opposite 
aspects of the truth, we should for one moment be justified in disparaging 
either the one or the other. The divergences which seem to arise from the 
analysis of truth by individual minds are merged in the catholicity of a wider 
synthesis. When St. Paul teaches that we are " justified by faith," he is 
teaching a truth infinitely precious ; and St. James is also teaching a precious 
truth when, with a different shade of meaning in both words, he says that 
"by works a man is justified." 1 The truths which these two great Apostles 
were commissioned to teach were complementary and supplementary, but not 
contradictory of each other. Of both aspects of truth we are the inheritors. 
If it be true that they did not cordially sympathise with each other in their 
life- time, the loss was theirs; but, even in that case, they were not the first 
instances in the Church of God — nor will they be the last — in which two good 
men, through the narrowness of one or the vehemence of the other, have been 
too much beset by the spirit of human infirmity to be able, in all perfectness, 
to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 

The man who saved the new convert from this humiliating isolation — an 
isolation which must at that moment have been doubly painful — was the wise 
and generous Joseph. He has already been mentioned in the Acts as a Levite 
of Cyprus who, in spite of the prejudices of his rank, had been among the 
earliest to join the new community, and to sanction its happy communism by 
the sale of his own possessions. The dignity and sweetness of his character, 
no less than the sacrifices which he had made, gave him a deservedly high 
position among the persecuted brethren ; and the power with which he 
preached the faith had won for him the surname of Barnabas, or " the son of 
exhortation." 2 His intimate relations with Paul in after-days, his journey all 
the way to Tarsus from Antioch to invite his assistance, and the unity of their 
purposes until the sad quarrel finally separated them, would alone render it 
probable that they had known each other at that earlier period of life during 
which, for the most part, the closest intimacies are formed. Tradition asserts 
that Joseph had been a scholar of Gamaliel, and the same feeling which led 
him to join a school of which one peculiarity was its permission of Greek 

1 James ii. 24. It is hardly a paradox to say that St. James meant by "faith" 
something analogous to what St. Paul meant by works. 

- n*tf32 13, "son of prophecy." That he had been one of the Seventy is probably a 
mere guess. (Euseb. H. K. i. 12; Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 176.) " UapdK\r}ai<» late patet; 
ubi defidea excitat est hortatio, ubi tristitiae medetur est aolatiwm" (Bengel). 



SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM. 133 

learning, might have led him yet earlier to take a few hours' sail from Cyprus 
to see what could be learnt in the University of Tarsus. If so, he would 
naturally have come into contact with the family of Saul, and the friendship 
thus commenced would be continued at Jerusalem. It had been broken by the 
conversion of Barnabas, it was now renewed by the conversion of Saul. 

Perhaps also it was to this friendship that Saul owed his admission as a 
guest into Peter's house. There was a close link of union between Barnabas 
and Peter in the person of Mark, who was the cousin 1 of Barnabas, and whom 
Peter loved so tenderly that he calls him his son. The very house in which 
Peter lived may have been the house of Mary, the mother of Mark. It is 
hardly probable that the poor fisherman of Galilee possessed any dwelling of 
his own in the Holy City. At any rate, Peter goes to this house immediately 
after his liberation from prison, and if Peter lived in it, the relation of 
Barnabas to its owner would have given him some claim to ask that Saul 
should share its hospitality. Generous as Peter was, it would have required 
an almost superhuman amount of confidence to receive at once under his roof 
a man who had tried by the utmost violence to extirpate the very fibres of the 
Church. But if one so highly honoured as Barnabas was ready to vouch for 
him, Peter was not the man to stand coldly aloof. Thus it happened that 
Saul's earliest introduction to the families of those whom he had scattered 
would be made under the high auspices of the greatest of the Twelve. 

The imagination tries in vain to penetrate the veil of two thousand years 
which hangs between us and the intercourse of the two Apostles. Bam abas, 
we may be sure, must have been often present in the little circle, and must 
have held many an earnest conversation with his former friend. Mary, the 
mother of Mark, would have something to tell. 2 Mark may have been an eye- 
witness of more than one pathetic scene. But how boundless would be the 
wealth of spiritual wisdom which Peter must have unfolded ! Is it not certain 
that from those lips St. Paul must have heard about the Divine brightness of 
the dawning ministry of Jesus during the Galilyean year — about the raising of 
Jairus' daughter, and the Transfiguration on Hermon, and the discourse in the 
synagogue of Capernaum, and the awful scenes which had occurred on the 
day of the Crucifixion ? And is it not natural to suppose that such a hearer — 
a hearer of exceptional culture, and enlightened to an extraordinary degree by 
the Holy Spirit of God — would grasp many of the words of the Lord with a 
firmness of grasp, and see into the very inmost heart of their significance 
with a keenness of insight, from which his informant might, in his turn, be 
glad to learn ? 

It must be a dull imagination that does not desire to linger for a moment 
on the few days during which two such men were inmates together of one 
obscure house in the city of Jerusalem. But however fruitful their inter- 
course, it did not at once secure to the new disciple a footing among the 

1 Col. iv. 10. 

2 St. John and other Apostles were probably absent, partly perhaps as a oonsequenqe 
pf the very persection in which Paul had been the prime mover. 



134 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

brethren whose poverty and persecutions he came to share. Then it was that 
Barnabas came forward, and saved Saul for the work of the Church. The 
same discrimination of character, the same charity of insight which afterwards 
made him prove Mark to be a worthy comrade of their second mission, in spite 
of his first defection, now made him vouch unhesitatingly for the sincerity of 
Saul. Taking him by the hand, he led him into the presence of the Apostles 
— the term being here used for Peter, 1 and James the Lord's brother, 2 and the 
elders of the assembled church — and there narrated to them the circumstances, 
which either they had never heard, or of the truth of which they had not yet been 
convinced. He told them of the vision on the road to Damascus, and of the 
fearlessness with which Saul had vindicated his sincerity in the very city to 
which he had come as an enemy. The words of Barnabas carried weight, and 
his confidence was contagious. Saul was admitted among the Christians on 
a footing of friendship, " going in and out among them." To the generosity 
and clear-sightedness of Joseph of Cyprus, on this and on a later occasion, the 
Apostle owed a vast debt of gratitude. Next only to the man who achieves 
the greatest and most blessed deeds is he who, perhaps himself wholly incap- 
able of such high work, is yet the first to help and encourage the genius of 
others. "We often do more good by our sympathy than by our labours, and 
render to the world a more lasting service by absence of jealousy, and recog- 
nition of merit, than we could ever render by the straining efforts of personal 
ambition. 

No sooner was Saul recognised as a brother, than he renewed the ministry 
which he had begun at Damascus. It is, however, remarkable that he did not 
venture to preach to the Hebrew Christians. He sought the synagogues of 
the Hellenists in which the voice of Stephen had first been heard, and disputed 
with an energy not inferior to his. It was incumbent on him, though it was a 
duty which required no little courage, that his voice should be uplifted in the 
name of the Lord Jesus in the places where it had been heard of old in 
blasphemy against Him. But this very circumstance increased his danger. 
His preaching was again cut short by a conspiracy to murder him. 3 

It was useless to continue in a place where to stay was certain death. 
The little Galilsean community got information of the plot. To do the Jews 
justice, they showed little skill in keeping the secret of these deadly 

1 Acts ix. 27; Gal. i. 19. The true reading in Gal. i. 18 seems to be "Kephas" 
(n, A, B, and the most important versions) ; as also in ii. 9, 11, 14. This Hebrew form 
of the name also occurs in 1 Cor. ix. 5. Although elsewhere (e.g. ii. 7, 8) St. Paul uses 
" Peter " indifferently with Cephas, as is there shown by the unanimity of the MSS., it 
seems clear that St. Paul's conception of St. Peter was one which far more identified him 
with the Judaic Church than with the Church in general. In the eyes of St. Paul, Simon 
was specially the Apostle of the Circumcision. 

2 Gal. i. 19, erepov 8e tu>v airocnoKoiv ovk etSov el /urj 'Iolkoj^ov . . . It is impossible from the 

form of the words to tell whether James is here regarded as in the strictest sense an 
Apostle or not. The addition of "the Lord's brother" — to o-efxvoKoymxa, as Chrysostom 
calls it — distinguishes him from James the brother of John, and from James the Less, 
the son of Alphaeus. 

3 Acts ix. 29, eirexeipouv avrbv avekelv. We know of at least ten such perils of assassin^ 
tion in the life of St. Paul, 



SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM. 135 

combinations. It was natural that the Church should not only desire tc save 
Saul's life, but also to avoid the danger of a fresh outbreak. Yet it was nof 
without a struggle, and a distinct intimation that such was the will of God 
that Saul yielded to the solicitations of his brethren. How deeply he felt this 
compulsory flight may be seen in the bitterness with which fie alludes to it 1 
even after the lapse of many years. He had scarcely been a fortnight in 
Jerusalem when the intensity of his prayers and emotions ended in a trance, 2 
during which he again saw the Divine figure and heard the Divine voice 
which had arrested his mad progress towards the gates of Damascus. " Make 
instant haste, and depart in speed from Jerusalem," said Jesus to him ; ,% for 
they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me." But to Saul it seemed 
incredible that his testimony could be resisted. If the vision of the risen 
Christ by which he had been converted was an argument which, from the 
nature of the case, could not, alone, be convincing to others, yet it seemed to 
Saul that, knowing what they did know of his intellectual power, and 
contrasting his present earnestness with his former persecution, they could 
not but listen to such a teacher as himself. He longed also to undo, so far as 
in him lay, the misery and mischief of the past havoc he had wrought. But 
however deep may have been his yearnings, however ardent his hopes, the* 
answer came, brief and peremptory, " Go ! for I will send thee forth afar to 
the Gentiles."' 3 

All reluctance was now at an end ; and we can see what at the time must 
have been utterly dark and mysterious to St. Paul — that the coldness with 
which he was received at Jerusalem, and the half-apparent desire to 
precipitate his departure — events so alien to his own plans and wishes, that he 
pleads even against the Divine voice which enforced the indications of 
circumstance — were part of a deep providential design. Tears afterward, 
when St. Paul " stood pilloried on infamy's high stage," he was able with one 
of his strongest asseverations to appeal to the brevity of his stay in 
Jerusalem, and the paucity of those with whom he had any intercourse, in 
proof that it was not from the Church of Jerusalem that he had received his 
commission, and not to the Apostles at Jerusalem that he owed his alle- 
giance. Bat though at present all this was unforeseen by him, he yielded to 
the suggestions of his brethren, and scarcely a fortnight after his arrival they 
— not, perhaps, wholly sorry to part with one whose presence was a source of 
many embarrassments — conducted him to the coast town of Csesarea Stratonis 4 

1 1 Thess. ii. 15, " who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and drove 

Ui OUt ' vqjxa? eK&LU>£6.vT(ov). 

2 Acts xxri. 17. 

3 Acts sxii. 17 — 21. The omission of this vision in the direct narrative of Acts vs.. is 
a proof that silence as to this or that occurrence in the brief narrative of St. Luke must 
not be taken as a proof that he wa s unaware of the event which he omits. We may also 
note, in this passage, the first appearance of the interesting word ^6.prv?. Here doubtless 
it has its primary sense of "witness ; " but it contains the <germ of its later sense of one 
who testified to Christ by voluntary death. 

4 That he was not sent to Caesarea Philippi is almost too obvious to need argument. 
Neither Kar^yayov, which means a going downwards — i.e., to the coast — nor e£a5re'<rretA«*', 



136 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL 

to start him on his way to his native Tarsus. Of his movements on this 
occasion we hear no more in the Acts of the Apostles ; but in the Epistle to 
the Galatians he says that he came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, but 
remained a complete stranger to the churches of Judaea that were in Christ, 
all that they had heard of him being the rumours that their former persecutor 
was now an evangelist of the faith of which he was once a destroyer ; news 
which gave them occasion to glorify God in him. 1 

Since we next find him at Tarsus, it might have been supposed that he 
sailed there direct, and there remained. The expression, however, that " he 
came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia/' seems to imply that this was not 
the case. 2 Syria and Cilicia were at this time politically separated, and there 
is room for the conjecture that the ship in which the Apostle sailed was 
destined, not for Tarsus, but for Tyre, or Sidon, or Seleucia, the port of 
Antioch. The existence of friends and disciples of Saul in the Phoenician 
towns, and^the churches of Syria as well as Cilicia, 3 point, though only with 
dim uncertainty, to the possibility that he performed part of his journey to 
Tarsus by land, and preached on the way. There is even nothing impossible 
in Mr. Lewin's suggestion 4 that his course may have been determined by one 
of those three shipwrecks which he mentions that he had undergone. But 
the occasions and circumstances of the three shipwrecks must be left to the 
merest conjecture. They occurred during the period when St. Luke was not 
a companion of St. Paul, and he has thought it sufficient to give from his own 
journal the graphic narrative of that later catastrophe of which he shared the 
perils. The active ministry in Syria and Cilicia may have occupied the period 
between Saul's departure in the direction of Tarsus, and his summons to 
fresh fields of labour in the Syrian Antioch. During this time he may have 
won over to the faith some of the members of his own family, and may have 
enjoyed the society of others who were in Christ before him. But all is 
uncertain, nor can we with the least confidence restore the probabilities of a 
period of which even the traditions have for centuries been obliterated. The 
stay of Saul at Tarsus was on any supposition a period mainly of waiting and 
of preparation, of which the records had no large significance in the history 
of the Christian faith. The fields in which he was to reap were whitening for 
the harvest ; the arms of the reaper were being strengthened and his heart 
prepared. 

would at all suit the long journey northwards to Csesarea Philippi ; nor is it probable 
that Saul would go to Tarsus by land, travelling in the direction of the dangerous 
Damascus, when he could go so much more easily by sea. It is a more interesting 
inquiry whether, as has been suggested, these words Ka-r^yayov and e^aTrecrreiW, imply a 
more than ordinary amount of 'passivity in the movements of Paul ; and whether in this 
case the passiveness was due to the attacks of illness which were the sequel of his late 
vision. 

1 Gal. i. 21 — 24, tj/xt)i> ayyoov/oiei/os . . . aKOvoi/res ^crav . . . evayyeKC^erai 
hnpBei. 

2 Gal. i. 21. The expression is not indeed decisive, since Cilicia might easily be 
regarded as a mere definitive addition to describe the part of Syria to which he went 
(Ewald, Oesch. d. Apost. Zeitalt. p. 439.) 

* Acts xxi. 2 ; xxvii. 3 ; xv. 23, 41, « St. Paul, i. 77. 



GAIUS AND THE JEWS— PEACE OF THE CHURCH. 137 

CHAPTER XIY. 

GAIUS AND THE JEWS — PEACE OF THE CHURCH. 

"Keliqua ut de monstro narranda sunt." — Suet. Calig. 

Immediately after the hasty flight of Saul from Jerusalem, St. Luke adds, 1 
" Then had the church rest throughout the whole of Judaea, and Galilee, and 
Samaria, being built up, and walking in the fear of the Lord ; and by the 
exhortation of the Holy Spirit was multiplied." At first sight it might 
almost seem as though this internal peace, which produced such happy 
growth, was connected in the writer's mind with the absence of one whose 
conversion stirred up to madness the prominent opponents of the Church. It 
may be, however, that the turn of his expression is simply meant to resume 
the broken thread of his narrative. The absence of molestation, which caused 
the prosperity of the faith, is sufficiently accounted for by the events which 
were now happening in the Pagan world. The pause in the recorded career 
of the Apostle enables us also to pause and survey some of the conflicting 
conditions of Jewish and Gentile life as they were illustrated at this time by 
prominent events. It need hardly be said that such a survey has an im- 
mediate bearing on the conditions of the Days after Christ, and on the work 
of His great Apostle. 

A multitude of concurrent arguments tend to show that Saul was con- 
verted early A.D. 37, and this brief stay at Jerusalem must therefore have 
occurred in the year 39. Now in the March of A.D. 37 Tiberius died, and 
Gaius — whose nickname of Caligula, or " Bootling," given him in his infancy 
by the soldiers of his father Germanicus, has been allowed to displace his true 
name — succeeded to the lordship of the world. Grim as had been the 
despotism of Tiberius, he extended to the religion of the Jews that contemp- 
tuous toleration which was the recognised principle of Roman policy. When 
Pilate had kindled their fanaticism by hanging the gilt shields in his palace at 
Jerusalem, 2 Tiberius, on an appeal being made to him, reprimanded the 
officiousness of his Procurator, and ordered him to remove the shields to 
Csesarea. It is true that he allowed four thousand Jews to be deported from 
Rome to Sardinia, and punished with remorseless severity those who, from 
dread of violating the Mosiac law, refused to take military service. 3 This 
severity was not, however, due to any enmity against the race, but only to his 
indignation against the designing hypocrisy which, under pretence of prose- 
lytising, had won the adhesion of Fulvia, a noble Roman lady, to the Jewish 
religion ; and to the detestable rascality with which her teacher and his com- 
panions had embezzled the presents of gold and purple which she had 
entrusted to them as an offering for the Temple at Jerusalem. Even this did 

1 Acts ix. 31, y ixev oSv eKK\r)<rla («, A, B, C, and the chief versions). I follow what 
to me to be the best punctuation of the verse. 

2 Life of Christ, ii. 362. * Jos. Antt. xviii. 3—5; Suet. Tib. xxxvi. 



138 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

not prevent Mm from protecting the Jews as far as he could in their own 
country ; and when Yitellius, the Legate of Syria, had decided that there was 
prima facie cause for the complaints which had been raised against the 
Procurator in all three divisions of his district, it is probable that Pilate, who 
was sent to Rome to answer for his misdemeanours, would have received 
strict justice from the aged Emperor. But before Pilate arrived Tiberius 
had ended his long life of disappointment, crime, and gloom. 

The accession of Gaius was hailed by the whole Roman world with a burst 
of rapture, 1 and there were none to whom it seemed more likely to introduce a 
golden era of prosperity than to the Jews. For if the young Emperor had 
any living friend, it was Herod Agrippa. That prince, if he could command 
but little affection as a grandson of Herod the Great, had yet a claim to 
Jewish loyalty as a son of the murdered Aristobulus, a grandson of the 
murdered Mariamne, and therefore a direct lineal descendant of that great 
line of Asmonsean princes whose names recalled the last glories of Jewish 
independence. Accordingly, when the news reached Jerusalem that Tiberius 
at last was dead, the Jews heaved a sigh of relief, and not only took with 
perfect readiness the oath of allegiance to Gaius, which was administered by 
Vitellius to the myriads who had thronged to the Peast of Pentecost, but 
offered speedy and willing holocausts for the prosperity of that reign which 
was to bring them a deeper misery, and a more absolute humiliation, than any 
which had been inflicted on them during the previous dominion of Rome. 2 

Gaius lost no time in publicly displaying his regard for the Herodian 
prince, who, with remarkable insight, had courted his friendship, not only 
before his accession was certain, but even in spite of the distinct recommenda- 
tion of the former Emperor. 3 

One day, while riding in the same carriage as Gaius, Agrippa was im- 
prudent enough to express his wish for the time when Tiberius would bequeath 
the Empire to a worthier successor. Such a remark might easily be construed 
into a crime of high treason, or laesa majestas. In a court which abounded 
with spies, and in which few dared to express above a whisper their real 
thoughts, it was natural that the obsequious slave who drove the chariot 
should seek an audience from Tiberius to communicate what he had heard; 
and when by the influence of Agrippa hhnself he had gained this opportunity, 
his report made the old Emperor so indignant, that he ordered the Jewish 

» Suet. Calig. 13, 14. 

2 Compare for this entire narrative Suet. Caligula; Philo, Leg. ad Gaium, and in 
Flaccum ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 9 ; B. J. ii. 10 ; Dio Cass. lix. 8, seq. ; Gratz, iii. 270—277 J 
Jahn, Hebr. Commonwealth, 174. 

3 The adventures of Herod Agrippa I. form one of the numerous romances which 
give us so clear a glimpse of the state of society during the early Empire. Sent to Rome 
by his grandfather, he had breathed from early youth the perfumed and intoxicating 
atmosphere of the Imperial Court as a companion of Drusus, the son of Tiberius. On 
the death of Drusus he was excluded from Court, and was brought to the verge of 
guicide by the indigence which followed a course of extravagance. Saved from his 
purpose by his wife Cypres, he went through a series of debts, disgraces, and escapades, 
until he was once more admitted to favour by Tiberius at Capreae. 



OAITTS AND THE JEWS — PEACE OP THE CHURCH. 139 

prince to be instantly arrested. Clothed as he was in royal purple, Agrippa 
was seized, pnt in chains, and taken off: to a prison, in which he languished 
for the six remaining months of the life of Tiberius. Almost the first 
thought of Gaius on his accession was to relieve the friend who had paid him 
such assiduous court before his fortunes were revealed. Agrippa was at once 
released from custody. A few days after, Gaius sent for him, put a diadem 
on his head, conferred on him the tetrarchies of Herod Philip and of 
Lysanias, and presented him with a golden chain of equal weight with the 
iron one with which he had been bound. 

Now, although Agrippa wsls a mere unprincipled adventurer, yet he had 
the one redeeming feature of respect for the external religion of his race. 
The Edomite admixture in his blood had not quite effaced the more generous 
instincts of an Asmonsean prince, nor had the sty of Caprese altogether made 
him forget that he drew his line from the Priest of Modin. The Jews might 
well have expected that, under an Emperor with whom their prince was a 
bosom friend, their interests would be more secure than they had been even 
under a magnanimous Julius and a liberal Augustus. Their hopes were 
doomed to the bitterest disappointment ; nor did any reign plunge them into 
more dreadful disasters than the reign of Agrippa's friend. 

In August, A.D. 38, Agrippa arrived at Alexandria on his way to his new 
kingdom. His arrival was so entirely free from ostentation — for, indeed, 
Alexandria, where his antecedents were not unknown, was the last city in 
which he would have wished to air his brand-new royalty — that though he 
came in sight of the Pharos about twilight, he ordered the captain to stay in 
the ofling till dark, that he might land unnoticed. 1 But the presence in the 
city of one who was at once a Jew, a king, an Iduniaean, a Herod, and a 
favourite of Csesar, would not be likely to remain long a secret ; and if it was 
some matter of exultation to the Jews, it exasperated beyond all bounds the 
envy of the Egyptians. Flaccus, the Governor of Alexandria, chose to regard 
Agrippa's visit as an intentional insult to himself, and by the abuse which he 
heaped in secret upon the Jewish prince, encouraged the insults in which the 
mob of Alexandria were only too ready to indulge. Unpopular everywhere, 
the Jews were regarded in Alexandria with special hatred. Their wealth , 
their numbers, their usuries, their exclusiveness, the immunities which the 
two first Csesars had granted them, 2 filled the worthless populace of a hybrid 
city with fury and loathing. A Jewish hing was to them a conception at once 
ludicrous and offensive. Every street rang with lampoons against him, every 
theatre and puppet-show echoed with ribald farces composed in his insult, 
At last the wanton mob seized on a poor naked idiot named Carabbas, who 
had long been the butt of mischievous boys, and carrying him off to the 
Gymnasium, clothed him in a door-mat, by way of a tallith, flattened a 

1 Derenbourg is therefore mistaken (p. 222) that Agrippa " se donna la puerile satis- 
faction detaler son luxe royal dans l'endroit ou naguere il avait traine une si honteuse 
misere." 

2 Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, 2 j xix. 5, 2, and xiv. 10, passim (Decrees of Julius). 



140 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

papyrus leaf as his diadem, gave him a stalk of papyrus for a sceptre, and 
surrounding him with a mimic body-guard of youths armed with sticks, pro- 
ceeded to bow the knee before him, and consult him on state affairs. They 
ended the derisive pageant by loud shouts of Maris ! Maris ! the Syriac word 
for " Lord." 

Encouraged by impunity and the connivance of the Prsefect they then 
bribed him to acquiesce in more serious outrages. First they raised a cry 
to erect images of Gaius in the synagogues, hoping thereby to provoke the 
Jews into a resistance which might be interpreted as treason. This was to 
set an example which might be fatal to the Jews, not only in Egypt, but in 
all other countries. Irritated, perhaps, by the determined attitude of the 
Jews, Flaccus, in spite of the privileges which had long been secured to them 
by law and charter, published an edict in which he called them " foreigners 
and aliens," and drove them all into a part of a single quarter of the city in 
which it was impossible for them to live. The mob then proceeded to break 
open and plunder the shops of the deserted quarter, blockaded the Jews in 
their narrow precincts, beat and murdered all who in the pangs of hunger 
ventured to leave it, and burnt whole families alive, sometimes with green 
fuel, which added terribly to their tortures. Flaccus, for his part, arrested 
thirty-eight leading members of their Council, and after having stripped them 
of all their possessions, had them beaten, not with rods by the lictors, but 
with scourges by the lowest executioners, with such severity that some of 
them died in consequence. Their houses were rifled, in the hope of finding 
arms ; but though nothing whatever was found, except common table-knives, 
men and women were dragged into the theatre, commanded to eat swine's 
flesh, and tortured if they refused. 1 

But neither these attempts to win popularity among the Gentile inhabi- 
tants by letting loose their rage against their Jewish neighbours, nor his 
ostentatious public loyalty and fulsome private flatteries saved Flaccus from 
the fate which he deserved. These proceedings had barely been going on for 
two months, when Gaius sent a centurion with a party of soldiers, who 
landing after dark, proceeded at once to the house of Stephanion, a freed- 
man of Tiberius, with whom Flaccus happened to be dining, arrested him 
without difficulty, and brought him to Rome. Here he found that two low 
demagogues, Isidoras and Lampo, who had hitherto been among his parasites, 
and who had constantly fomented his hatred of the Jews, were now his chief 
accusers. He was found guilty. His property was confiscated, and he was 
banished, first to the miserable rock of Gyara, in the iEgean, and then to 
Andros. In one of those sleepless nights which were at once a symptom and 
an aggravation of his madness.Gaius, meditating on the speech of an exile whom 
he had restored, that during his banishment he used to pray for the death of 
Tiberius, determined to put an end to the crowd of distinguished criminals 
which imperial tyranny had collected on the barren islets of the Mediterranean, 

1 There seem to be distinct allusions to these troubles in 3 Maco. (passim,). 



GAIUS AND THE JEWS — PEACE OF THE CHURCH. 141 

Flaccus was among the earliest victims, and Philo narrates with too gloating 
a vindictiveness the horrible manner in which he was hewn to pieces in a ditch 
by the despot's emissaries. 1 

Gaius had begun his reign with moderation, but the sudden change from 
the enforced simplicity of his tutelage to the boundless luxuries and lusts of 
his autocracy — the sudden plung-e into all things which, as Philo 2 says, 
" destroy both soul and body and all the bonds which unite and strengthen 
the two " — brought on the illness which altered the entire organism of his 
brain. Up to that time he had been a vile and cruel man ; thenceforth he 
was a mad and sanguinary monster. It was after this illness, and the im- 
mediately subsequent murders of Tiberius Gemellus, Macro, and Marcus 
Silanus, which delivered him from all apprehension of rivalry or restraint, 
that he began most violently to assert his godhead. His predecessors would 
have regarded it as far less impious to allow themselves or their fortunes to 
be regarded as divine, than to arrogate to themselves the actual style and 
attributes of existing deities. 3 But disdaining all mere demi-gods like Tro- 
phonius and Amphiaraus, Gaius began to appear in public, first in the guise 
of Hercules, or Bacchus, or one of the Dioscuri, and then as Apollo, or Mars, 
or Mercury, or even Yenus (!), and demanded that choruses should be sung in 
his honour under these attributes ; and, lastly, he did not hesitate to assert his 
perfect equality with Jupiter himself. The majority of the Romans, partly 
out of abject terror, partly out of contemptuous indifference, would feel little 
difficulty in humouring these vagaries ; but the Jews, to their eternal honour, 
refused at all costs to sanction this frightful concession of divine honours to 
the basest of mankind. As there were plenty of parasites in the Court of 
Gaius who would lose no opportunity of indulging their spite against the 
Jews, an ingrained hatred of the whole nation soon took possession of his 
mind. The Alexandrians were not slow to avail themselves of this antipathy. 
They were well aware that the most acceptable flattery to the Emperor, and 
the most overwhelming insult to the Jews, was to erect images of Gaius in 
Jewish synagogues, and they not only did this, but even in the superb and 
celebrated Chief Synagogue of Alexandria 4 they erected a bronze statue in 
an old gilt quadriga which had once been dedicated to Cleopatra. 

Of all these proceedings Gaius was kept informed, partly by his delighted 
study of Alexandrian newspapers, which Philo says that he preferred to all 
other literature, and partly by the incessant insults against the Jews distilled 
into his ears by Egyptian buffoons like the infamous Helicon. 5 

The sufferings of the Jews in Alexandria at last became so frightful that 
they despatched the venerable Philo with four others on an embassy to the 

1 It is not impossible that Herod Antipas may have perished in consequence of this 
same order of Gaius. It is true that Suetonius (Calig. 28) only says, "Misit circum 
insulas qui omnes (exsules) trucidarent ; " but the cause would apply as much to al] 
political exiles, and Dion (hx. 18) distinctly says that he put Antipas to death (/caTeo-4>a£e). 
The trial of Antipas took place at Puteoli shortly before the Philonian embassy, A.D. 39. 

2 Be Leg. 2. 3 See Excursus XII., "Apotheosis of Roman Emperors." 
4 The Diapleuston. 5 Philo, Leg. John xxv. 



142 THE LIFE AND WOKK OP ST. PAUL. 

insane youth whom they refused to adore. Philo has left us an account of 
this embassy, which, though written with his usual rhetorical diffuseness, is 
intensely interesting as a record of the times. It opens for us a little window 
into the daily life of the Imperial Court at Home within ten years of the death 
of Christ. 

The first interview of the ambassadors with Gaius took place while he 
was walking in his mother's garden on the banks of the Tiber, and the 
apparent graciousness of his reception deceived all of them except Philo him- 
self. After having been kept waiting for some time, the Jews were ordered 
to follow him to Puteoli, and there it was that a man with disordered aspect 
and bloodshot eyes rushed up to them, and with a frame that shivered with 
agony and in a voice broken with sobs, barely succeeded in giving utterance to 
the horrible intelligence that Gaius had asserted his intention of erecting a 
golden colossus of himself with the attributes of Jupiter in the Holy of Holies 
at Jerusalem. After giving way to their terror and agitation, the ambassadors 
asked the cause of this diabolical sacrilege, and were informed that it was due 
to the advice of " that scorpion-like slave," Helicon, who with " a poisonous 
Ascalonite " named Apelles — a low tragic actor — had made the suggestion 
during the fit of rage with which Gaius heard that the Jews of Jamnia had 
torn down a trumpery altar which the Gentiles of the city had erected to his 
deity with no other intention than that of wounding and insulting them. 

So far from this being a transient or idle threat, Gaius wrote to Petronius, 
the Legate of Syria, and ordered him to carry it out with every precaution and 
by main force ; and though the legate was well aware of the perilous nature of 
the undertaking, he had been obliged to furnish the necessary materials for 
the statue to the artists of Sidon. 

No sooner had the miserable Jews heard of this threatened abomination of 
desolation, than they yielded themselves to such a passion of horror as made 
them forget every other interest. It was no time to be persecuting Christians 
when the most precious heritage of their religion was at stake. Flocking to 
Phoenicia in myriads, until they occupied the whole country like a cloud, they 
divided themselves into six companies of old men, youths, boys, aged women, 
matrons, and virgins, and rent the air with their howls and supplications, as 
they lay prostrate on the earth and scattered the dust in handfuls upon their 
heads. Petronius, a sensible and honourable man, was moved by their abject 
misery, and with the object of gaining time, ordered the Sidonian artists to 
make their statue very perfect, intimating not very obscurely that he wished 
them to be as long over it as possible. Meanwhile, in order to test the Jews, 
he went from Acre to Tiberias, and there the same scenes were repeated. For 
forty days, neglecting the sowing of their fields, they lay prostrate on the 
ground, and when the legate asked them whether they meant to make war 
against Caesar, they said, No, but they were ready to die rather than see their 
temple desecrated, and in proof of their sincerity stretched out their throats. 
Seeing the obstinacy of their resolution, besieged by the entreaties of Aris- 
tobulus and Heleias the elder, afraid, too, that a famine would be caused by 



GAirS AND THE JEWS — PEACE OF THE CHTIECH. 143 

fche neglect of tillage.. Petronius, though at the risk of his own life, promised thb 
Jews that he would write and intercede for them, if they would separate peace- 
ably and attend to their husbandry. It was accepted by both Jews and Gentiles 
as a sign of the special blessing of God on this brave and humane decision, 
that no sooner had Petronius finished his speech than, after long drought, tho 
sky grew black with clouds, and there was an abundant rain. He kept his 
word. He wrote a letter to Gains, telling him that if the affair of the statue 
were pressed the Jews would neglect their harvest and there would be great 
danger lest he should find the whole country in a state of starvation, which 
might be even dangerous for himself and his suite, if he carried out his 
intended visit. 

Aleanwhile, in entire ignorance of all that had taken place, Agrippa had 
anived at Rome, and he at once read in the countenance of the Emperor that 
something had gone wrong. On hearing what it was, he fell down in a fit, 
and lay for some time in a deep stupor. By the exertion of his whole influence 
with Gaius he only succeeded in procuring a temporary suspension of the 
design : and it was not long before the Emperor announced the intention of 
taking with him from Rome a colossus of gilded bronze — in order to cut off 
all excuse for delay — and of personally superintending its erection in the 
Temple, which would henceforth be regarded as dedicated to " the new 
Jupiter, the illustrious Gains."' Even during his brief period of indecision he 
was so angry with Petronius for the humanity that he had shown that he 
wrote him a letter commanding him to commit suicide if he did not want to 
die by the hands of the executioner. 

These events, and the celebrated embassy of Philo to Gaius, of which he has 
left us so painfully graphic a description, probably took place in the August 
of the year 40. In the January of the following year the avenging sword of 
the brave tribune Cassius Chaerea rid the world of the intolerable despot. 1 
The vessel which had carried to Petronius the command to commit suicide, 
was fortunately delayed by stormy weather, and only arrived twenty-seven 
days after intelligence had been received that the tyrant was dead. From 
Claudius — who owed his throne entirely to the subtle intrigues of Agrippa — 
the Jews received both kindness and consideration. Petronius was ordered 
thenceforth to suppress and punish all attempts to insult them 2 in the quiet 
exercise of their religious duties; and Chiudius utterly forbad that prayers 
should be addressed or sacrifices offered to h im self. 3 

1 The Jews believed that a Bath Ktl from the Holy of Holies had announced his death 
to the High Priest (Simon the Just), and the anniversary was forbidden to be ever 
■haerved as a fast day [Megillath Taanttk, § 26; Sotah, f. 33, 1; Derenbourg, Palest. 
p. 207). 

2 5iee the decree of Claudius against; the inhabitants of Dor, who had set up his statue 
in a Jewish synagogue. 

* Dion,lx.5. 



144 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

4Soofc g& 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE GENTILE& 
CHAPTER XY. 

THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 

" Whenever I look at Peter, my very heart leaps for joy. If I could paint a 
portrait of Peter I would paint upon every hair of his head 1 1 believe in the for- 
giveness of sins.' "—Luther. 

" Quel Padre vetusto 
Di santa chiesa, a cui Cristo le chiavi 
Kacommando di questo nor venusto." 

Dante, Paradise*, xxxii. 124. 

'•Blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor 
imagined wicked things against God : for unto him shall he given the special gift of 
faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable to his mind. 
For glorious is the fruit of good labours : and the root of wisdom shall never fall 
away." — Wisd. iii. 14, 15. 

The peace, the progress, the edification, the holiness of the Church, were 
caused, no doubt, by that rest from persecution which seems to have been due 
to the absorption of the Jews in the desire to avert the outrageous sacrilege of 
Gaius. And yet we cannot but ask with surprise whether the Christians 
looked on with indifference at the awful insult which was being aimed at their 
national religion. It would mark a state of opinion very different from what 
we should imagine if they had learnt to regard the unsullied sanctity of 
Jehovah's Temple as a thing in which they had no longer any immediate 
concern. Can we for one moment suppose that James the Lord's brother, or 
Simon the Zealot, were content to enjoy their freedom from molestation, 
without caring to take part in the despairing efforts of their people to move 
the compassion of the Legate of Syria ? Is it conceivable that they would 
have stayed quietly at home while the other Jews in tens of thousands were 
streaming to his headquarters at Caesarea, or flinging the dust upon their heads 
as they lay prostrate before him at Tiberias ? Or was it their own personal 
peril which kept them from mingling among masses of fanatics who indignantly 
rejected their co-operation ? Were they forced to confine their energies to the 
teaching of the infant churches of Palestine because they were not even 
allowed to participate in the hopes and fears of their compatriots ? We may 
fairly assume that the Jewish Christians abhorred the purposed sacrilege ; but 
if the schools of Hillel and Shammai, and the cliques of Hanan and Herod, 
hated them only one degree less than they hated the minions of Gaius, it is 
evident that there could have been nothing for the Apostles to do but to rejoice 
over their immediate immunity from danger, and to employ the rest thus 
granted them for the spread of the Kingdom of God. The kings of the earth 
might rage, and the princes imagine vain things, but they, at least, could kisa 



THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 145 

the Son, 1 and win the blessing of those who trusted in the Lord. It was the 
darkest midnight of the world's history, but the Goshen of Christ's Church 
was brightening more and more with the silver dawn. 

To this outward peace and inward development was due an event which 
must continue to have the most memorable importance to the end of time — the 
admission of Gentiles, as Gentiles, into the Church of Christ. This great 
event must have seemed inevitable to men like St. Stephen, whose training as 
Hellenists had emancipated them from the crude spirit of Jewish isolation. 
But the experience of all history shows how difficult it is for the mind to shake 
itself free from views which have become rather instinctive than volitional ; 
and though Jesus had uttered words which could only have one logical explana- 
tion, the older disciples, even the Apostles themselves, had not yet learnt their 
full significance. The revelation of God in Christ had been a beam in the 
darkness. To pour suddenly upon the midnight a full flood of spiritual 
illumination would have been alien to the method of God's dealings with our 
race. The dayspring had risen, but many a long year was to elapse before it 
broadened into the boundless noon. 

But the time had now fully come in which those other sheep of which Jesus 
had spoken — the other sheep which were not of this fold 2 — must be brought 
to hear His voice. Indirectly, as well as directly, the result was due to St. 
Paul in a degree immeasurably greater than to any other man. To St. Peter, 
indeed, as a reward for his great confession, had been entrusted the keys of the 
Kingdom of Heaven ; and, in accordance with this high metaphor, to him was 
permitted the honour of opening to the Gentiles the doors of the Christian 
Church. And that this was so ordained is a subject for deep thankfulness. 
The struggle of St. Paul against the hostility of Judaism from without and 
the leaven of Judaism from within was severe and lifelong, and even at his 
death faith alone could have enabled him to see that it had not been in vain. 
But the glorious effort of his life must have been fruitless had not the principle 
at stake been publicly conceded — conceded in direct obedience to sanctions 
which none ventured to dispute — by the most eminent and most authoritative 
of the Twelve. And yet, though St. Peter was thus set apart by Divine fore- 
sight to take the initiative, it was to one whom even the Twelve formally 
recognised as the Apostle of the Uncircumcision, that the world owes under 
God the development of Christian faith into a Christian theology, and the 
emancipation of Christianity from those Judaic limitations which would have 
been fatal to its universal acceptance. 3 To us, indeed, it is obvious that " it 
would have been impossible for the Gentiles to adopt the bye-laws of a 
Ghetto." If the followers of Christ had refused them the right-hand of 
fellowship on any other conditions, then the world would have gone its own 

1 Ps. ii. 12, "O lpiz?3, either "kiss the Son," or "worship purely." Which rendering i 3 
right has been a disputed point ever since Jerome's day {Adv. Buff.i.). See Perowne, 
JPsahns, i. 116. 

2 John x. 16. In this verse it is a pity that the English version makes no distinction 
between av^, "fold," and tvoi^vt], "flock." 

3 Immer, Neut. Theol. 206. 

K 



146 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

way, and Mammon and Belial and Beelzebub would have rejoiced in the 
undisturbed corruption of a Paganism which was sinking deeper and deeper into 
the abyss of shame. 

And as this deliverance of the Gentiles was due directly to the letters and 
labours of St. Paul, so the first beginnings of it rose indirectly from the 
consequences of the persecutions of which he had been the most fiery agent. 
The Ttavager of the Faith was unconsciously proving himself its most 
powerful propagator. When he was making havoc of the Church, its 
members, who were thus scattered abroad, went everywhere preaching the 
word. To the liberal Hellenists this was a golden opportunity, and Philip, 
who had been a fellow-worker with Stephen, gladly seized it to preach the 
Gospel to the hated Samaritans. The eye of Jesus had already gazed in that 
country on fields whitening to the harvests, and the zeal of Philip, aided by 
high spiritual gifts, not only won a multitude of converts, but even arrested 
the influence of a powerful goes, or sorcerer, named Simon. 1 Justin Martyr 
calls him Simon of Gitton, and he has been generally identified with Simon 
Magus, the first heresiarch, 2 and with Simon the Cyprian, whom Felix 
employed to entrap the wandering affections of the Queen Drusilla. This 
man, though — as afterwards appeared — with the most interested and unworthy 
motives, went so far as to receive baptism; and the progress of the faith 
among his former dupes was so remarkable as to require the immediate pre- 
sence of the Apostles. St. Peter and St. John went from Jerusalem to confirm 
the converts, and their presence resulted not only in the public discomfiture 
of Simon, 3 but also in that outpouring of special manifestations which 
accompanied the gift of the promised Comforter. 

But Philip had the honour of achieving yet another great conversion, 
destined to prove yet more decisively that the day was at hand when the 
rules of Judaism were to be regarded as obsolete. Guided by divine im- 
pressions and angel voices he had turned his • steps southward along the 
desert road which leads from Eleutheropolis to Gaza, 4 and there had en- 

1 As I have no space to give an account of the strange career and opinions of this 
"hero of the Romance of Heresy," as given in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and 
Recognitions, I must content myself by referring to Hippolyt. Philosoph. p. 161 seq. ; 
Iren. Haer. i. 23 ; Neander, Ch. Hist. i. 454 ; Planting, 51—64 ; Gieseler, Eccl. Hist. i. 
49 ; Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, 91—94 ; De Pressense, i. 396 seq. The stories about him 
are fabulous (Arnob. Adv. Gent. 11, 12), and the supposed statue to him (Just. Mart. 
Apol. i. 26, 56 ; Iren. Adv. Haer. i. 23 ; Tert. Apol. 13) is believed, from a tablet found 
in 1574 on the Insula Tiberina, to have been a statue to the Sabine God Semo Sancus 
(Baronius, in ann. 44 ; Burton, Bampt. Led. 375). A typical impostor of this epoch was 
Alexander of Abonoteichos (see Lucian, Pseudo-mantis, 10 — 51, and on the general 
prevalence of magic and theurgy, Dollinger, Judenth. u. Heidenth. viii. 2,"§ 7). 

2 iiacn?; aipea-eax; euperrfc (Cyril, Iren. adv. Hcer. i. 27 ; ii. praef.). " Gitton " may very 
likely be a confusion with Citium, whence " Chifctim," &c. 

3 From his endeavour to obtain spiritual functions by a bribe is derived the word 
simony. 

4 The awn) ea-riv eprjju.05 of viii. 26 probably refers to the road. Gaza was not destroyed 
till A.D. 65 (Robinson, Bibl. Res. ii. 640). Lange's notion {Apost. Zeit. ii. 109) that 
eprf/xo? means "a moral desert" is out of the question. Although paronomasia is so 
frequent a figure in the N. T., yet I cannot think that there is anything intentional in 
the eis Vd^av of 26, and the ttjs ya^js of 27. 



THE SAMARITANS— THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 14 1 ? 

countered the retinue of a wealthy Ethiopian ennnch, who held the high 
position of treasurer to the Kandake of Meroe. 1 There seems to be some 
reason for believing that this region had been to a certain extent converted to 
Judaism by Jews who penetrated into it from Egypt in the days of 
Psammetichus, whose descendants still exist under the name of Falasyan. 2 
The eunuch, in pious fulfilment of the duties of a Proselyte of the Gate — and 
his very condition rendered more than this impossible — had gone up to 
Jerusalem to worship, and not improbably to be present at one of the great 
yearly festivals. As he rode in his chariot at the head of his retinue he 
occupied his time, in accordance with the rules of the Rabbis, in studying the 
Scriptures, and he happened at the moment to be reading aloud in the LXX. 
version 3 the prophecy of Isaiah, " He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as 
a lamb before his shearer is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. In his 
humiliation his judgment was taken away, and his generation who shall 
declare ? for his life is being taken from the earth." 4 Philip asked him 
whether he understood what he was reading ? The eunuch confessed that it 
was all dark to him, and after having courteously invited Philip to take a seat 
in his chariot, asked who it was to whom the prophet was referring. Philip 
was thus enabled to unfold the Christian interpretation of the great scheme 
of prophecy, and so completely did he command the assent of his listener, 
that on their reaching a spring of water — possibly that at Bethsoron, not far 
from Hebron 5 — the eunuch asked to be baptised. The request was addressed 
to a large-hearted Hellenist, and was instantly granted, though there were 
reasons which might have made a James or a Simon hesitate. But in spite 
of the prohibition of Deuteronomy, 6 Philip saw that the Christian Church was 
to be an infinitely wider and more spiritual communion than that which had 
been formed by the Mosaic ritual. Recalling, perhaps, the magnificent 
prediction of Isaiah, 7 which seemed to rise above the Levitical prohibition — 
recalling, perhaps, also some of the tender words and promises of his Master, 
Christ — he instantly stepped down with the eunuch into the water. Without 
any recorded confession of creed or faith — for that which is introduced into 
Acts viii. 37 is one of the early instances of interpolation 8 — he administered 

1 The title of the -Queen of Meroe (Pliny, H.N. vi. 35 ; Dio Cass. liv. 5). (For the 
" treasure " of Ethiopia see Isa. xlv. 14). Ethiopian tradition gives the eunuch the name 
of Indich. On the relation of the Jews with Ethiopia see Zeph. iii. 10 ; Ps. lxviii. 31 ; and 
for another faithful Ethiopian eunuch, also a "king's servant" (Ebed-melech), Jer. 
xxxviii. 7 ; xxxix. 16. 

2 Kenan, Les Apotres, p. 158. 

3 Isa. liii. 7, 8. The quotation in Acts viii. 33 is from the LXX. We might have 
supposed that the eunuch was reading the ancient Ethiopic version founded on the LXX.; 
but in that case Philip would not have understood him. 

4 This passage differs in several respects from our Hebrew text. 

5 Josh. xv. 58 ; Neh. iii. 16 ; Jer. Ep. ciii. The spring is called Ain edh-Dhirweh. 
But Dr. Robinson fixes the site near Tell el-Hasy (Bibl. Res. ii. 641). The tradition which 
fixes it at Ai-n Haniyeh, near Jerusalem, is much later. 

6 Deut. xxiii. 1. As for the nationality of the Ethiopian it must be borne in mind 
that even Moses himself had once married an Ethiopian wife (Numb. xii. 1). 

7 Isa. lvi. 3, 8. 

8 It is not found in «, A, B, C, G, H, and the phrase rbv 'IijctoOi/ Xpto-rdv is unknown to 

K 2 



148 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

to one who was not only (as is probable) a Gentile by birth, but a eunuch by 
condition, the rite of baptism. The law of Deuteronomy forbade him to 
become a member of the Jewish Church, but Philip admitted him into that 
Christian communion 1 in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male 
nor female, neither bond nor free. 2 

The subsequent work of Philip in the towns of Philistia and the sea-coast, 
as well as during his long subsequent residence at Csesarea, 3 was doubtless 
fruitful, but for Christian history the main significance of his life lay in his 
successful mission to detested Samaritans, and in that bold baptism of the 
mutilated alien. Deacon though he was, he had not shrunk from putting into 
effect the Divine intimation which foreshadowed the ultimate obliteration 
of exclusive privileges. We cannot doubt that it was the fearless initiative 
of Philip which helped to shape the convictions of St. Peter, just as it was the 
avowed act of St. Peter which involved a logical concession of all those truths 
that were dearest to the heart of St. Paul. 

In the peaceful visitation of the communities which the undisturbed 
prosperity of the new faith rendered both possible and desirable, Peter had 
journeyed westward, and, encouraged by the many conversions caused by the 
healing of iEneas and the raising of Tabitha, he had fixed his home at Joppa, 
in order to strengthen the young but flourishing churches on the plain 
of Sharon. That he lodged in the house of Simon, a tanner, is merely 
mentioned as one of those incidental circumstances which are never wanting in 
the narratives of writers familiar with the events which they describe. But 
we may now see in it a remarkable significance. It shows on the one hand 
how humble must have been the circumstances of even the chiefest of the 
Apostles, since nothing but poverty could have induced the choice of such 
a residence. But it shows further that Peter had already abandoned Rabbinic 
scrupulosities, for we can scarcely imagine that he would have found it 
impossible to procure another home, 4 and at the house of a tanner no strict and 
uncompromising follower of the Oral Law could have been induced to dwell. 
The daily contact with the hides and carcases of various animals necessitated 
by this trade, and the materials which it requires, rendered it impure and 
disgusting in the eyes of all rigid legalists. If a tanner married without 
mentioning his trade, his wife was permitted to get a divorce. 6 The law of 

St. Luke. It is moreover obvious that while there was to some a strong temptation to iuserfc 
something of the kind, there was no conceivable reason to omit it if it had been genuine. 

1 The significance of the act on those grounds is probably the main if not the sole 
reason for its narration; and if evi/ouxos had merely meant "chamberlain," there would 
have been no reason to add the word Wao-i-T)? in v. 27. Dr. Plumptre [New Testament 
Commentary, in loc. ) adduces the interesting parallel furnished by the first decree of the 
first (Ecumenical Council (Cone. Nic. Can. 1). 

2 Gal. iii. 28. In Iren. Haer. iii. 12, Euseb. H, E. ii. 1, he is said to have evangelised 
his own country. 

3 Acts. xxi. 8, 9. Observe the undesigned coincidence in his welcome of the Apostle 
of the Gentiles. At this point he disappears from Christian history. The Philip who 
died at Hierapolis (Euseb. H. E. iii. 31) is probably Philip the Apostle. 

4 Lydda and Joppa were thoroughly Judaic (Jos. B. J.u.1%% 1). 
* Ketubkdih, f. 77, L 



THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 14S 

levirate marriage might be set aside if the brother-in-law of the childless 
widow was a tanner. A tanner's yard mnst be at least fifty cubits distant 
from any town, 1 and it must be even further off, said Rabbi Akibha, if built 
to the west of a town, from which quarter the effluvium is more easily blown- 
Now, a trade that is looked on with disgust tends to lower the self-respect of 
all who undertake it, and although Simon's yard may not have been contiguous 
to his house, yet the choice of his house as a residence not only proves 
how modest were the only resources which Peter could command, but 
also that he had learnt to rise superior to prejudice, and to recognise the 
dignity of honest labour in even the humblest trade. 

It is certain that two problems of vast importance must constantly have 
been present to the mind of Peter at this time : namely, the relation of 
the Church to the Gentiles, and the relation alike of Jewish and Gentile 
Christians to the Mosaic, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say — though 
the distinction was not then realised — to the Levitical law. In the tanner's 
house at Joppa these difficulties were to meet with their divine and final 
solution. 

They were problems extremely perplexing. As regards the first question, 
if the Gentiles were now to be admitted to the possession of full and equal 
privileges, then had God cast off His people ? had the olden promises failed ? 
As regards the second question, was not the Law divine ? had it not been 
delivered amid the terrors of Sinai ? Could it have been enforced on one 
nation if it had not been intended for all ? Had not Jesus himself been 
obedient to the commandments P If a distinction were to be drawn between 
commandments ceremonial and moral, where were the traces of any distinction 
in the legislation itself, or in the words of Christ ? Had He not bidden the 
leper go show himself to the priest, and offer for his cleansing such things as 
Moses has commanded for a testimony unto them? 2 Had He not said 
" Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets ; I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfil ? n 3 Had He not even said, " Till heaven 
and earth shall pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the 
law till all be fulfilled ?" 4 

These perplexing scruples had yet to wait for their removal, until, by the 
experience of missionary labour, God had ripened into its richest maturity the 
inspired genius of Saul of Tarsus. At that period it is probable that no living 
man could have accurately defined the future relations between Jew and Gentile, 
or met the difficulties which rose from these considerations. St. Stephen, 
who might have enlightened the minds of the Apostles on these great 
subjects, had passed away. St. Paul was still a suspected novice. The day 
when, in the great Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, such problems 
should be fully solved, was still far distant. There is no hurry in the designa 

1 Bdbha Bathra, f. 25, 1, 16, 2 (where the remark is attributed to Bar Kappara). 
"No trade," says Rabbi, " will ever pass away from the earth ; but happy be he whose 
parents belong to a respectable trade . . . The world cannot exist without tanners, 
. . . but woe unto him who is a tanner " (Kiddushin, f. 82, 2). 

3 Matt. viii. 4 ; Mark L 44. 3 Matt. v. 17. 4 Matt. v. 18 j Luke xvi. 17. 



150 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

of God. It is only when the servitude is at its worst that Moses is called 
forth. It is only when the perplexity is deepest that Saul enters the 
arena of controversy. It was only in the fulness of time that Christ was 
born. 

But even at this period St. Peter — especially when he had left Jerusalem 
— must have been forced to see that the objections of the orthodox Jew to the 
equal participation of the Gentiles in Gospel privileges could be met by counter 
objections of serious importance ; and that the arguments of Hebraists as to 
the eternal validity of the Mosaic system were being confronted by the logic 
of facts with opposing arguments which could not long be set aside. 

For if Christ had said that He came to fulfil the Law, had He not also said 
many things which showed that those words had a deeper meaning than the 
•prima facie application which might be attached to them? Had He not six 
times vindicated for the Sabbath a larger freedom than the scribes admitted P 1 
Had He not poured something like contempt on needless ceremonial ablutions? 2 
Had He not Himself abstained from going up thrice yearly to Jerusalem to 
the three great festivals ? Had He not often quoted with approval the words 
of Hoshea : " I will have mercy and not sacrifice ? " 3 Had He not repeatedly 
said that all the Law and the Prophets hang on two broad and simple 
commandments? 4 Had He not both by word and action, showed His light 
estimation of mere ceremonial defilement, to which the Law attached a deep 
importance ? 5 Had He not refused to sanction the stoning of an adulteress ? 
Had He not even gone so far as to say that Moses had conceded some things, 
which were in themselves undesirable, only because of the hardness of 
Jewish hearts ? Had He not said, " The Law and the Prophets were until 
John?" 6 

And, besides all this, was it not clear that He meant His Church to be an 
Universal Church ? "Was not this universality of the offered message of mercy 
and adoption clearly indicated in the language of the Old Testament ? Had 
not the Prophets again and again implied the ultimate calling of the Gentiles? 7 
But if the Gentiles were to be admitted into the number of saints and brethren; 
if, as Jesus Himself had prophesied, there was to be at last one flock and one 
Shepherd, 8 how could this be if the Mosaic Law was to be considered as of 
permanent and universal validity? Was it not certain that the Gentiles, as a 
body, never would accept the whole system of Mosaism, and never would 
accept, above all, the crucial ordinance of circumcision? Would not such a 
demand upon them be a certain way of ensuring the refusal of the Gospel 
message ? Or, if they did embrace it, was it conceivable that the Gentiles 
were never to be anything but mere Proselytes of the Gate, thrust as it were 
outside the portals of the True Spiritual Temple ? If so, were not the most 

1 Luke xiv. 1 — 6 ; John v. 10 ; Mark ii. 23; Matt. xii. 10 ; John ix. 14 ; Luke xiii. 14 jj 
xvi. 16. (See Life of Christ, ii. 114.) 

2 Matt. xv. 20. 

3 M arkx ii. 33 ; Matt. ix. 13 ; xii. 7. • Matt. xix. 8 ; Mark x. 6- -9. 
« Matt. xxii. 40. 7 See Kom. xv. 9, 10, 11. 

• Matt. xv. 17 ; Mark vii. 19. • John x. 16, ihh/moj. 



THE SAMARITANS— THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 15J 

primary conceptions of Christianity cut away at the very roots ? were not its 
most beautiful and essential institutions rendered impossible ? How could 
there be love-feasts, how could there be celebrations of the Lord's Supper, how 
could there be the beautiful spectacle of Christian love and Christian unity, if 
the Church was to be composed, not of members joined together in equal 
brotherhood, but of a proletariate of tolerated Gentiles, excluded even from 
the privilege of eating with an aristocracy of superior Jews ? Dim and 
dwarfed and maimed did such an ideal look beside the grand conception of the 
redeemed nations of the world coming to Sion, singing, and with everlasting 
joy upon their heads ! 

And behind all these uncertainties towered a yet vaster and more eternal 
question. Christ had died to take away the sins of the world ; what need, 
then, could there be of sacrifices ? What significance could there be any more 
in the shadow, when the substance had been granted? l Where was the mean- 
ing of types, after they had been fulfilled in the glorious Antitype ? What 
use was left for the lamp of the Tabernacle when the Sun of Righteousness 
had risen with healing in His wings ? 

Such thoughts, such problems, such perplexities, pressing for a decided 
principle which should guide men in their course of action amid daily 
multiplying difficulties, must inevitably have occupied, at this period, the 
thoughts of many of the brethren. In the heart of Peter they must have as- 
sumed yet more momentous proportions, because on hitn in many respects the 
initiative would depend. 2 The destinies of the world during centuries of his- 
tory — the question whether, ere that brief aeon closed, the inestimable benefits 
of the Life and Death of Christ should be confined to the sectaries of an 
obsolete covenant and a perishing nationality, or extended freely to all the 
races of mankind— the question whether weary generations should be forced 
to accept the peculiarities of a Semitic tribe, or else look for no other refuge 
than the shrines of Isis or the Stoa of Athens — all depended, humanly speak- 
ing, on the line which should be taken by one who claimed no higher earthly 
intelligence than that of a Jewish fisherman. But God always chooses His 
own fitting instruments. In the decision of momentous questions rectitude 
of heart is a far surer guarantee of wisdom than power of intellect. When 
the unselfish purpose is ready to obey, the supernatural illumination is never 
wanting. When we desire only to do what is right, it is never long before we 
hear the voice behind us saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it," however 
much we might be otherwise inclined to turn aside to the right hand or to the 
left. 

With such uncertainties in his heart, but also with such desire to be guided 
aright, one day at noon Peter mounted to the flat roof of the tanner's house 
for his mid-day prayer. 3 It is far from impossible that the house may hav« 

i 1 Cor. xiii. 10 ; Col. ii. 17 ; Heb. x. i. 

3 " Lo maggior Padre di famiglia" (Dante, Parad. xxxii. 136), 

3 Matt. x. 27 ; xxiv. 17 ; Luke xvii. 31. House-tops in old days had been the oora* 
mon scenes of idol-worship (Jer. xix. 13 ; Zeph. i. 5, &c.). 



152 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. I A.UL. 

been on the very spot with the one with which it has long been identified. It 
is at the south-west corner of the little town, and the spring in the courtyard 
would have been useful to the tanner if he carried on his trade in the place 
where he lived. A fig-tree now overshadows it, and there may have been one 
even then to protect the Apostle from the Syrian sun. In any case his eyes 
must have looked on identically the same scene which we may now witness 
from that spot : a small Oriental town with the outline of its flat roofs and 
low square houses relieved by trees and gardens ; a line of low dunes and 
sandy shore ; a sea stretching far away to the Isles of the Gentiles — a golden 
mirror burning under the rays of the Eastern noon in unbroken light, except 
where it is rippled by the wings of the sea-birds which congregate on the 
slippery rocks beneath the town, or where its lazy swell breaks over the line of 
reef which legend has connected with the story of Andromeda. It is a 
meeting-point of the East and West. Behind us lie Philistia and the Holy 
Land. Beyond the Jordan, and beyond the purple hills which form the eastern 
ramparts of its valley, and far away beyond the Euphrates, were the countries 
of those immemorial and colossal despotisms — the giant forms of empires 
which had passed long ago " on their way to ruin;" before us — a highway for 
the nations — are the inland waters of the sea whose shores during long ages of 
history have been the scene of all that is best and greatest in the progress of 
mankind. As he gazed dreamily on sea and town did Peter think of that old 
prophet who, eight centuries before, had been sent by God from that very port 
to preach repentance to one of those mighty kingdoms of the perishing 
Gentiles, and whom in strange ways God had taught? 1 

It was high noon, and while he prayed and meditated, the Apostle, who all 
his life had been familiar with the scanty fare of poverty, became very hungry. 
But the mid-day meal was not yet ready, and, while he waited, his hunger, his 
uncertainties, his prayers for guidance, were all moulded by the providence of 
God, to the fulfilment of His own high ends. There is something inimitably 
natural in the way in which truths of transcendent importance were brought 
home to the seeker's thoughts amid the fantastic crudities of mental imagery. 
The narrative bears upon the face of it the marks of authenticity, and we feel 
instinctively that it is the closest possible reflection of the form in which 
divine guidance came to the honest and impetuous Apostle as, in the hungry 
pause which followed his mid-day supplications, he half-dozed, half- meditated, 
on the hot flat roof under the blazing sky, with his gaze towards the West and 
towards the future, over the blazing sea. 

A sort of trance came over him. 2 

The heaven seemed to open. Instead of the burning radiance of sky and 
sea there shone before him something like a great linen sheet, 3 which was 
being let down to him from heaven to earth by ropes which held it at the 
four corners. 4 In its vast capacity, as in the hollow of some great ark, he saw 

1 Jonah i. 3. 2 Acts X. 10, €Y<Wto eir avrbv eico-Tao-is («, A, B, C, E, &c). 

3 beSvri (cf. John xix. 40). 

4 This aeems to be implied in the ipx<us (see Eur. Hippol. 762, and Wetst. ad loc.). But 



THE SAMARITANS— THE ETTNTTCH — THE CENTURION. 155 

all the four-footed beasts, and reptiles of the earth, and fowls of the air, 1 
while a voice said to him, "Rise, Peter, slay and eat." But even in his 
hunger, kindled yet more keenly by the sight of food, Peter did not forget the 
habits of his training. Among these animals and creeping things were swine, 
and camels, and rabbits, and creatures which did not chew the cud or divide the 
hoof — all of which had been distinctly forbidden by the Law as articles of 
food. Better die of hunger than violate the rules of the Kashar, and eat such 
things, the very thought of which caused a shudder to a Jew. 2 It seemed 
strange to Peter that a voice from heaven should bid him, without exception 
or distinction, to slay and eat creatures among which the unclean were thus 
mingled with the clean ; — nay, the very presence of the unclean among them 
seemed to defile the entire sheet. 3 Brief as is the narrative of this trance in 
which bodily sensations assuming the grotesque form of objective images 
became a medium of spiritual illumination, 4 it is clearly implied that though 
pure and impure animals were freely mingled in the great white sheet, it was 
mainly on the latter that the glance of Peter fell, just as it was with 
" sinners " of the Gentiles, and their admission to the privileges of brother- 
hood, that his thoughts must have been mainly occupied. Accordingly, with 
that simple and audacious self-confidence which in his character was so singu- 
larly mingled with fits of timidity and depression, he boldly corrects the Yoice 
which orders him, and reminds the Divine Interlocutor that he must, so to 
speak, have made an oversight. 5 

" By no means, Lord !" — and the reader will immediately recall the scene 
of the G-ospel, in which St. Peter, emboldened by Christ's words of praise, 
took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Be it far from Thee, Lord/' — 

SefiejaeVov /cat are wanting in N, A, B, E. The Vulgate has "quatuor initiis submitti de 
caelo." 

1 Acts x. 12, Ti-avTa ra, "all the," not "all kinds of," which would be iravrola. Augustine 
uses the comparison of the ark (c. Faust, xii. 15) ; omit ko.1 to. 6-qpCa («, A, B, &c). 

2 On the Kashar, see infra, p. 245- The example of Daniel (i. 8 — 16) made the Jews 
more particular. Josephus ( Vit. 3) tells us that some priests imprisoned at Kome lived 
only on figs and nuts. 

3 In the Talmud {Sanhedr. f . 59, col. 2) there is a curious story aboi\t unclean animals 
super naturally represented to R. Shimon Ben Chalaphtha, who slays them for food. This 
leads to the remark, "Nothing unclean comes down from heaven." Have we here an 
oblique argument against the significance of St. Peter's vision ? R. Ishmael said that the 
care of Israel to avoid creeping things would alone have been a reason why God saved 
them from Egypt [Babha Metzia, f. 61, 2). Yet every Sanhedrist must be ingenious 
enough to prove that a creeping thing is clean {Sanhedrin, f. 17, 1). 

4 See some excellent remarks of Neander, Planting, i. 73. 

5 Cf. John xiii. 8. Increased familiarity with Jewish writings invariably deepens oui 
conviction that in the New Testament we are dealing with truthful records. Knowing 
as we do the reverence of the Jews for divine intimations, we might well have supposed 
that not even in a trance would Peter have raised objections to the mandate of the Bath 
Kol. And yet we find exactly the same thing in Scripture (1 Kings xix. 14 ; Jonah iv. 
1, 9 ; Jer. i. 6), in the previous accounts of Peter himself (Matt. xvi. 22) ; of St. Paul 
(Acts xxii. 19) ; and in the Talmudic writings. Few stories of the Talmud convey a 
more unshaken conviction of the indefeasible obligatoriness of the Law than that of the 
resistance even to a voice from heaven by the assembled Rabbis, in Babha Metzia, f . 59, 
2 (I have quoted it in the Expositor, 1877). It not only illustrates the point immediately 
before us, but also shows more clearly than anything else could do the overwhelming 
forces against which St. Paul had to fight his way. 



154 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

"for," he added, with a touch of genuine Judaic pride, "I never ate anything 
profane or unclean." And the Voice spake a second time: "What God 
cleansed, 'profane' not thou;" or, in the less energetic periphrasis of our 
Version, " What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." This was 
done thrice, and then the vision vanished. The sheet was suddenly drawn up 
into heaven. The trance was over. Peter was alone with his own thoughts ; 
all was hushed ; there came no murmur more from the blazing heaven ; at his 
feet rolled silently the blazing sea. 

What did it mean ? St. Peter's hunger was absorbed in the perplexity of 
interpreting the strange symbols by which he felt at once that the Holy 
Spirit was guiding him to truth — to truth on which he must act, however 
momentous were the issues, however painful the immediate results. Was that 
great linen sheet in its whiteness the image of a world washed white, 1 and 
were its four corners a sign that they who dwelt therein were to be gathered 
from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south ; and 
were all the animals and creeping things, clean and unclean, the image of all 
the races which inhabit it ? And if so, was the permission — nay, the com- 
mand — to eat of the unclean no less than of the clean an indication that the 
Levitical Law was now "ready to vanish away;" 2 and that with it must 
vanish away, no less inevitably, that horror of any communion with Gentile 
races which rested mainly upon its provisions ? What else could be meant by 
a command which directly contradicted the command of Moses ? 3 Was it 
really meant that all things were to become new ? that even these unclean 
things were to be regarded as let down from heaven ? and that in this new 
world, this pure world, Gentiles were no longer to be called " dogs," but Jew 
and Gentile were to meet on a footing of perfect equality, cleansed alike by 
the blood of Christ ? 

Nor is the connexion between the symbol and the thing signified quite so 
distant and arbitrary as has been generally supposed. The distinction 
between clean and unclean meats was one of the insuperable barriers between 
the Gentile and the Jew — a barrier which prevented all intercourse between 
them, because it rendered it impossible for them to meet at the same table or 
in social life. In the society of a Gentile, a Jew was liable at any moment to 
those ceremonial defilements which involved all kinds of seclusion and incon- 
venience ; and not only so, but it was mainly by partaking of unclean food 
that the Gentiles became themselves so unclean in the eyes of the Jews. It 
is hardly possible to put into words the intensity of horror and revolt with 
which the Jew regarded swine. 4 They were to him the very ideal and quint- 
essence of all that must be looked upon with an energetic concentration of 
disgust. He would not even mention a pig by name, but spoke of it as 
dabhar acheer, or " the other thing." When, in the days of Hyrcanus, a pig 

1 So GEcumenius. 2 Heb. viii. 13. 3 Lev. xi. 7 ; Deut. xiv. 8. 

4 Isa. lxv. 4 ; lxvi. 3 ; 2 Mace. vi. 18, 19 ; Jos. G. Ap. ii. 14. The abhorrence wae 
ghared by many Eastern nations (Hdt. ii. 47 ; Pliny, H. N. viii. 52 ; Koran). This wa* 
partly due to its filthy habits (2 Pet. ii 22). 



THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 155 

had been surreptitiously put into a box and drawn up the walls of Jerusalem, 
the Jews declared that a shudder of earthquake had run through four hundred 
parasangs of the Holy Land. 1 Tet this filthy and atrocious creature, which could 
hardly even be thought of without pollution, was not only the chief delicacy 
at Gentile banquets, 2 but was, in one form or other, one of the commonest 
articles of Gentile consumption. How could a Jew touch or speak to a human 
being who of deliberate choice had banqueted on swine's flesh, and who might 
on that very day have partaken of the abomination ? The cleansing of all 
articles of food involved far more immediately than has yet been noticed the 
acceptance of Gentiles on equal footing to equal privileges. 

And doubtless, as such thoughts passed through the soul of Peter, he 
remembered also that remarkable " parable " of Jesus of which he and his 
brother disciples had once asked the explanation. Jesus in a few words, but 
with both of the emphatic formulae which He adopted to call special attention 
to any utterance of more than ordinary depth and solemnity — " Hearken unto 
me, every one of you, and understand ; " " If any man hath ears to hear, let 
him hear," 3 — had said, " There is nothing from without a man entering into 
him which can defile him." What He had proceeded to say — that what 
truly defiles a man is that which comes out of him — was easy enough to 
understand, and was a truth of deep meaning; but so difficult had it been 
to grasp the first half of the clause, that they had asked Him to explain a 
" parable " which seemed to be in direct contradiction to the Mosaic Law. 
Expressing His astonishment at their want of insight, He had shown them 
that what entered into a man from without did but become a part of his 
material organism, entering, " not into the heart, but into the belly, and so 
passing into the draught." This, He said — as now for the first time, 
perhaps, flashed with full conviction into the mind of Peter— making all 
meats pure ; 4 — as he proceeded afterwards to develop those weighty truths 
about the inward character of all real pollution, and the genesis of all crime 
from evil thoughts, which convey so solemn a warning. To me it seems that 
it was the trance and vision of Joppa which first made Peter realise the true 
meaning of Christ in one of those few distinct utterances in which he had 
intimated the coming annulment of the Mosaic Law. It is, doubtless, due to 
the fact that St. Peter, as the informant of St. Mark in writing his Gospel, 

1 Jer. Berachdth, iv. 1 ; Derenbourg, Palest. 114 ; Gratz. iii. 480. (The story is also 
told in Babha Kama, f. 82, 2 ; Menachotk, f. 64, 2 ; Sotah, f. 49, 2.) 
* Sumen, in Plaut. Cure. ii. 3, 44 ; Pers. i. 53 ; Plin. H. N. xi. 37. 

3 Mark vii. 14, 16. 

4 Mark vii. 19. This interpretation, due originally to the early Fathers— being found 
in Chrysostom, Horn, in Matt. Ii. p. 526, and Gregory Thaumaturgus — was revived, forty 
years ago, by the Rev. F. Field, in a note of bis edition of St. Chrysostom's Homilies 
(iii. 112). (See Expositor for 1876, where I have examined the passage at length.) Here, 
however, it lay unnoticed, till it gained, quite recently, the attention which it deserved. 
The true reading is certainly icadapifav not the KaOapifrv of our edition — a reading due, in 
all probability, to the impossibility of making K.o.QapL£<x>v agree with d^eSpwva. The loss of 
the true interpretation has been very serious. Now, however, it is happily revived. It 
has a more direct bearing than any other on the main practical difficulty of the Apostolic 
■ge. 



156 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

and the sole ultimate authority for this vision in the Acts, is the source of 
both narratives, that we owe the hitherto unnoticed circumstance that the two 
verbs "cleanse''' and "profane" — both in a peculiarly pregnant sense — are 
the two most prominent words in the narrative of both events. 

While Peter thus pondered — perplexed, indeed, but with a new light 
dawning in his soul — the circumstance occurred which gave to his vision 
its full significance. Trained, like all Jews, in unquestioning belief of a 
daily Providence exercised over the minutest no less than over the greatest 
events of life, Peter would have been exactly in the mood which was prepared 
to accept any further indication of God's will from whatever source it came. 
The recognised source of such guidance at this epoch was the utterance of 
voices apparently accidental which the Jews reckoned as their sole remaining 
kind of inspired teaching, and to which they gave the name of Bath Kol. 1 
The first words heard by Peter after his singular trance were in the voices of 
Gentiles. In the courtyard below him were three Gentiles, of whom one was 
in the garb of a soldier. Having asked their way to the house of Simon the 
Tanner, they were now inquiring whether a certain Simon, who bore the 
surname of Peter, was lodging there. Instantly there shot through his mind 
a gleam of heavenly light. He saw the divine connexion between the vision 
of his trance and the inquiry of these Gentiles, and a Yoice within him 
warned him that these men had come in accordance with an express intima- 
tion of God's will, and that he was to go with them without question or 
hesitation. He instantly obeyed. He descended from the roof, told the 
messengers he was the person whom they were seeking, and asked their 
business. They were the bearers of a strange message. " Cornelius," they 
said, " a centurion, a just man, and a worshipper of God, to whose virtues the 
entire Jewish nation bore testimony, had received an angelic intimation to 
send for him, and hear his instructions. Peter at once offered them the free 
and simple hospitality of the East ; and as it was too hot and they were too 
tired to start at once on their homeward journey, they rested there until the 
following morning. Further conversation would have made Peter aware that 
Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band ; 2 that not only he, but all his 
house, " feared God ; " that the generosity of his almsgiving and the earnest- 
ness of his prayers were widely known ; and that the intimation to send for 
Peter had been given to him while he was fasting on the previous day at three 
o'clock. He had acted upon it so immediately that, in spite of the heat and 
the distance of thirty miles along shore and plain, his messengers had arrived 
at Joppa by the following noon. 

The next morning they all started on the journey which was to involve 
such momentous issues How deeply alive St. Peter himself was to the 
consequences which might ensue from his act is significantly shown by his 

1 Life- of Christ, i. 118. 

2 The Italian cohort was probably one composed of " Fefones," Italian volunteers. 
"Cohors militum voluntaria, quae est in (Syria " (Gruter, Iwtcr. i, 434; Akerman, Num, 
IUua\ r. 34). It would be specially required at Caesarea, 



THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTUEION. 157 

inviting no fewer than six of the brethren at Joppa to accompany him, and to 
be witnesses of all that should take place. 1 

The journey — since Orientals are leisurely in their movements, and they 
could only travel during the cool hours — occupied two days. Thus it was not 
until the fourth day after the vision of Cornelius that, for the first time 
during two thousand years, the Jew and the Gentile met on the broad 
grounds of perfect religious equality before God their Father. Struck with 
the sacredness of the occasion — struck, too, it may be, by something in the 
appearance of the chief of the Apostles — Cornelius, who had risen to meet 
Peter on the threshold, prostrated himself at his feet, 2 as we are told that, 
three hundred years before, Alexander the Great had done at the feet of the 
High Priest Jaddua, 3 and, six hundred years afterwards, Edwin of Deira did 
at the feet of Paulinus. 4 Instantly Peter raised the pious soldier, and, to the 
amazement doubtless of the brethren who accompanied him, perhaps even to 
his own astonishment, violated all the traditions of a lifetime, as well as the 
national customs of many centuries, by walking side by side with him in free 
conversation into the presence of his assembled Gentile relatives. This he 
did, not from the forgetfulness of an enthusiastic moment, but with the 
avowal that he was doing that which had been hitherto regarded as irreligious, 5 
but doing it in accordance with a divine revelation. Cornelius then related 
the causes which had led him to send for Peter, and the Apostle began his 
solemn address to them with the memorable statement that now he perceived 
with undoubted certainty that " God is NO respecter of persons, but 

IN EVERY NATION HE THAT FEARETH HlM AND WORKETH RIGHTEOUS- 
NESS is acceptable to Him." 6 Never were words more noble uttered. 
But we must not interpret them to mean the same proposition as that which 
is so emphatically repudiated by the English Reformers, " That every man 
shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to 
frame his life according to that law and the light of Nature." Had this 
been the meaning of the Apostle — a meaning which it would be an immense 
anachronism to attribute to him — it would have been needless for him to 
preach to Cornelius, as he proceeded to do, the leading doctrines of the 
Christian faith ; it would have been sufficient for him to bid Cornelius con- 
tinue in prayer and charity without unfolding to him " only the name of 
Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved." The indifference of nationality 
was the thought in Peter's mind; not by any means the indifference of 

1 Compare Acts x. 23 with xi. 12. 

2 D and the Syr. have the pragmatic addition, "And when Peter drew near to 
Caesarea, one of the slaves running forward gave notice that he had arrived; and 
Cornelius springing forth, and meeting "him , falling at his feet, worshipped him." 

• See Jos. Antt. xi. 8, § 5. 

4 The story is told in Bede, Eccl. Hist. Angl. ii. 12. 

5 Acts x. 28, aOefjiLTov ; cf . John xviii. 28. Lightf . Hor. Hebr. ad Matt, xviii. 17. 

St. Peter's words are the most categorical contradiction of the Rabbinic comments 
on Prov. xiv. 34, which asserted that any righteous acts done by the Gentiles were sin to 
them. Such was the thesis maintained even by Hillelites like Gamaliel II. and B, 
Ehezer of Modin, Babha Bathra, f. 10, 2. (v. infra, pp. 428 453.) 



158 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUI* 

religions. All who, to the utmost of the opportunities vouchsafed to them, 
fear and love God with sincerity of heart, shall be saved by Christ's redemp- 
tion ; some of them — many of them — will He lead to a knowledge of Him in 
this life ; all of them shall see Him and know Him in the life to come. 1 

Accordingly Peter proceeded to recall to these Gentiles all that they had 
heard 2 of the preaching of peace by Jesus Christ the Lord of all ; of His life 
and ministry after the baptism of John ; how God anointed Him with the 
Holy Spirit and with power ; how He went about doing good, and healing all 
who were under the tyranny of the devil ; and then of the Crucifixion and 
Resurrection from the dead, of which the disciples were the appointed wit- 
nesses, commissioned by the Yoice of their risen Lord to testify that He is the 
destined Judge of quick and dead. And while Peter was proceeding to show 
from the Prophets that all who believed on Him should through His name 
receive remission of sins, suddenly on these unbaptised Gentiles no less than 
on the Jews who were present, fell that inspired emotion of superhuman 
utterance which was the signature of Pentecost. " The Holy Ghost fell upon 
them." The six brethren who had accompanied Peter from Joppa might well 
be amazed. Here were men unbaptised, uncircumcised, unclean — men who 
had been idolaters, dogs of the Gentiles, eaters of the unclean beast, whose 
touch involved ceremonial pollution — speaking and praising God in the 
utterances which could only come from hearts stirred by divine influence to 
their most secret depth. With bold readiness Peter seized the favourable 
moment. The spectacle which he had witnessed raised him above ignoble 
prejudices, and the rising tide of conviction swept away the dogmas and 
habits of his earlier years. Appealing to this proof of the spiritual equality 
of the Gentile with the Jew, he asked " whether any one could forbid water 
for their baptism ? " No one cared to dispute the cogency of this proof that 
it was God's will to admit Cornelius and his friends to the privileges of 
Christian brotherhood. Peter not only commanded them to be baptised in 
the name of the Lord, but even freely accepted their invitation " to tarry with 
them certain days." 

The news of a revolution so astounding was not long in reaching Jerusalem, 
and when Peter returned to the Holy City he was met by the sterner zealots 
who had joined Christianity, by those of whom we shall henceforth hear so 
often as " those of the circumcision," with the fierce indignant murmur, 
" Thou wentest into the house of men uncircumcised, and didst EAT WITH 
them!" 3 To associate with them, to enter their houses, was not that pol- 
lution enough ? to touch in familiar intercourse men who had never received 
the seal of the covenant, to be in daily contact with people who might, no one 
knew how recently, have had " broth of abominable things in their vessels "— 

i Cf. Rom. ii. 6, 10, 14, 15. 

2 Acts x. 36. To understand rbv \6yop here in the Johannine sense seems to mo 
utterly uncritical. 

3 "He who eats with an uncircumcised person, eats, as it were, with a dog ; he who 
touches him, touches, as it were, a dead body ; and he who bathes in the same place with 
him, bathes, as it were, with a leper " {Pirke Eabbi Eliezer, 29). 



THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 159 

was not this sufficiently horrible ? Bnt " to eat with them " — to eat food 
prepared by Gentiles — to taste meat which had been illegally killed by Gentile 
hands — to neglect the rules of the Kashar — to take food from dishes which 
any sort of unclean insect or animal, nay even " the other thing," might have 
denied — was it to be thought of without a shudder ? 1 

Thus Peter was met at Jerusalem by something very like an impeachment, 
but he (onfronted the storm with perfect courage. 2 What he had done he 
had not lone arbitrarily, but step by step under direct divine guidance. He 
detailed to them his vision on the roof at Joppa, and the angelic appearance 
which had suggested the message of Cornelius. Finally he appealed to the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which had been manifested in these Gentiles 
by the very same signs as in themselves. Was not this the promised baptism 
with the Holy Ghost ? was it not a proof that God accepted these Gentiles 
no less fully than He accepted them ? " What was I that I could withstand 
God?" 

The bold defence silenced for a time the adversaries of what they regarded 
as an unscriptural and disloyal innovation. They could not dispute facts 
authenticated by the direct testimony of their six brethren — whom Peter, 
conscious of the seriousness of the crisis, had very prudently brought with 
him from Joppa — nor could they deny the apparent approval of heaven. 
The feeling of the majority was in favour of astonished but grateful acquies- 
cence. Subsequent events prove only too plainly that there was at any rate 
a displeased minority, who were quite unprepared to sacrifice their monopoly 
of precedence in the equal kingdom of God. Even in the language of the 
others 3 we seem to catch a faint echo of reluctance and surprise. Nor would 
they admit any general principle. The only point which they conceded was — 
not that the Gentiles were to be admitted, without circumcision, to full com- 
munion, still less that Jews would be generally justified in eating with them, 
as Peter had done — but only that " God had, it seemed, to the Gentiles also 
granted repentance unto life." 

Meanwhile, and, so far as we are aware, in entire independence of these 
initial movements, the Church had been undergoing a new and vast develop- 
ment in Syria, which transferred the position of the metropolis of Christianity 
from Jerusalem to Antioch, as completely as it was to be afterwards trans- 
ferred from Antioch to Rome. 

1 To this day orthodox Jews submit to any inconvenience rather than touch meat 
killed by a Gentile butcher (McCaul, Old Paths, 397, sq.). This leads sometimes not 
only to a monopoly, but even to a downright tyranny on the part of the butcher who 
has the kadima (FranM, Jews in the East, ii.). 

2 Acts xi. 2. SieKpivovTO npbg avrov ', cf . Jud. 9. 

3 Acts xi. 18, apaye icai Tots sdve&iv. 



160 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 



ANTIOCH. 
CHAPTER XYI. 

THE SECOND CAPITAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 

*' Quos, per nagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat." — Tac. Ann rv. 44. 

XpicrTiavSs el/xi. — Mart. Polyc. iii. 

Evx a P l<rT0 ^/ jLeu °" ^ $ Tt T ^ ouo/xa rod Xptcrrov <rov iiruceic\r]Tai e<p i]p.a: , Kcd (ro\ 
irp**ra>Keic£/Aeda. — Clem. B.OM. 

Ovk avrbt fiXacrcprjiuLOvcri rb Ka\bu 6uo/xarb iTtiK\T]Q4v i<p' vfxas ; — J AS. ii. 7. 

E2 oj/eiSt^ecfle iv bv6jj.ari Xpicrrov, (xaKapioi. — 1 Pet. iv. 14. 

" Nomen . . . quod sicut unguentum diffusum longe lateque redolet." — Gal. 
Tyr. iv. 9. 

" Oditur ergo in hominibus innocuis etiam nomen innocuum." — Tert. Apol. 3. 

The overruling Providence of God is so clearly marked in the progress of 
human events that the Christian hardly needs any further proof that " there 
is a hand that guides." In the events of his own little life the perspective of 
God's dealings is often hidden from him, but when he watches the story of 
nations and of religions he can clearly trace the divine purposes, and see the 
lessons which God's hand has written on every page of history. What seems 
to be utter ruin is often complete salvation; what was regarded as cruel 
disaster constantly turns out to be essential blessing. 

It was so with the persecution which ensued on the death of Stephen. 
Had it been less inquisitorial, it would not have accomplished its destined 
purpose. The Saul who laid in ruins the Church of Jerusalem was uncon- 
sciously deepening the foundations of circumstance on which hereafter — the 
same and not the same — he should rear the superstructure of the Church of 
God. Saul the persecutor was doing, by opposite means, the same work as 
Paul the Apostle. 

For when the members of the infant Church fled terror-stricken from the 
Holy City, they carried with them far and wide the good tidings of the 
Jerusalem above. At first, as was natural, they spoke to Jews alone. It 
would be long before they would hear how Philip had evangelised Samaria, 
and how, by his baptism of the eunuch, he had admitted into the Church of 
Christ one whom Moses had excluded from the congregation of Israel. The 
baptism of the pious soldier had taken place si ill later, and the knowledge of 
it could not at once reach the scattered Christians. In Phoenicia, therefore, 
and in Cyprus, their preaching was confined at first within the limits of 
Judaism; nor was it until the wandering Hellenists had reached Antioch 
that they boldly ventured TO preach to the gentiles. 1 Whether these 

1 Acts xi. 20. There can be no doubt that "EXX^us, and not 'EAAijvktw (which is 
accepted by our version, and rendered "Grecians") is the true reading. (1) External 



THE SECOND CAPITAL OP CHRISTIANITY. 161 

Gentiles were such only as had already embraced the " Noachian dispensation," 
or whether they included others who had in no sense become adherents of the 
synagogue, we are not told. Greek proselytes were at this period common in 
every considerable city of the Empire, 1 and it is reasonable to suppose that 
they furnished a majority, at any rate, of the new converts. However this 
may have been, the work of these nameless Evangelists was eminently 
successful. It received the seal of God's blessing, and a large multitude of 
Greeks turned to the Lord. The fact, so much obscured by the wrong read- 
ing followed by our English Yersion, is nothing less than the beginning, on a 
large scale, of the conversion of the Gentiles. It is one of the great moments 
in the ascensive work begun by Stephen, advanced by Philip, authorised by 
Peter, and finally culminating in the life, mission, and Epistles of St. Paul. 

When the news reached Jerusalem, it excited great attention, and the 
members of the Church determined to despatch one of their number to watch 
what was going on. Then- choice of an emissary showed that as yet the counsels 
of the party of moderation prevailed, for they despatched the large-hearted and i 
conciliatory Barnabas. His Levitical descent, and the sacrifice which he had 
made of his property to the common fund, combined with his sympathetic 
spirit and liberal culture to give him a natural authority, which he had always 
used on the side of charity and wisdom. 

The arrival of such a man was an especial blessing. This new church, 
which was so largely composed of Gentiles, was destined to be a fresh starting- 
point in the career of Christianity. Barnabas saw the grace of God at work, 
and rejoiced at it, and justified his happy title of " the son of exhortation," 

evidence in favour of 'EAA^a? is indeed defective, since it is only found in A (which also 
has "EWr}vas, even in ix. 29, where 'EW-qvta-Tas is the only possible reading) and D. n has 
evayyeXio-Tas, which has been altered into "EAAijvas ; but both « and B read K al before 
eAaAouj/, which indicates a new and important statement. Some of the most important 
versions are valueless as evidence of reading in this instance, because they have no 
specific word by which to distinguish 'EAAtj^to-Tal and 'EAAijves. CEcumenius and Theophy- 
lact read 'EAA.T)v«rras, and so does Chrysostom in his text, but in his commentary he 
accepts "EAArjvas, as does Eusebius. But (2) if we turn to internal evidence it is clear 
that "Greeks," not "Grecians" — i.e., Gentiles, not Greek-speaking Jews — is the only 
admissible reading ; for (i. ) Hellenists were, of course, Jews, and as it is perfectly 
certain that the 'IovSatots of the previous verse cannot mean only Hebraists, this verse 
20 would add nothing whatever to the narrative if ' ' Hellenists " were the right reading, 
(ii.) The statement comes as the sequel and crowning point of narratives, of which it has 
been the express object to describe the admission of Gentiles into the Church. The 
reading "Hellenists" obscures the verse on which the entire narrative of the Acts 
hinges, (iii.) The conversion of a number of Hellenists at Antioch would have excited 
no special notice, and required no special mission of inquiry, seeing that the existing 
Church at Jerusalem itself consisted largely of Hellenists. The entire context-, therefore, 
conclusively proves that 'EAArjva? is the right reading, and it has accordingly been received 
into the text, in spite of the external evidence against it, by all the best editors — 
Griesbach, Lachmann, Schok, Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford, &c. The reason for the 
corruption of the text seems to have been an assumption that this narrative is retrospec- 
tive, and that to suppose the admission of Gentiles into the faith before Peter had opened 
to them the doors of the kingdom would be to derogate from his authority. But this 
preaching at Antioch may have been subsequent to the conversion of Cornelius ; and it 
was, in any case, the authority of Peter which for the majority of the Church incon- 
trovertibly settled the claim of the Gentiles. 
1 See Acts xiv. 1 ; xviii. 4 ; John xii. 20. 
L 



162 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

by exhorting the believers to cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart. 
His ministry won over converts in still larger numbers, for, as Luke adds 
with emphatic commendation, "he was a good man, and full of the Holy 
Ghost and faith." 

The work multiplied in his hands, and needed so much wisdom, knowledge, 
and energy, that he soon felt the need of a colleague. Doubtless, had he 
desired it, he could have secured the co-operation of one of the Apostles, or of 
their trusted adherents. But Barnabas instinctively perceived that a fresher 
point of view, a clearer insight, a wider culture, a more complete immunity 
from prejudices were needed for so large and delicate a task. Himself a 
Grecian, and now called upon to minister not only to Grecians but to Greeks, 
he longed for the aid of one who would maintain the cause of truth and 
liberality with superior ability and more unflinching conviction. There was 
but one man who in any degree met his requirements — it was the delegate of 
the Sanhedrin, the zealot of the Pharisees, the once persecuting Saul of Tarsus. 
Since his escape from Jerusalem, Saul had been more or less unnoticed by the 
leading Apostles. We lose sight of him at Caesarea, apparently starting on his 
way to Tarsus, and all that Barnabas now knew about him was that he was 
living quietly at home, waiting the Lord's call. Accordingly he set out, to 
\ seek for him, and the turn of expression seems to imply that it was not with- 
' out difficulty that he found him. Paul readily accepted the invitation to 
leave his seclusion, and join his friend in this new work in the great capital of 
,/.- Syria. Thus, twice over, did Barnabas save Saul for the work of Christianity. 
To his self-effacing nobleness is due the honour of recognising, before they 
had yet been revealed to others, the fiery vigour, the indomitable energy, the 
splendid courage, the illuminated and illuminating intellect, which were 
destined to spend themselves in the high endeavour to ennoble and evangelise 
the world. 

No place could have been more suitable than Antioch for the initial stage 
of such a ministry. The queen of the East, the third metropolis of the world, 
the residence of the imperial Legate of Syria, this vast city of perhaps 500,000 
souls must not be judged of by the diminished, shrunken, and earthquake- 
shattered Antakieh of to-day. 1 It was no mere Oriental town, with low flat 
roofs and dingy narrow streets, but a Greek capital enriched and enlarged by 
Roman munificence. It is situated at the point of junction between the chains 
of Lebanon and Taurus. Its natural position on the northern slope of Mount 
Silpius, with a navigable river, the broad, historic Orontes, flowing at its feet, 
was at once commanding and beautiful. The windings of the river enriched 
the whole well-wooded plain, and as the city was but sixteen miles from the 
shore, the sea-breezes gave it health and coolness. These natural advantages 
had been largely increased by the lavish genius of ancient art. Built by the 
Seleucidae 2 as the royal residence of their dynasty, its wide circuit of many 
miles was surrounded by walls of astonishing height and thickness, which had 

1 It is now a fifth-rate Turkish town of 6,000 inhabitants. (Porter's Syria, p. 568.) 
> B.C. 301, Apr. 23. 



THE SECOND CAPITAL OP CHRISTIANITY. 163 

beer carried across ravines and over mountain summits with such daring 
magnificence of conception as to give the city the aspect of being defended by 
its own encircling mountains, as though those gigantic bulwarks were but its 
natural walls. The palace of the kings of Syria was on an island formed by 
an artificial channel of the river. Through the entire length of the city, from 
the Golden or Daphne gate on the west, ran for nearly five miles a fine corso 
adorned with trees, colonnades, and statues. Originally constructed by 
Seleucus Mcator, it had been continued by Herod the Great, who, at once to 
gratify his passion for architecture, and to reward the people of Antioch for 
their good-will towards the Jews, had paved it for two miles and a half with 
blocks of white marble. 1 Broai bridges spanned the river and its various 
affluents; baths, aqueducts, basilicas, villas, theatres, clustered on the level 
plain, and, overshadowed by picturesque and rugged eminences, gave the 
city a splendour worthy of its fame as only inferior in grandeur to Alex- 
andria and Rome. Mingled with this splendour were innumerable signs 
of luxury and comfort. Under the spreading plane-trees that shaded the 
banks of the river, and among gardens brightened with masses of flowers, 
sparkled amid groves of laurel and myrtle the gay villas of the wealthier 
inhabitants, bright with Greek frescoes, and adorned with every refinement 
which Roman wealth had borrowed from Ionian luxury. Art had lent its aid 
to enhance the beauties of nature, and one colossal crag of Mount Silpius, 
which overlooked the city, had been carved into human semblance by the skill 
of Leios. In the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, a pestilence had ravaged the 
kingdom, and to appease the anger of the gods, the king had ordered the 
sculptor to hew the mountain-mass into one vast statue. The huge grim face, 
under the rocky semblance of a crown, stared over the Forum of the city, and 
was known to the Antiochenes as the Charonium, being supposed to represent 
the head of 

" That grim ferryman which poets write of," 

who conveyed the souls of the dead in his dim-gleaming boat across the waters 
of the Styx. 

It was natural that such a city should attract a vast multitude of inhabi- 
tants, and those inhabitants were of very various nationalities. The basis of 
the population was composed of native Syrians, represented to this day by the 
Maronites ; 2 but the Syrian kings had invited many colonists to people their 
Presidence, and the most important of these were Greeks and Jews. To these, 
after the conquest of Syria by Pompey, had been added a garrison of Romans. 3 
The court of the Legato of Syria, surrounded as it was by military pomp, 
attracted into its glittering circle, not only a multitude of rapacious and 
domineering officials, but also that large retinue of flatterers, slaves, artists, 
literary companions, and general hangers-on, whose presence was deemed 

1 Jos, Antt. xvi. 5, § 3. 2 Renan, Les Apdtres, p. 228. 

3 Syria was made a Roman province B.C. 64. M. iEmil. Scaurus went there aa 
Quaestor pro Praetore B.C. 62. 
L 2 



164 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

essential to the state of an imperial viceroy. The autonomy of the city, and 
its consequent freedom from the property tax, made it a pleasant place of 
abode to many others. The soft, yielding, and voluptuous Syrians, the 
cunning, versatile, and degraded Greeks, added their special contributions to 
the general corruption engendered by an enervating climate and a frivolous 
society. Side by side with these — governed, as at Alexandria, by their own 
Archon and their own mimic Sanhedrin, but owing allegiance to the central 
government at Jerusalem — lived an immense colony of Jews. Libanius could 
affirm from personal experience that he who sat in the agora of Antioch might 
study the customs of the world. 

Cities liable to the influx of heterogeneous races are rarely otherwise than 
immoral and debased. Even E-ome, in the decadence of its Csesarism, could 
groan to think of the dregs of degradation — the quacks, and pandars, and 
musicians, and dancing-girls — poured into the Tiber by the Syrian Orontes. 
Her satirists spoke of this infusion of Orientalism as adding a fresh miasma 
even to the corruption which the ebbing tide of glory had left upon the 
naked sands of Grecian life. 1 It seems as though it were a law of human 
intercourse, that when races are commingled in large masses, the worst 
qualities of each appear intensified in the general iniquity. The mud and 
silt of the combining streams pollute any clearness or sweetness they may 
previously have enjoyed. If the Jews had been less exclusive, less haughtily 
indifferent to the moral good of any but themselves, they might have 
checked the tide of immorality. But their disdainful isolation either pre- 
vented them from making any efforts to ameliorate the condition of their 
fellow-citizens, or rendered their efforts nugatory. Their synagogues — one, 
at least, of which was a building of some pretensions, adorned with brazen 
spoils which had once belonged to the Temple of Jerusalem, 2 and had been 
resigned by Antiochus Epiphanes, in a fit of remorse, to the Jews of 
Antioch — rose in considerable numbers among the radiant temples of the 
gods of Hellas. But the spirit of those who worshipped in them rendered 
them an ineffectual witness; and the Jews, absorbed in the conviction that 
they were the sole favourites of Jehovah, passed with a scowl of contempt, 
or " spat, devoutly brutal, in the face " of the many statues which no classic 
beauty could redeem from the disgrace of being " dumb idols." There were 
doubtless, indeed, other proselytes besides Nicolas and Luke ; but those 
proselytes, whether few or many in number, had, up to this period, exercised 
no appreciable influence on the gay and guilty city. And if the best Jews 
despised all attempts at active propagandism, there were sure to be many 
lewd and wicked Jews who furthered their own interests by a propaganda of 
iniquity. If the Jewish nationality has produced some of the best and greatest, 

i " Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes 
Et linguam, et mores, et cum tibicine chordas 
Obliquas, necnon gentilia tympana secum 
Vexit, et ad circum jussas prostare puellas." 

Juv. Sat. Hi. 62-«. 
2 Job. B. J. vii. 3, § 3. 



THE SECOND CAPITAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 165 

it has also produced some of the basest and vilest of mankind. The Jews at 
Antioch were of just the same mixed character as the Jews at Alexandria, or 
Rome, or Paris, or London ; and we may he quite sure that there must have 
been many among them who, instead of witnessing for Jehovah, would only 
add a tinge of original wickedness to the seething mass of atheism, idolatry, 
and polluted lif e. 

And thus for the great mass of the population in Antioch there was nothing 
that could be truly called a religion to serve as a barrier against the ever -rising 
flood of Roman sensuality and Grseco-Syrian suppleness. What religion there 
was took the form of the crudest nature -worship, or the most imbecile super- 
stition. A few years before the foundation of a Christian Church at Antioch, 
in the year 37, there had occurred one of those terrible earthquakes to which 
in all ages, the city had been liable. 1 It might have seemed at first sight 
incredible that an intellectual and literary city like Antioch— a city of wits and 
philosophers, of casuists and rhetoricians, of poets and satirists — should at once 
have become the dupes of a wretched quack named Debborius, who professed 
to avert such terrors by talismans as ludicrous as the famous earthquake-pills 
which so often point an allusion in modern literature. Tet there is in reality 
nothing strange in such apparent contrasts. History more than once has 
shown that the border-lands of Atheism reach to the confines of strange 
credulity. 2 

Into this city of Pagan pleasure — into the midst of a population pauperised 
by public doles, and polluted by the indulgences which they procured — among 
the intrigues and ignominies of some of the lowest of the human race at one 

1 Our authorities for the description and condition of Antioch are unusually rich. 
The chief are Josephus, B. J. vii. 3, § 3 ; Antt. xii. 3, § 1 ; xvi. 5, § 3 ; c. Ap. ii. 4 ; 
1 Mace. hi. 37 ; xi. 13 ; 2 Mace. iv. 7—9,^33 ; v. 21 ; xi. 36 ; Philostr. Vit. Apollon. hi. 58 ; 
Libanius, Antioch. pp. 355, 356 ; Chrysost. Homil. ad Pop. Antioch. vii., in Matth., et 
passim. ; Julian. Misopogon ; Pliny, H. N. v. 18 ; and, above all, the Chronographiu of 
John of Antioch, better known by his Syriac surname of Malala, or the Orator. C. O. 
Muller, in his Antiquitates Antiochenae (Gott. 1830), has diligently examined all these 
and other authorities. Some accounts of modern Antioch, by travellers who have visited 
it, may be found in Pocock's Descript. of the East, ii. 192 ; Chesney, Euphrates Expedition, 
i. 425, seqq. ; Bitter, Paldst. u. Syria, iv. 2. Its hopeless decline dates from 1268, when 
it was reconquered by the Mohammedans. 

2 The state of the city has been described by a master-hand. "It was," says M. Kenan 
— rendered still more graphic in his description by familiarity with modern Paris — "an 
unheard-of collection of jugglers, charlatans, pantomimists, magicians, thaumaturgists, 
sorcerers, and priestly impostors ; a city of races, of games, of dances, of processions, of 
festivals, of bacchanalia, of unchecked luxury ; all the extravagances of the East, the 
most unhealthy superstitions, the fanaticism of orgies. In turns servile and ungrateful, 
worthless and insolent, the Antiochenes were the finished model of those crowds devoted 
to Caesarism, without country, without nationality, without family honour, without a 
name to preserve. The great Corso which traversed the city was like a theatre, in which 
all day long rolled the waves of a popidation empty, frivolous, fickle, turbulent, some- 
times witty, absorbed in songs, parodies, pleasantries, and impertinences of every descrip- 
tion. It was, " he continues, after describing certain dances and swimming-races, which, 
if we would understand the depravity of G-entile morals, we are forced to mention, "like 
an intoxication, a dream of Sardanapalus, in which all pleasures, all debaucheries, unfolded 
themselves in strange confusion, without excluding certain delicacies and refinements " 
(Les Apdtres, p. 221). The Orontes never flowed with fouler mud than when there began 
to spring up upon its banks the sweet fountain of the river of the water of life. 



166 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

of the lowest periods of human history 1 — passed the eager spirit of Saul of 
Tarsus. On his way, five miles from the city, he must have seen upon the 
river-bank at least the fringe of laurels, cypresses, and myrtles that marked 

" that sweet grove 



Of Daphne "by Orontes," 2 

and caught sight, perhaps, of its colossal statue of Apollo, 3 reared by Seleucus 
Nicator. But it was sweet no longer, except in its natural and ineffaceable 
beauty, and it is certain that a faithful Jew would not willingly have entered 
its polluted precincts. Those precincts, being endowed with the right of 
asylum, were, like all the asylums of ancient and modern days, far more a 
protection to outrageous villany than to persecuted innocence; 4 and those 
umbrageous groves were the dark haunts of every foulness. For their scenic 
loveliness, their rich foliage, their fragrant herbage, their perennial fountains, 
the' fiery-hearted convert had little taste. He could only have recalled with a 
sense of disgust how that grove had given its title to a proverb which expressed 
the superfluity of naughtiness, 5 and how its evil haunts had flung away the one 
rare chance of sheltering virtue from persecution, when the good Onias was 
tempted from it to be murdered by the governor of its protecting city. 6 

Such was the place where, in the street Singon, Saul began to preach. He 
may have entered it by the gate which was afterwards called the Gate of the 
Cherubim, because twenty-seven years later 7 it was surmounted by those 
colossal gilded ornaments which Titus had taken from the Temple of 
Jerusalem. It was a populous quarter, in close proximity to the Senate 
House, the Forum, and the Amphitheatre ; and every time that during his 
sermon he raised his eyes to the lower crags of Mount Silpius, he would be 
confronted by the stern visage and rocky crown of the choleric ferryman of 
Hades. But the soil was prepared for his teaching. It is darkest just before 
the dawn. When mankind has sunk into hopeless scepticism, the help of God 
is often very nigh at hand. " Bitter with weariness, and sick with sin," there 
were many at any rate, even among the giddy and voluptuous Antiochenes, 
who, in despair of all sweetness and nobleness, were ready to hail with 
rapture the preaching of a new faith which promised forgiveness for the past, 
and brought ennoblement to the present. The work grew and prospered, and 
for a whole year the Apostles laboured in brotherly union and amid constant 
encouragement. The success of their labours was most decisively marked by 

1 Ausonius says of Antioch and Alexandria, 

"Turbida vulgo 
Utraque et amentis populi malesana tumultu" (Ordo Nob. Urb. iii.). 

2 See the celebrated passage in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxiii. 

3 Now Beit-al-Ma'a — a secluded glen. A few dilapidated mills mark a spot where the 
sbrine of Apollo once gleamed with gold and gems. When Julian the Apostate paid it a 
solemn visit, he found there a solitary goose ! The Bab Bolos, or " Gate of Paul," is on 
the Aleppo road. The town still bears a bad name for licentiousness, and only contains a 
few hundred Christians. (See Game's Syria, i. 5, &c.) 

4 2 Mace. iv. 33. * " Daphnici mores." 6 Jos. Antt. xii. 6, § 1. 
^ AD. 70, 



THE SECOND CAPITAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 

the coinage of a new word, destined to a glorious immortality ;— the disciples 
were first called Christians at Antioch. 

It is always interesting to notice the rise of a nevr and memorable word, 
out not a few of those which have met with universal acceptance have started 
into accidental life. It is not so with the word u Christian.''' It indicates a 
decisive epoch, and was the coinage rather of a society than of any single 
man. More, perhaps, than any word which was ever invented, it marks, if I 
may use the expression, the watershed of all human history. It signalises the 
emergence of a true faith among the G-entiles. and the separation of that faith 
from the tenets of the Jews. All former ages, nations, and religions 
contribute to it. The conception which lies at the base of it is Semitic, and 
sums up centuries of expectation and of prophecy in the historic person of 
One who was anointed to be for all mankind a Prophet, Priest, and King. 
But this Hebrew conception is translated by a Greek word, showing that the 
great religious thoughts of which hitherto the Jewish race had been the 
appointed guardians, were henceforth to be the common glory of mankind, 
and were, therefore, to be expressed in a language which enshrined the world's 
most perfect literature, and which had been imposed on all civilised countries 
by the nation which had played by far the most splendid part in the secular 
annals of the past. And this Greek rendering of a Hebrew idea was stamped 
with a Roman form by receiving a Latin termination, 1 as though to fore- 
shadow that the new name should be co-extensive with the vast dominion 
which swayed the present destinies of the world. And if the word was thus. 
pregnant with all the deepest and mightiest associations of the past and of the 
present, how divine was to be its future history \ Henceforth it was needed 
to describe the peculiarity, to indicate the essence, of all that was morally the 
greatest and ideally the most lovely in the condition of mankind. Prom the 
day when the roar of the wild beast in the Amphitheatre was interrupted by 
the proud utterance, Christianus sura — from the days when the martyrs, like 
" a host of Scaevolas,'"'" upheld their courage by this name as they bathed their 
hands without a shudder in the bickering fire — the idea of all patience, of all 
heroic constancy, of all missionary enterprise, of all philanthropic effort, of all 
cheerful self-sacrifice for the common benefit of mankind is in that name. 
How little thought the canaille at Antioch, who first hit on what was to them 
a convenient nickname, that thenceforward their whole city should be chiefly 
famous for its "'"' Christian " associations : that the fame of Seleucus Xicator 
and Antiochus Epiphanes should be lost in that of Ignatius and Chrysostoni/ 
and that long after the power of the imperial legates had been as utterly 

1 The Greek adjective from Xpiorb? would have been Xpurrabs. It is true that 
ijvb? and tvo; are Greek terminations, bat anus is mainly Roman, and there can be little 
doubt that it is due — not to the Doric dialect ! — but to the prevalence of Roman termi- 
nology at Antioch, even if it be admitted that the spread of the Empire had by this time 
made anv* a familiar ter min ation throughout the East cf. Mariari, Pompeiani, <Jcc). 
" Christianity ,: (Xpun-iano-ubsJ first occurs in Ignatius (ad Philad. 6<, as was m. rural in a 
Bishop of Antioch ; and probably " Catholic ;: ilgnat. ad Smyrn. 8) was invented in the 
same city {id. 78). See Bmgham, Antt. II. i. § i. 



168 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

crumbled into the dust of oblivion as the glittering palace bf the Seleucidae in 
which they dwelt, the world would linger with unwearied interest on every 
detail of the life of the obscure Cypriot, and the afflicted Tarsian, whose 
preaching only evoked their wit and laughter ! How much less could they 
have conceived it possible that thenceforward all the greatest art, all the 
greatest literature, all the greatest government, all the greatest philosophy, 
all the greatest eloquence, all the greatest science, all the greatest colonisation 
■ — and more even than this — all of what is best, truest, purest, and loveliest in 
the possible achievements of man, should be capable of no designation so 
distinctive as that furnished by the connotation of what was intended for an 
impertinent sobriquet ! The secret of the wisdom of the Greek, and the 
fervour of the Latin fathers, and the eloquence of both, is in that word ; and 
the isolation of the hermits, and the devotion of the monks, and the self- 
denial of the missionaries, and the learning of the schoolmen, and the 
grand designs of the Catholic statesmen, and the chivalry of the knights, 
and the courage of the reformers, and the love of the philanthropists, and 
the sweetness and purity of northern homes, and everything of divine and 
noble which marks — from the squalor of its catacombs to the splendour 
of its cathedrals — the story of the Christian Church. And why does all 
this lie involved in this one word ? Because it is the standing witness that 
the world's Faith is centred not in formulae, but in historic realities — not in 
a dead system, but in the living Person of its Lord. An ironic inscription 
on the Cross of Christ had been written in letters of Greek, of Latin, and 
of Hebrew; and that Cross, implement as it was of shame and torture, 
became the symbol of the national ruin of the Jew, of the willing allegiance 
of the Greeks and Romans, of the dearest hopes and intensest gratitude 
of the world of civilisation. An hybrid and insulting designation was 
invented in the frivolous streets of Antioch, and around it clustered for ever 
the deepest faith and the purest glory of mankind. 

I have assumed that the name was given by Gentiles, and given more or 
less in sport. It could not have been given by the Jews, who preferred the 
scornful name of " Galilsean," 1 and who would not in any case have dragged 
through the mire of apostasy — for so it would have seemed to them — the word 
in which centred their most cherished hopes. Nor was it in all probability a 
term invented by the Christians themselves. In the New Testament, as is 
well known, it occurs but thrice ; once in the historical notice of its origin, 
and only in two other places as a name used by enemies. It was employed 
by Agrippa the Second in his half-sneering, half-complimentary interpellation 
to St. Paul ; 2 and it is used by St. Peter as the name of a charge under which 
the brethren were likely to be persecuted and impeached. 3 But during the 

1 Or, Nazarine. Acts xxiv. 5 (cf. John i. 46 ; Luke xiii. 2). Cyril, Gatech. x. 
s Acts xxvi. 28. This (which was twenty years later) is the first subsequent allusion 
to the name. Epiphanius [Haer. 29, n. 4) says that an earlier name for Christian wa» 

TicraruoL. 

* 1 Pet. iv. X6, 



THE SECOND CAPITAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 

life-time of the Apostles it does not seem to hare acquired any currency 
among the Christians themselves. 1 and they preferred those vague and loving 
appellations of "the brethren." 2 "the disciples.'' 3 "the believers." i '"' the 
saints," 6 "the Chnrch of Christ," 6 "those of the way," 7 -the elect.'" 9 
" the faithful,'' 9 which had been sweetened to them by so much tender and 
hallowed intercourse during so many heavy trials and persecutions. After- 
wards, indeed, when the name Christian had acquired a charm so potent that 
the very sound of it was formidable. Julian tried to forbid its use by edict. 10 
and to substitute for it the more ignominious term of u Xazarene," which is 
still universal in the East. A tradition naturally sprang" up that the name 
had been invented by Evodius, the first Bishop of Antioch, and even adopted 
at a general synod. 11 But what makes it nearly certain that this is an error, 
is that up to this time il Christ " was not used, or a r any rate was barely 
beginning to be used, as a proper name ; and the currency of a designation 
which marked adherence to Jesus as though Christ were His name and not 
His title, seems to be due only to the ignorance and carelessness of Gentiles, 
who without further inquiry caught up the first prominent word with which 
Christian preaching had made them familiar. 1 - And even this word, in the 
prevalent itacism. was often corrupted into the shape C as though 

it came from the Greek Chrestos, •■excellent." and not from Ohristos, 
"anointed." 13 The latter term — arising from customs and eoneej 
which up to this time were almost exclusively Judaic— : onvey little 

or no meaning to Greek or Eoman ears. We may therefore regard it as 
certain that the most famous of all noble words was invented by the wit 
for which the Antiochenes were famous in antiquity, and which often dis- 
played itself in happy appellations. 14 But whatever may have been the 
spirit in which the name was given, the disciples would not be long in 
welcoming so convenient a term. Bestowed as a stigma, they accepted it 
as a distinction. They who afterwards gloried in the contemptuous re- 

1 The allusion to it in Jaa. ii. 7 is, to say the least, dubious. 

2 Acts xv. 1 ; 1 Cor. vii. 12. 3 Acts ix. 26 ; xL 29. 
4 Acts v. 14. 5 Bom. viii. 27 ; xv. 25. " Eph. v. 25. 

7 Acts xix. 9, 23. Compare the name M ' 2 Eim. ::. 10. Sec 

9 Eph. L 1, kc. Later names like ptieiculi, kc, had some vogue also. 

10 Greg. Xaz. Orat. hi. 81; Julian, Epp. vii., ix. ; Gibbon, v. 312, el. Milman; 
Renan, Les Apotres, 235. 

11 Suid. ii. 3930 a, ed. Gaisf ord ; Malala, Ckronoffr. 10, p. 318, ed. Mill. Dr. 
Plumptre (Paul in Asia, 71) conjectures thai Erodros and Ignatius may have been 
contemporary presbyter-episcopi of the Judaic and Hellenist communities at Antioch. 
Babylas the martyr and Paul of Samosata, the heresiarchs, were both Bishops of 
Antioch, as was Meletius, wbo baptised St. Chrysostom. 

l - " Christus non proprium nomen est, sed nuncupatio potestatis et regni ; " iLact. Liv, 
Instt. iv. 7; see Lift of CI :. i 287, ~. . Hie name "Christian expressed contemp- 
tuous indifference, not definite hatred. Tacitus uses it with dislike — "quae . Ifftu 
Christianos appellabat" (Ann. xv. 14 . 

13 In 1 Pet. ii. 3. some have 3een a sort of allusion to "the L:ri being botl rm 
and xpT)<rro?> jiist as there seems to be a play on i£.rcu and ';■.-; — •:? in Acts ix. 34 ; x. 38. 

14 See Julian, Jfisopogon (an answer to their insults about \m beard' ; Zaek :.. iiL 11; 
PrOCOp. B. P. ii. 8. ycXoiatS rs (coi dra|i<j Uaw<> e&mu PhilosTT. Yit, Ape&on. ii:. 16; 
Conyb. and Hows, i. 130. 



170 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

proaches w hich branded them as sarmenticii and semaxii, 1 from the fagots 
to which they were tied and the stakes to which they were bound, would 
not be likely to blush at a name which was indeed their robe of victory, 
their triumphal chariot. 2 They gloried in it all the more because even the 
ignorant mispronunciations of it which I have just mentioned were a happy 
nomen et omen. If the Greeks and Romans spoke correctly of Ghristus^ 
they gave unwilling testimony to the Universal King ; if they ignorantly 
said Chrestus, they bore witness to the Sinless One. If they said Chris- 
tiani, they showed that the new Faith centred not in a dogma, but in a 
Person ; if they said Chrestiani, they used a word which spoke of sweetness 
and kindliness. 3 And beyond all this, to the Christians themselves the name 
was all the dearer because it constantly reminded them that they too were 
God's anointed ones — a holy generation, a royal priesthood ; that they had an 
unction from the Holy One which brought all truth to their remembrance. 4 

The name marks a most important advance in the progress of the Faith. 
Hitherto, the Christians had been solely looked upon as the obscure sectarians 
of Judaism. The Greeks in their frivolity, the Somans in their superficial 
disdain for all " execrable " and " foreign superstitions," never troubled 
themselves to learn the difference which divided the Jew from the Christian, 
but idly attributed the internal disturbances which seemed to be agitating 
the peace of these detested fanaticisms to the instigations of some un- 
known person named Chrestus. 5 But meanwhile, here at Antioch, the 
inhabitants of the third city in the Empire had seen that there was 
between the two systems an irreconcilable divergence, and had brought that 
fact prominently home to the minds of the Christians themselves by im- 
posing on them a designation which seized upon, and stereotyped for ever, 
the very central belief which separated them from the religion in which they 
had been born and bred. 

» Tert. Apol. 50. 

2 1 Pet. iv. 16, et Se ws Xpiariavds, fjtrj al<rxyve(T0oi , Sofa.£eYa) Se toj> 8ebv eirl t<3 ovo/ian (A, B, 

&c, not /aepei as in E. V.) tovtw. The mere name became a crime. Aiwkovo-i rolwv Tj/u-as 

ovk olSikov? eivai Ka.TaAa/36 vres oAA' olvtco ftovca Tip Xpicrrtavovs eiyat rbv jS/ov dSt/cetv vTroKaixpavovTes, 

k.t.K. Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. 11, § 81. 

3 " Sed quum et perperam Chrestiani nuncupamur a vobis (nam nee nominis certa 
est notitia penes vos) de suavitate et benignitate compositum est" (Tert. Apol. 3). Oi eU 

Xpio-rbv TreTTtcrrevKOTes XPWroi re ettrt koL Aeyovrat (Clem. Alex. Strom. XL. 4, § 18). See Just. 

Mart. Apol. 2. 

4 This was a beautiful after-thought, tovtov evenev KaXov/xeOa Xpurrtavoi on \pi6fieSa 
e\aiov Qeov. (Theoph. ad Autol. i. 12; Tert. Apol. 3.) Compare the German Christen 
(Jer. Taylor, Disc, of Confirm., § 3). There are similar allusions in Ambr. De Obit. 
Valent., and Jerome on Ps. cv. 15 ("Nolite tangere Christos meos"). See Pearson on 
the Creed, Art. ii. 

5 Even in Epictetus {Dissert, iv. 7, 6) and Marcus Aurelius (xi. 3), Renan {Les Ap6tres, 
232) thinks that "Christians" means sicarii. This seems to me very doubtful. 
Sulpicius Severus (ii. 30) preserves a phrase in which Tacitus says of Christianity and 
Judaism, "Has superstitiones, licet contrarias sibi, 'usdem tamen auctoribus profectas.' 
Christianos a Judaeis enstitisse" (Bermays Ueber die Chronik Sulp. Sev., p. 57). # See 
Spartianus, Sept. Sever. 10 ; Caracalla, 1 ; Lampridius, Alex. Sev. 22 — 45,51. Vopiscus, 
Saturn. 8. The confusion was most unfortunate, and peaceful Christians were con- 
stantly persecuted while turbulent Jews were protected. (Tert. Apol. 2, 3 ; Ad Nat. i. 
'S ; Justin, Apol. i. 4 — 7, n.) 



A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 171 

The necessity for such a name marks clearly the success which attended 
I he mission work of these early Evangelists. They could not have tilled a 
soil which was more likely to be fruitful. With what a burst of joy must 
the more large-hearted even of the Jews have hailed the proclamation of a 
Gospel which made them no longer a hated colony living at drawn daggers 
with the heathen life that surrounded them ! How ardently must the Gentile 
whose heart had once been touched, whose eyes had once been enlightened 
have exulted in the divine illumination, the illimitable hope ! How must his 
heart have been stirred by the emotions which marked the outpouring of 
the Spirit and accompanied the grace of baptism ! How with the new life 
tingling through the dry bones of the valley of vision must he have turned 
away — with abhorrence for his former self, and a divine pity for his former 
companions — from the poisoned grapes of Heathendom, to pluck the fair 
fruits which grow upon the Tree of Life in the Paradise of God ! How, in 
one word, must his heart have thrilled, his soul have dilated, at high words 
like these : — " Such things were some of you ; but ye washed yourselves, but 
ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, by the name of the Lord Jesus, and by 
the Spirit of our God." 1 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 

" O great Apostle ! rightly now 

Thou readest all thy Saviour meant, 
What time His grave yet gentle brow 

In sweet reproof on thee was bent." — Keblb. 

Thus it was that at Antioch the Church of Christ was enlarged, and the 
views of its members indefinitely widened. For a whole year— and it may 
well have been the happiest year in the life of Saul — he worked here with his 
beloved companion. The calm and conciliatory tact of Barnabas tempered 
and was inspirited by the fervour of Saul. Each contributed his own high 
gifts to clear away the myriad obstacles which still impeded the free flow of 
the river of God's grace. In the glory and delight of a ministry so richly 
successful, it is far from impossible that Saul may have enjoyed that 
rapturous revelation which he describes in the Epistle to the Corinthians, 
during which he was caught up into Paradise as far as the third heaven, 2 and 
heard unspeakable words which man neither could nor ought to utter. It 
was one of those ecstasies which the Jews themselves regarded as the 

* 1 Cor. vi. 11. Tau-rd Ttves ijtc aW ane\ov<ra<70e, k.t.A. 

2 The "third heaven" is called "Zevul" by Eashi (cf. Chagigah, f. 12, 2). In such 
visions the soul " hath no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, yet sees and hears, and is all eye, 
All ear." St. Teresa, in describing her visions as indescribable, says, "The restless little 
butterfly of the memory has its wings burnt now, and it cannot fly." (Vida, xviii. 18.) 



172 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAXTL. 

highest form of revelation — one of those moments of inspiration in whi th the 
soul, like Moses on Sinai, sees God face to face and does not die. St. Panl, it 
must be remembered, had a work to perform which required more absolute 
self-sacrifice, more unwavering faith, more undaunted courage, more un- 
clouded insight, more glorious superiority to immemorial prejudices, than any 
man who ever lived. It needed moments like this to sustain the nameless 
agonies, to kindle the inspiring flame of such a life. The light upon the 
countenance of Moses might die away, like the radiance of a mountain peak 
which has caught the colour of the dawn, but the glow in the heart of Paul 
could never fade. The utterance of the unspeakable words might cease to 
vibrate in the soul, but no after-influence could obliterate the impression of 
the eternal message. Amid seas and storms, amid agonies and energies, even 
when all earthly hopes had ceased, we may be sure that the voice of God still 
rang in his heart, the vision of God was still bright before his spiritual eye. 

The only recorded incident of this year of service is the visit of certain 
brethren from Jerusalem, of whom one, named Agabus, prophesied the near 
occurrence of a general famine. The warning note which he sounded was 
not in vain. It quickened the sympathies of the Christians at Antioch, and 
enabled the earliest of the Gentile Churches to give expression to their 
reverence for those venerable sufferers in the Mother Church of Jerusalem 
who " had seen and heard, and whose hands had handled the Word of Life." x 
A contribution was made for the brethren of Judaea. The inhabitants of that 
country, and more especially of the Holy City, have been accustomed in all 
ages, as they are in this, to rely largely on the chaluka, 2 or alms, which are 
willingly contributed to their poverty by Jews living in other countries. The 
vast sums collected for the Temple tribute flowed into the bursting coffers of 
the Beni Hanan — much as they now do, though in dwindled rills, into those 
of a few of the leading Ashkenazim and Ansche hod. But there would be 
little chance that any of these treasures would help to alleviate the hunger of 
the struggling disciples. Priests who starved their own coadjutors 3 would 
hardly be inclined to subsidise their impoverished opponents. The Gentiles, 
who had been blessed by the spiritual wealth of Jewish Christians, cheerfully 
returned the benefit by subscribing to the supply of their temporal needs. 4 
The sums thus gathered were entrusted by the Church to Barnabas and Saul. 

The exact month in which these two messengers of mercy arrived to assist 
their famine-stricken brethren cannot be ascertained, but there can be but 
little doubt that it was in the year 44. On their arrival they found the 
Church in strange distress from a new persecution. It is not impossible that 
the fury of the onslaught may once more have scattered the chief Apostles, 
for we hear nothing of any intercourse between them and the two great 

1 1 John i. 1. 

2 According to Dr. Frankl (Jews in the East, ii. 31) a sum of 818,000 piastres finds its 
way annually to Jerusalem, for a Jewish population of some 5,700 souls. It is distributed 
partly as chaluka — i.e., at so much per head, without distinction of age or sex — and partly 
as ka,(lirn/j,, according to the rank of the recipient. 

3 Derenbourg, p. 232, seq. 4 Eom. xv. 26, 27. 



A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 173 

leaders of the Church of Antioch. Indeed, it is said that the alms were 
handed over, not to the Apostles, but to the Elders. It is true that Elders 
may include Apostles, but the rapid and purely monetary character of the 
visit, and the complete silence as to further details, seem to imply that this 
was not the case. 

The Church of Antioch was not the sole contributor to the distresses of 
Jerusalem. If they helped their Christian brethren, the Jews found benefac- 
tors in the members of an interesting household, the royal family of Adiabene, 
whose history is much mingled at this time with that of Judaea, and sheds 
instructive light on the annals of early Christianity. 

Adiabene, once a province of Assyria, now forms part of the modern Kurdis- 
tan. Monobazus, the king of this district, had married his sister Helena, and 
by that marriage had two sons, of whom the younger, Izates, was the favourite of 
his parents. x To save him from the jealousy of his other brothers, the king and 
queen sent him to the court of Abennerig, king of the Charax-Spasini, who gave 
him his daughter in marriage. While he was living in this sort of honourable 
exile, a Jewish merchant, named Hananiah, managed to find admission into 
the harem of Abennerig, and to convert some of his wives to the Jewish faith. 
In this way he was introduced to Izates, of whom he also made a proselyte. 
Izates was recalled by his father before his death, and endowed with the 
princedom of Charrae; and when Monobazus died, Helena summoned the 
leading men of Adiabene, and informed them that Izates had been appointed 
successor to the crown. These satraps accepted the decision, but advised 
Helena to make her elder son, Monobazus, a temporary sovereign until the 
arrival of his brother, and to put the other brothers in bonds preparatory 
to their assassination in accordance with the common fashion of Oriental 
despotism. 2 Izates, however, on his arrival, was cheerfully acknowledged by 
his elder brother, and set all his other brothers free, though he sent them as 
hostages to Rome and various neighbouring courts. I shall subsequently 
relate the very remarkable circumstances which led to his circumcision. 3 At 
present I need only mention that his reign was long and prosperous, and that 
he was able to render such important services to Artabanus, the nineteenth 
Arsacid, that he received from him the kingdom of Nisibis, as well as the 
right to wear the peak of his tiara upright, and to sleep in a golden bed — 
privileges usually reserved for the kings of Persia. Even before these events, 
Helena had been so much struck with the prosperity and piety of her son, 
that she too had embraced Judaism, and at this very period was living 
in Jerusalem. Being extremely wealthy, and a profound admirer of Jewish 
institutions, she took energetic measures to alleviate the severity of the 
famine ; and by importing large quantities of corn from Alexandria, and 
of dried figs from Cyprus, she was happily able to save many lives. Her 

1 Josephus ( Antt. xx. 2, § 1) attributes this partiality to a prophetic dream. 

2 Hence we are told that " ' King ' Mumbaz made golden h andles for the vessels used 
In the Temple on the Day of Atonement " ( Toma, 37 a). 

3 Infra, p. 429. 



174 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

royal bounty was largely aided by the liberality of IzaVes, 1 whose contributions 
continued to be of service to the Jews long after the arrival of Saul and 
Barnabas with the alms which they had brought from Antioch for their 
suffering brethren. 

It is clear that they arrived shortly before the Passover, or towards the 
end of March ; for St. Luke fixes their visit about the time of Herod's perse- 
cution, which began just before, and would, but for God's Providence, have 
been consummated just after, that great feast. Indeed, it was a priori probable 
that the Apostles would time their visit by the feast, both from a natural 
desire to be present at these great annual celebrations, and a 1 so because that 
was the very time at which the vast concourse of visitors would render their 
aid most timely and indispensable. 

They arrived, therefore, at a period of extreme peril to the little Church at 
Jerusalem, which had now enjoyed some five years of unbroken peace. 2 

Herod Agrippa I., of whom we have already had some glimpses, was one 
of those singular characters who combine external devotion with moral laxity. 
I have elsewhere told the strange story of the part which on one memorable day 
he played in Roman history, 3 and how his supple address and determination 
saved Home from a revolution, and placed the uncouth Claudius on his 
nephew's throne. Claudius, who with all his pedantic and uxorious eccentricity 
was not devoid either of kindness or rectitude, was not slow to recognise that 
he owed to the Jewish prince both his life and his empire. It was probably 
due, in part at least, to the influence of Agrippa that shortly after his accession 
he abolished the law of "Impiety" on which Gaius had so vehemently 
insisted, 4 and which attached the severest penalties to any neglect of the 
imperial cult. But the further extension of the power of Agrippa was 
fraught with disastrous consequences to the Church of Christ. For the Jews 
were restored to the fullest privileges which they had ever enjoyed, and 
Agrippa set sail for Palestine in the flood-tide of imperial favour and with 
the splendid additions of Judaea and Samaria, Abilene, and the district 
of Lebanon 5 to Herod Philip's tetrarchy of Trachonitis, which he had 
received at the accession of Gaius. 6 

It is natural that a prince of Asmonsean blood, 7 who thus found himself in 

1 Oros. vii. 6 ; Jos. Antt. xx. 2, § 5. Helena is also said to have given to the Temple 
a golden candlestick, and a golden tablet inscribed with the "trial of jealousy " (Yoma, 
37 a). 

2 Caligula's order to place his statue in the Temple was given in A.D. 39. Herod 
Agrippa died in A.D. 44. 

3 Setters after God, p. 76. 4 Dion. lx. 3, 5. 

6 Jos. Antt. xix. 5, §§ 2, 3. 6 Id. xviii. 5, § 10. 

7 Agrippa I. was the grandson of Herod the Great and Mariamne. Mariamne was the 
granddaughter of Hyrcanus II., who was a grandson of Hyrcanus I., who was a son of 
Simon, the elder brother of Judas Maccabseus. Some of the Rabbis were, however, 
anxious to deny any drop of Asmoiuean blood to the Herodian family. They relate that 
Herod the Great had been a slave to one of the Asmonseans, and one day heard a Bath 
Kol saying, " Every slave that now rebels will succeed." Accordingly, he murdered all 
the family, except one young maiden, whom he reserved for marriage. But she mounted 
to the roof, cried out that any one who asserted himself to be of the Asmonsean house 



A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 175 

possession of a dominion as extensive as that of his grandfather Herod the 
Great, should try to win the favour of the people whom he was sent 
to govern. Apart from the subtle policy of facing both ways so as to please 
the Jews while he dazzled the Romans, and to enjoy his life in the midst 
of Gentile luxuries while he affected the reputation of a devoted Pharisee, 
Agrippa seems to have been sincere in his desire to be — at any rate at Jeru- 
salem — an observer of the Mosaic Law. St. Luke, though his allusions to him 
are so brief and incidental, shows remarkable fidelity to historic facts in 
presenting him to us in both these aspects. In carrying out his policy, 
Agrippa paid studious court to the Jews, and especially to the Pharisees. He 
omitted nothing which could win their confidence or flatter their pride, and 
his wife, Cypros, 1 seems also to have been as much attached to the party as 
her kinswoman, Salome, sister of Herod the Great. 2 

It is clear that such a king — a king who wished to foster the sense of 
Jewish nationality, 3 to satisfy the Sadducees, to be supported by the Pharisees, 
and to be popular with the multitude — could not have lived long in Jerusalem, 
which was his usual place of residence, 4 without hearing many complaints 
about the Christians. At this time they had become equally distasteful to 
every section of the Jews, being regarded not only as fanatics, but as apostates, 
some of whom sat loosely to the covenant which God had made with their 
fathers. To extirpate the Christians would, as Agrippa was well aware, be the 
cheapest possible way to win general popularity. It was accordingly about the 
very time of the visit of the two Apostles to the Passover, as delegates from 
Autioch, that " he laid hands on certain of the Church to injure them ; and he 
slew James, the brother of John, with the sword; and seeing that it was 
pleasiug to the Jews, proceeded to arrest Peter also." 5 Thus in a single 
touch does St. Luke strike the keynote of Agrippa's policy, which was an un- 
scrupulous desire for such popularity as could be earned by identifying himself 
with Jewish prejudices. In the High Priests of the day be would find willing 
coadjutors. The priest for the time being was probably Elionseus, whom 
Josephus calls a son of Kanthera, but whom the Talmud calls a son of 
Caiaphas. 6 If so, he would have been animated with an hereditary fury 

henceforth would be a slave, for that she alone of that house was left ; " and flinging 
herself down was killed. Some say that for seven years Herod preserved her body in 
honey, to make people believe that he was married to an Asmonsean princess. Angry 
with the Rabbis, who insisted on Deut. xvii. 15, he killed them all, except the Babha Ben 
Buta (whom he blinded by binding up his eyes with the skin of a hedgehog), that he 
might have one counsellor left. Having disguised himself, and tried in vain to tempt 
Babha Ben Buta to say something evil of him, he revealed himself, and asked what he 
ought to do by way of expiation. The blind man answered, " Thou hast extinguished the 
light of the world (see Matt. v. 14) ; rekindle it by building the Temple " (Babha Bathra, 
f. 3, 2, seqq.). 

1 Cypros was the name of the wife of Antipater and mother of Herod the Great. She 
was descended from a Nabathean family ; her name, which is probably connected with 
*^D3, (kenna), was borne by several Herodian princesses (Derenbourg, Palest., p. 210). 

2 See Excursus XTH., Herod Agrippa I. in the Talmud and in Secular History. 

3 Jos. Antt. xx. 1, § 1. 

* Id. xix. 7, § 3. 5 Acts xii. 1—3. 

6 Jos. B. J. xix. 8, § 1 ; Para, iii. 5 ; Ben Hakkaiph ; Derenbourg, p. 215 



176 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

against the followers of Christ, and would have been an eager instrument in 
the hands of Herod. When such allies were in unison, and Agrippa in the 
*ery plenitude of his power, it was easy to strike a deadly blow at the Naza- 
renes. It was no bold Hellenist who was now singled out as a victim, no 
spirited opponent of Jewish exclusiveness. James, as the elder brother of the 
beloved disciple, perhaps as a kinsman of Christ Himself, as one of the earliest 
and one of the most favoured Apostles, as one not only of the Twelve, but of 
the Three, as the son of a father apparently of higher social position than the 
rest of the little band, seems to have had a sort of precedence at Jerusalem ; 
and for this reason alone — not, so far as we are aware, from being personally 
obnoxious — he was so suddenly seized and martyred that no single detail or 
circumstance of his martyrdom has been preserved. Two words 1 are all the 
space devoted to recount the death of the first Apostle by the historian who 
had narrated at such length the martyrdom of Stephen. It may be merely due 
to a sense of inadequacy in this brief record that Christian tradition told how 
the constancy and the harangues of James converted his accuser, and caused 
him to become a voluntary sharer of his death. 2 But perhaps we are meant to 
see a spiritual fitness in this lonely and unrecorded end of the son of Thunder. 
He had stood by Jesus at the bedside of the daughter of Jairus, and on the 
holy mount, and in the agony of the garden ; had once wished to call down fire 
from heaven on those who treated his Lord with incivility ; had helped to urge 
the claim that he might sit in closest proximity to His throne of judgment. 
There is a deep lesson in the circumstance that he should, meekly and silently, 
in utter self-renouncement, with no visible consolation, with no elaborate 
eulogy, amid no pomp of circumstance, with not even a recorded burial, perish 
first of the faithful few who had forsaken all to follow Christ, and so be the 
first to fulfil the warning prophecy that he should drink of His bitter cup, and 
be baptised with His fiery baptism. 

It was before the Passover that James had been doomed to feel the tyrants 
sword. The universal approbation of the fact by the Jews — an approbation 
which would be all the more conspicuous from the presence of the vast throngs 
who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover — stimulated the king, to 
whom no incense was so sweet as the voice of popular applause, to inflict a 
blow yet more terrible by seizing the most prominent of all the Apostles. 
Peter was accordingly arrested, and since there was no time to finish his trial 
before the Passover, and the Jews were not inclined to inflict death by their 
own act during the Feast, he was kept in prison till the seven sacred days had 
elapsed that he might then be put to death with the most ostentatious pub- 
licity. 3 Day after day the Apostle remained in close custody, bound by either 
arm to two soldiers, and guarded by two others. Aware how irreparable would 
be the loss of one so brave, so true, so gifted with spiritual fervour and wisdom, 

* Acts xii. 2, avel\e . . . /u.ax a< P?* 

2 Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 9. The Apostle, it is said, looked at him for a 
little time, and then kissed him, with the words, "Peace be with you," just before they 
both were killed. 

* Acts Xii. 4, ivdyeiy. 



A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 177 

the Christians of Jerusalem poured out their hearts and souls in prayer for his 
deliverance. But it seemed as if all would be in vain. The last night of the 
Feast had come ; the dawn of the morning would see Peter brought forth to 
the mockery of trial, and the certainty of death. It seemed as if the day had 
already come when, as his Lord had told him, another should gird him, and 
carry him whither he would not. But in that last extremity God had not for- 
saken His Apostle or His Church. On that last night, by a divine deliverance, 
so sudden, mysterious, and bewildering, that to Peter, until he woke to the 
sober certainty of his rescue, it seemed like a vision, 1 the great Apostle was 
snatched from his persecutors. After brieHy narrating the circumstances of 
his deliverance to the brethren assembled in the house of Mary, the mother of 
John Mark the Evangelist, he entrusted them with the duty of bearing the 
same message to James, the Lord's brother, and to the other Christians who 
were not present, and withdrew for a time to safe retirement, while Herod was 
left to wreak his impotent vengeance on the unconscious quaternion of soldiers. 

It might well seem as though the blood of martyrdom brought its own 
retribution on the heads of those who cause it to be spilt. We have seen 
Agrippa in the insolent plenitude of his tyranny ,• the next scene exhibits him 
in the horrible anguish of his end. It was at the beginning of April, A.D. 44, 
that he had slain James and arrested Peter ; it was probably the very same 
month which ended his brief and guilty splendour, and cut him off in the 
flower of his life. 

Versatile and cosmopolitan as was natural in an adventurer whose youth 
and manhood had experienced every variety of fortune, Agrippa could play the 
heathen at Csesarea with as much zeal as he could play the Pharisee at Jerusa- 
lem. The ordinary herd of Rabbis and hierarchs had winked at this phase 
of his royalty, and had managed to disintegrate in their imaginations the 
Herod who offered holocausts in the Temple from the Herod who presided 
in amphitheatres at Berytus ; the Herod who wept, because he was only half 
a Jew, in the Temple at the Passover, and the Herod who presided at 
Pagan spectacles at Csesarean jubilees. 2 One bold Pharisee — Simon by 
name — did indeed venture for a time to display the courage of his opinions. 
During an absence of Agrippa from Jerusalem, he summoned an assembly, and 
declared the king's actions to be so illegal that, on this ground, as well as on 
the ground of his Idumsean origin, he ought to be excluded from the Temple. 
As it was not Agrippa's object to break with the Pharisees, he merely sent for 
Simon to Csesarea, made him sit by his side in the theatre, and then asked him, 
gently, " whether he saw anything there which contradicted the law of Moses ?" 
Simon either was or pretended to be convinced that there was no overt infrac- 
tion of Mosaic regulations, and after begging the king's pardon was dismissed 
with a small present. 

It was in that same theatre that Agrippa met his end. Severe troubles 
had arisen in the relations between Judaea and the Phoenician cities of Tyre 

1 Acts xii. 9. 2 Jos. Antt. xix. 7, § 4. 



178 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

and Sidon, and since that maritime strip of coast depends entirely for its 
subsistence on the harvests of Palestine, it was of the extremest importance 
to the inhabitants of the merchant cities that they should keep on good terms 
with the little autocrat. 1 The pressure of the famine, which would fall on 
them with peculiar severity, made them still more anxious to bring about a 
reconciliation, and the visit of Agrippa to Csesarea on a joyful occasion 
furnished them with the requisite opportunity. 

That occasion was the news that Claudius had returned in safety from his 
expedition to Britain, and had been welcomed at Rome with an outburst of 
flattery, in which the interested princelings of the provinces thought it politic 
to bear their part. 2 Agrippa was always glad of any excuse which enabled 
him to indulge his passion for gladiatorial exhibitions and the cruel vanities of 
Eoman dissipation. Accordingly he hurried to Csesarea, which was the 
Roman capital of Palestine, and ordered every preparation to be made for a 
splendid festival. To this town came the deputies of Tyre and Sidon, taking 
care to secure a friend at court in the person of Blastus, the king's groom of 
the bedchamber. 3 

It was on the second morning of the festival, at the early dawn of a 
burning day in the Syrian spring, that Agrippa gave audience to the 
Phoenician embassy. It was exactly the time and place and occasion in which 
he would be glad to display his magnificence and wealth. Accordingly he 
entered the theatre with his royal retinue in an entire robe of tissued silver, 
and taking his seat on the bema, made to the Tyrians and Sidonians a set 
harangue. As he sat there the sun blazed on his glittering robe, and seemed 
to wrap him in a sheet of splendour. The theatre was thronged with his 
creatures, his subjects, the idle mob whose amusement he was supplying with 
profuse liberality, and the people whose prosperity depended on his royal 
favour. Here and there among the crowd a voice began to be heard shouting 
that it was a god who was speaking to them, 4 a god whose radiant epiphany 
was manifested before their eyes. In the prime of life, and of the manly 
beauty for which his race was remarkable, at the zenith of his power, in the 
seventh year of his reign, in the plenitude of his wealth, 6 an autocrat by his 
own position, and an autocrat rendered all but irresistible by the support of 
the strange being whom his supple address had saved from the dagger to seat 
him on the imperial throne — surrounded, too, at this moment by flatterers and 
parasites, and seated in the very midst of the stately buildings which Jews and 
Gentiles alike knew to have been conferred upon the city by the architectural 
extravagance of his race — the feeble intellect of Agrippa was turned by this 
intoxicating incense. He thought himself to be the god whom they declared. 

1 Cf . 1 Kings v. 9 ; Ezek. xxvii. 17 ; Ezra iii. 7. 

2 Dion. lx. 23 ; Suet. Claud. 17 ; Philo, Leg. 45. See Lewin, Fasti Sacri, §§ 1668, 
1674 ; and contra Wieseler, Chron. d. A post. ZeU. 130. 

3 fori toi"; *oitoh'o<;, nihici/Jariiis, praefectus cuhiculi. 

1 See Jos. Antt. xix. 8, § 2, which closely confirms the narrative of Acts xii. 
5 His revenue is stated to have been 12,000,000 of drachmae, or more than £425,000 a 
year. 



A MARTYRDOM AND A RETRIBUTION. 179 

Why should not he accept the apotheosis so abjectly obtruded on a Caligula 
or a Claudius ? He accepted the blasphemous adulation, which, as a King of 
the Jews, he ought to have rejected with indignant horror. At that very 
moment his doom was sealed. It was a fresh instance of that irony of 
heaven which often seems to place men in positions of superlative gorgeous- 
ness at the very moment when the fiat is uttered which consigns them to the 
most pitiable and irrecoverable fall. 1 

There was no visible intervention. No awful voice sounded in the ears 
of the trembling listeners. No awful hand wrote fiery letters upon the wall. 
St. Luke says merely that the angel of God smote him. Josephus introduces 
the grotesque incident of an owl seated above him on one of the cords which 
ran across the theatre, which Agrippa saw, and recognised in it the predicted 
omen of impending death. 2 Whether he saw an owl or not, he was carried 
from the theatre to his palace a stricken man — stricken by the hand of God. 
In five days from that time — five days of internal anguish and vain despair, 3 
in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and the fourth of his reign over the entire 
dominion of his grandfather — Agrippa died. And whatever may be the 
extent to which he had won the goodwill of the Jews by his lavish benefac- 
tions, the Gentiles hated him all the more because he was not only a Jew but 
an apostate. A consistent Jew they could in some measure tolerate, even 
while they hated him ; but for these hybrid renegades they always express an 
unmitigated contempt. The news of Agrippa's death was received by the 
population, and especially by the soldiers, both at Caesarea and Sebaste with 
feastings, carousals, and every indication of indecent joy. Not content with 
crowning themselves with garlands, and pouring libations to the ferryman of 
the Styx, they tore down from the palace the statues of Agrippa's daughters, 
and subjected them to the most infamous indignities. The foolish inertness 
of Claudius left the insult unpunished, and these violent and dissolute soldiers 
contributed in no small degree to the evils which not many years afterwards 
burst over Judsea with a storm of fire and sword. 4 



1 See Bishop Thirlwall's Essay on the Irony of Sophocles. 

2 He says that an owl was sitting on a tree on the day of Agrippa's arrest at Capreae, 
and that a German soothsayer had foretold that he should become a king, but should be 
near his death when he saw that owl again. See also Euseb. H. E. ii. 10, who substitutes 
the angel for the owl. 

3 Jos. Antt. XIX. 8, § 2, -yaOTpos akyrjiJiao-L SiepyaaOeis : Acts xii. 23, crKa>ATjK:6j3p<oTos aneOavsv. 

Whether there be any disease which can strictly be described as the phthiriasis, morbus 
pedicularis, is, as I have mentioned in my Life of Christ, i. 47, more than doubtful. The 
death of Herod Agrippa, bike that of his grandfather, has been so called, but not by the 
sacred historians. It is, however, an historic fact that many cruel tyrants have died of 
ulcerous maladies, which the popular rumour described much as Lactantius describes them 
in his tract De Mortibus persecutorum. Instances are — Pheretima (Herod, iv. 205, evA.eW 
e^Oa-ev, where the retributive appropriateness of the disease is first pointed out) ; 
Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Mace. v. 9) ; Herod the Great (Jos. Antt. xvii. 6, § 5, B. J. i. 33, 
§ § 8, 9) ; Maximius Galerius (Euseb. H. E. viii. 16) ; Maximin {id. ix. 10, 11 ; Lact. De 
Mort. persec. xxxiii. ) ; Claudius Lucius Herminianus (Tertull. ad Scap. iii. cum vivus 
rermibus ebulliisset "Nemo sciat " dicebat, "ne gaudeant Christiani ") ; Duke of 
Alva ; &c. 

« Jos. Antt. xix. 9, § 2. 
M 2 



180 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Of these scenes Saul and Barnabas may have been eye-witnesses on their 
return journey from Jerusalem to Autioch. The order of events in St. Luke 
may indeed be guided by the convenience of narrating consecutively all that 
he had to say about Herod Agrippa, and above all of showing how the sudden 
onslaught on the Church, which seemed to threaten it with nothing short of 
extermination, was checked by the deliverance of Peter, and arrested by the 
retribution of God. This would be the more natural if, as there seems to be 
good reason to believe, the ghastly death of Herod took place in the very same 
month in which, by shedding the blood of the innocent in mere pursuit of 
popularity, he had consummated his crimes. 1 If Saul and Barnabas were at 
Jerusalem during Peter's imprisonment, they may have been present at the 
prayer meeting at the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, and the kinswoman 
of Barnabas. If so we can at once account for the vivid minuteness of the 
details furnished to St. Luke respecting the events of that memorable time. 2 

In any case, they must have heard the death of Agrippa discussed a 
thousand times, and must have recognised in it a fresh proof of the immediate 
governance of God. But this was to them a truth of the most elementary 
character. Their alleged indifference to public questions simply arose from 
their absorption in other interests. Their minds were full of deeper concerns 
than the pride and fall of kings ; and their visit to Jerusalem was so purely 
an episode in the work of St. Paul that in the Epistle to the Galatians he 
passes it over without a single allusion. 3 There is nothing surprising in the 
omission. It is the object of the Apostle to show his absolute independence 
of the Twelve. This second visit to Jerusalem had, therefore, no bearing on 
the subject with which he was dealing. More than eleven years had already 
elapsed since the Crucifixion, and a very ancient tradition says that twelve 
years (which to the Jews would mean anything above eleven years) was the 
period fixed by our Lord for the stay of the Apostles in the Holy City. 4 
Even if we attach no importance to the tradition, it is certain that it approxi- 
mates to known facts, and we may therefore assume that, about this time, the 
Apostles began to be scattered in various directions. St. Paul passes over 
this eleemosynary visit, either because in this connexion it did not occur to 
his memory, or because the mention of it was wholly unimportant for his 
purpose. 

Yet there was one circumstance of this visit which was fraught with 

1 Saul and Barnabas seem to have started from Antioch with the intention of 
arriving at Jesusalem for the Passover of April 1, A.D. 44. The martyrdom of James 
immediately preceded the Passover, and the imprisonment of Peter took place during 
the Paschal week (Acts xii. 3 — 6). It was immediately afterwards that Herod started 
for Caesarea ; and if the object of his visit was to celebrate the return of Claudius from 
Britain, it must have been in this very month. For Claudius returned early in A.D. 44, 
and it would take some little time for the news to reach Jerusalem. Further, Josephus 
nays that Agrippa reigned seven years {Anlt. xix. 8, § 2), and as he was appointed in 
April, A.D. Vil, these seven years would end in April, A.D. 44. See the question fully 
examined in Lewin, Fasti Sacri, p. 280. 

2 In D is mentioned even the number of steps from Peter's prison to the street. 
•'' Gal. ii. I. 

« See Apullun. ay. Fuseb. M. K. v. 18 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, vi p. 762, ed. Potter. 



JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 181 

future consequences full of sadness to both the Apostles. Barnabas, as we 
have seen, was nearly related to John Mark, son 1 of that Mary in whose 
house was the upper room. It would be most natural that he, and therefore 
that Saul, should, during their short visit, be guests in Mary's house, and the 
enthusiasm of her son may well have been kindled by the glowing spirit 
of his cousin and the yet more fiery ardour of his great companion. The 
danger of further persecution seemed to be o\er, but Peter, Mark's close 
friend and teacher, was no longer in Jerusalem, and, in spite of any natural 
anxieties which the prevalent famine may have caused, the Christian mother 
consented to part with her son, and he left Jerusalem in the company of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles. 



CHAPTER XYin. 

JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 



" Whoso breaketh a hedge [applied by the Rabbis to their Seyyag la Thorah, or 
e for the Law '], a serpent shall bite him." — Eccles. x. 8. 

" « Gods of Hellas ! Gods of Hellas! ' 

Said the old Hellenic tongue ; 

Said the hero-oaths, as well as 

Poets' songs the sweetest sung ! 

' Have ye grown deaf in a day ? 

Can ye speak not yea or nay — 

Since Pan is dead ? ' " — E. Barrett Browning. 

" Die Gotter sanken vom Himmelsthron 
Es stiirtzten die Herrlichen Saulen, 
Und geboren wiirde der Jungfrau Sohn 

Die Gebrechen der Erde zu heilen ; 
Verbannt war der Sinne fluchtige Lust 
Und der Mensch griff denkend in seine Brust." 

Schiller. 

When Barnabas and Saul returned to Antioch they found the Church still 
animated by the spirit of happy activity. It was evidently destined to 
eclipse the importance of the Holy City as a centre and stronghold of the 
Faith. In the Church of Jerusalem there were many sources of weakness 
which were wanting at Antioch. It was hampered by depressing poverty. 
It had to bear the brunt of the earliest persecutions. Its lot was cast in the 
very furnace of Jewish hatred; and yet the views of its most influential 
elders were so much identified with their old Judaic training that they would 
naturally feel less interest in any attempt to proselytise the Gentiles. 

At Antioch all was different. There the prejudices of the Jews wore an 
aspect more extravagant, and the claims of the Gentiles assumed a more 
overwhelming importance. At Jerusalem the Christians had been at the 

1 Col. iv. 10, 6 ai/ei/uos means "cousin," not "sister's son," which would be dSeA.<j>i$ov«. 



1S2 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUIi. 

mercy of a petty Jewish despot. At Antioch the Jews were force 1 to meet 
the Christians on terms of perfect equality, under the impartial rule of 
Eoman law. 1 

Of the constitution of the early Church at Antioch nothing is said, but we 
are told of a little group of prophets and teachers 2 who occupied a prominent 
position in their religious services. These were Barnabas, Simeon (surnamed, 
for distinction's sake, Niger, and possibly, therefore, like Lucius, a native of 
Cyrene), Manaen, and Saul. Of Simeon and Lucius nothing whatever is 
known, since the suggestion that Lucius may be the same person as Luke the 
Evangelist is too foundationless to deserve a refutation. Of Manaen, or, to 
give him his proper Jewish name, Menahem, we are told the interesting cir- 
cumstance that he was the foster-brother of Herod Antipas. It has, therefore, 
been conjectured that he may have been a son of the Essene who lent to 
Herod the Great the influence of his high authority, 3 and who, when Herod 
was a boy at school, had patted him on the back and told him he should one 
day be king. 4 If so, Menahem must have been one of the few early converts 
who came from wealthy positions ; but there is nothing to prove that he was 
thus connected with the celebrated Essene, and in any case he can hardly have 
been his son. 5 

It was during a period of special service, accompanied by fasting, that the 
Holy Spirit brought home to their souls the strong conviction of the new work 
which lay before the Church, and of the special commission of Barnabas and 
Saul. 6 The language in which this Divine intimation is expressed seems to 
imply a sudden conviction following upon anxious deliberation ; and that 
special prayer and fasting 7 had been undertaken by these prophets and teachers 
in order that they might receive guidance to decide about a course which had 
been already indicated to the two Apostles. 

1 " Eruditissimis hominibus liberalissimisque studiis affluens" (Cic. Pro Archid, iii.). 

2 The accurate distinction between "prophets " and "teachers " is nowhere laid down, 
but it is clear that in the Apostolic age it was well understood (1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 
11). But the question naturally arises whether it is meant that Barnabas and Saul were 
"prophets" or "teachers" — or whether they were both. The latter, perhaps, is the 
correct view. The prophet stood higher than the teacher, was more immediately inspired, 
spoke with a loftier authority ; but the teacher, whose functions were of a gentler and 
humbler nature, might, at great moments, and under strong influences, rise to the power 
of prophecy, while the prophet also might on ordinary occasions fulfil the functions of a 
teacher. (See Neander, Planting, p. 133, seqq.) 

3 Jos. Antt. xv. 10, § 5. 

4 Incidents of this kind are also told of Galba (Tac. Ann. vi. 20 ; Suet. Gfalb. 4 ; Jos. 
Antt. xviii. 69), of Henry VII., and of Louis Philippe. 

5 Because Manaen the Essene must have attained middle age when Herod the Great 
was a boy, and since we have now reached A.D. 45, this Manaen could only have been 
born when the other was in extreme old age. 

6 Acts xiii. 2, ' A^opia-are 8»j, "Come, set apart at once." The meaning of the 
KfLTovpyovvruiv (hence our word " liturgy ") is probably general. Chrysostom explains it bv 
K.r\pvT™vTuv. For other instances of the word, see Luke i. 23 ; Bom. xv. 16 ; 2 Cor. ix. 12 ; 
Phil. ii. 30. The 6 7rpo<r/ceKArj/xai. avVous implies, of course, that Barnabas and Saul had 
already received a summons to the work (cf. Acts ix. 15 ; xxh. 21 ; Kom. i. 1 ; Gal. i. 1). 
Hooker thinks that Paul was made an Apostle because James could not leave Jerusalem ; 
and Barnabas to supply the place of James the brother of John (Eccl. Pol. vii. 4, 2). 

7 On fasting in Ember weeks see Bingham xxi. ch, 2. 



JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 183 

St. Paul, indeed, must long have yearned for the day in which the Lord 
should see fit to carry out His own promise " to send him far hence to the 
Gentiles." 1 The more deeply he thought over his predicted mission, the more 
would he realise that it had been predestined in the councils of God. Gentiles 
worshipped idols, but so had their own fathers done when they dwelt beyond 
Euphrates. Jewish Rabbis had admitted that, after all, Abraham himself 
was but the earliest of the proselytes. 2 If, as legend told. Terah had been a 
maker of idols, and if Abraham had received his first call, as Stephen had 
sa'd, while yet living in Ur of the Chaldees, why should not thousands of the 
heathen be yet numbered among the elect of God ? Had not God made of 
one blood all the nations upon earth ? Had not the aged Simeon prophesied 
that the infant Jesus should be a light to lighten the Gentiles, no less than the 
glory of His people Israel ? And were there not to be reckoned among His 
human ancestors Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, and Ruth, the loving woman of 
the accursed race of Moab ? Had not Hadassah been a sultana in the seraglio 
of Xerxes ? Had not Moses himself married a woman of Ethiopia ? 3 And 
among the great doctors of recent days was it not asserted that Shammai was 
descended from Haman the Amalekite ? 4 And, however necessary had been 
the active hostility to mixed marriages, and all other close intercourse with the 
heathen in the reforming period of Ezra and Nehemiah, had not Zephaniah 
declared in the voice of prophecy that " men should worship Jehovah every 
one from Ids place, even all the isles of the heathen?" 5 Nay, did no deeper 
significance than was suggested in the vulgar exegesis lie in the ancient 
promise to Abraham, that ''in him all families of the earth should be blessed ?" b 
Did the prophecy that all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of our 
God 7 merely mean that they should see it as excluded aliens, or as wanderers 
doomed to perish ? If the Gentiles were to come to the light of Zion, and 
kings to the brightness of her dawn — if the isles were to wait for God, and the 
ships of Tarshish 8 — did this merely mean that the nations were but to be 
distant admirers and tolerated servants, admitted only to the exoteric doctrines 
and the less peculiar blessings, and tolerated only as dubious worshippers in 
the Temple's outmost courts ? Would not this be to them a blessing like the 
blessing of Esau, which was almost like a curse, that their dwelling should be 
away from the fatness of the earth, and away from the dew of blessing from 
above ? 9 Or, after all, if such reasonings were inconclusive — if, however con- 

« Acts ix. 15, 16. 

2 Josh. xxiv. 2. The apologue of the gazelle feeding among a flock of sheep, found 
in the Talmud, and attributed to Hi ll el, beautifully expresses the toleration of the wiser 
and more enlightened Rabbis ; but the proselytism contemplated is, of course, that 
purchased by absolute conformity to Jewish precepts. 

3 The Rabbis, to get over this startling fact, interpreted Koosith ("Ethiopian 
woman") by Gematria, and made it mean "fair of face;" since Koosith = 736 = the 
Hebrew words for " fair of eyes." 

4 Similarly it was said that Akibha descended from Sisera. 

5 Zeph. ii. 11. e Q eru ^ 3 . Gal. iii. 14. 
1 Isa. Iii. 10. 8 Isa. Ix. 3, 9. 

9 Gen. xxvii. 39, "Behold, without the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling, 
and without the dew of heaven from above " (v. Kalisch, in loc.). 



184 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

elusive, they were still inadequate to break down that barrier of prejudice 
which was an obstacle more difficult to surmount than the middle wall of par- 
tition — was any argument needful, when they had heard so recently the 
command of their Lord that they were to go into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature, 1 and the prophecy that they should be witnesses unto 
the uttermost parts of the earth ? 2 

Such convictions may have been in the heart of Paul long before he could 
persuade others to join in giving effect to them. It is matter of daily ex- 
perience that the amount of reasoning which ought to be sufficient to produce 
immediate action is often insufficient to procure even a languid assent. But 
the purpose of the Apostle was happily aided by the open-hearted candour of 
Barnabas, the intellectual freshness of the Church of Antioch, and the 
immense effect produced by the example of Peter, who had won even from the 
Church of Jerusalem a reluctant acquiescence in the baptism of Cornelius. 

And apart from the all but ineradicable dislike towards the heathen which 
must have existed in the minds of Jews and Jewish Christians, as a legacy of 
six centuries of intolerance — even supposing this dislike to be removed from 
within — yet the attempt to win over to the new faith the vast opposing forces 
of Judaism and heathenism without the fold might well have seemed fantastic 
and impossible. Could any but those whose hearts were lit with a zeal which 
consumed every difficulty, and dilated with a faith to which it seemed easy to 
remove mountains, listen without a smile to the proposal of evangelising the 
world which was then being advanced by two poor Jews — Jews who, as Jews 
by birth, were objects of scorn to the Gentiles, and as Jews who sat loose to 
what had come to be regarded as the essence of Judaism, were objects of 
detestation to Jews themselves ? Is it possible to imagine two emissaries less 
likely to preach with acceptance " to the Jew first, and afterwards to the 
Greek ?" And if the acceptance of such a mission required nothing short of 
the religious genius and ardent faith of Paul, surely nothing short of the im- 
mediate aid of the Holy Spirit of God could have given to that mission so 
grand and eternal a success. 

For even had the mission been to the Jews exclusively, the difficulties which 
it presented might well have seemed insuperable. It must utterly fail unless 
the Jew could be persuaded of two things, of which one would be most abhor- 
rent to his pride, the other most opposed to his convictions, and both most alien 
to his deepest prejudices. To become a Christian he would be forced to admit 
that all his cherished conceptions of the Messiah had been carnal and erroneous, 
and that when, after awaiting His advent for twenty centuries, that Lord had 
come suddenly to His Temple, the Jews had not only rejected but actually 
crucified Him, and thereby filled up the guilt which their fathers had incurred 
by shedding the blood of the Prophets. Further, he would have to acknow- 
ledge that not only his "hereditary customs," but even the Law — the awful 
fiery Law which he believed to have been delivered by God Himself from the 

iMarkxvi. 15. a Act* L 8. 



JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 185 

shrouded summit of Sinai — was destined, in all the facts which he regarded as 
most distinctive, to be superseded by the loftier and more spiritual revelation 
of this crucified Messiah. Lastly, he would have to resign without a murmur 
those exclusive privileges, that religious haughtiness by which he avenged 
himself on the insults of his adversaries, while he regarded God as being " a 
respecter of persons," and himself as the special favourite of Heaven. 

And fear would be mingled with hatred. Under certain conditions, in the 
secrecy of Oriental seraglios, in the back- stairs intercourse of courts and 
gyncecea, in safe places like the harem of Abennerig and the audience-room of 
Helen of Adiabene, with Mary of Palmyra, or Eulvia, the wife of Saturninus, 
or Poppsea in the Golden House, 1 a Jew was glad enough to gain the ear of an 
influential proselyte, and the more moderate Jews were fully content in such 
cases with general conformity. They found it easy to devour widows' houses 
and make long prayers. But they were well aware that every widely success 
ful attempt to induce Gentile proselytes to practise the outward ceremonies of 
their religion would be fraught with the extreme st peril to their communities, 2 
and would lead in every city of the Empire to a renewal of such scenes as 
those of which Alexandria had lately been the witness. It is probable that 
they would have checked any impolitic zeal on the part of even an orthodox 
Rabbi ; but it filled them with fury to see it displayed by one who, as a 
schismatic, incurred a deadlier odium than the most corrupted of the heathen. 
To them a Paul was even more hateful than a Flaccus, and Paul was all the 
more hateful because he had once been Saul. And that this audacious pervert 
should not only preach, but preach to the heathen ; and preach to the heathen 
a doctrine which proposed to place him on a level with the Jew ; and, worse 
still, to place him on this level without any acceptance on his part of the 
customs without which a Jew could hardly be regarded as a Jew at all — this 
thought filled them with a rage which year after year was all but fatal to the 
life of Paul, as for long years together it was entirely fatal to his happiness 
and peace. 3 

Yet even supposing these obstacles to be surmounted, supposing that the 
missionaries were successful in converting their own countrymen, and so were 
enabled, by means of the " Proselytes of the Gate," to obtain their first point 
of contact through the synagogue with the heathen world, might it not seem 
after all as if their difficulties had then first begun ? What hopes could they 
possibly entertain of making even the slightest impression on that vast welter- 
ing mass of idolatry and corruption ? Now and then, perhaps, they might win 
the heart of some gentle woman, sick to death of the cruelty and depravity of 

1 Jos. Antt. xiii. 9, § 1 ; 11, § 3 ; 15, § 4 ; xviii. 3, § 5 ; xx. 2, § 4 ; B. J. ii. 17, § 10 ; 
c. Ap. ii. 39 ; Tac. Ann. ii. 85 ; H. v. 5 ; Hor. Sat. I. iv. 142 ; Dion. Cass, xxxvii. 17, &c. ; 
Juv. Sat. vi. 546. See too Derenbourg, Palestine, p. 223, seq. 

2 As early as B.C. 139 Jews had been expelled from Rome for admitting proselytes to 
the Sabbath (Mommsen, Bom. Gesch. ii. 429). On the wider spread of Sabbatism even 
among heathens, see Jos. c. Ap. ii. 11, § 29. There appear to be some traces of the Jews 
taking pains annually to secure one proselyte (eVa Trpoa^AuToi/, Matt, xxiii. 15), to typify the 
salvabilitj" of the Gentiles (Taylor, Pirke Abhoth, p. 36). 

3 See Excursus XIII., " Burdens laid on Proselytes." 



186 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

which she was forced to be a daily witness ; here and there , perhaps, of some 
slave, oppressed and ignorant, and eager to find a refuge from the intolerable 
indignities of ancient servitude ; — but even if they could hope for this, how 
far had they then advanced in the conversion of Heathendom, with all its 
splendid worldliness and glittering fascination ? 

For to the mass of the heathen, as I have said, their very persons were 
hateful from the mere fact that they were Jews. 1 And so far from escaping 
this hatred, the missionaries were certain to be doubly hated as Christian Jews. 
For during the first century of Christianity, the ancients never condescended 
to inquire what was the distinction between a Jew and a Christian. 2 To them 
a Christian was only a more dangerous, a more superstitious, a more outrage- 
ously intolerable Jew, who added to the follies of the Jew the yet more inex- 
plicable folly of adoring a crucified malefactor. It is to the supposed turbulence 
of One whom he ignorantly calls Chrestus, and imagines to have been still 
living, that Suetonius attributes the riots which cost the Jews their expulsion 
from Rome. The stolid endurance of agony by the Christians under persecu- 
tion woke a sort of astonished admiration ; 3 but even Pliny, though his candid 
account of the Christians in Bithynia refutes his own epithets, could only call 
Christianity " a distorted and outrageous superstition ;" and Tacitus and 
Suetonius, using the substantive, only qualify it by the severer epithets of 
"deadly," "pernicious," and "new." 4 

The heathen world into which, " as lambs among wolves," the Apostles 
were going forth, was at that moment in its worse condition. The western 
regions, towards which the course of missions took its way, were prevalently 
Greek and Roman ; but it was a conquered Greece and a corrupted Rome. 
It was a Greece which had lost its genius and retained its falsity, a Rome 
which had lost its simplicity and retained its coarseness. It was Greece in 
her lowest stage of seducer and parasite ; it was Rome at the epoch of her 
most gorgeous gluttonies and her most gilded rottenness. The heart of the 
Roman Empire under the Ctesars was " a fen of stagnant waters." Csesarism 
has found its modern defenders, and even a Tiberius has had his eulogists 
among the admirers of despotic power; but no defence can silence the 
damning evidence of, patent facts. No advocacy can silence the awful 
indictment which St. Paul writes to the inhabitants of the imperial city. 5 If 
such things were done in the green tree, what was done in the dry ? What 
was the condition of the thistles, if this was the code of the forest-trees ? If 
St. John in the Apocalypse describes Rome as the harlot city which lad made 
the nations drunk with the cup of the wine of her fornications, he uses 

1 See Excursus XIV., "Hatred of the Jews in Classical Antiquity." 

2 In Dio (lxvii. 12 — 14) the Christian (?) martyr Acilius Glabrio is called a Jew. 

3 Marc. Aurel. xi. 3 ; Mart. x. 25 ; Epict. Dissert, iv. 8. 

4 Plin. Ep. x. 97, " supers titionem pravam et immodicam ; " Tac. Ann. xv. 44, "exitia- 
bllis superstitio ; " Suet. Nero. 16, "novae et maleficae superstitionis. " See Excursus XV., 
"Judgments of Early Pagan Writers on Christianity." 

6 See Friedliinder, Sittengesch. Moms. B. v. Denis, Idies Morales duns VAntwuiU. 
ii. 218-230. 



JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 187 

language no whit severer than that of Seneca, who speaks of Rome as a 
cesspool of iniquity ; x or than that of Juvenal, who pictures her as a filthy 
sewer, into which have flowed the abominable dregs of every Achaean and 
Syrian stream. 2 Crushed under the ignominies inflicted on her by the 
despotism of madmen and monsters ; 3 corrupted by the pollutions of the 
stage, and hardened by the cruelties of the amphitheatre ; swarming with 
parasites, impostors, prisoners, and the vilest slaves ; without any serious 
religion ; without any public education ; terrorised by insolent soldiers and 
pauperised mobs, the world's capital presents at this period a picture un- 
paralleled for shame and misery in the annals of the world. But, reduced as 
it was to torpor under the night-mare of an absolutism which it neither could 
nor would shake off, the Roman world had sought its solace in superstition, 
in sensuality, or in Stoicism. The superstition mainly consisted in the 
adoption of cunning systems of priestcraft, impassioned rituals, horrible 
expiations borrowed from the degrading mythologies of Egypt or from the 
sensual religions of Galatia and Phrygia. 4 So rife were these, and so 
dangerous to morality and order, that long before this age the Senate had 
vainly attempted the suppression of the rites offered to Sabazius, to Isis, and 
to Serapis. 5 The jingling of sistra, and the cracked voices of beardless Galli, 
were familiar in every Roman town. 6 The sensuality was probably more 
shameful, and more shameless, than has ever been heard of in history. And 
amid this seething corruption, it was the few alone who retained the virtue 
and simplicity of the old family life and worship. The Stoicism in which the 
greater and more suffering spirits of the epoch — a Cremutius Oordus, a 
Thrasea Paetus, an Helvidius Priscus, an Annaeus Cornutus, a Musonius 
Rufus, a Barea Soranus — found refuge, was noble and heroic, but hard and 
unnatural. He who would estimate the reaction of man's nobler instincts 
against the profligacy of Pagan life — he who would judge to what heights the 
Spirit of God can aid those who unconsciously seek Him, and to what depths 
the powers of evil can degrade their willing votaries — must bridge over the 
gulf which separates a Petronius and an Appuleius from the sweetness 
and dignity of " minds naturally Christian," like those of an Epictetus and an 
Aurelius. He who would further estimate the priceless services which 
Christianity can still render even to souls the most naturally exalted, must 
once more compare the chill, the sadness, the painful tension, the haughty 

1 Cf. Sail. Cat. xxxvii. 5, "Hi Romam sicut in sentinam confluxerunt." 

2 Juv. iii. 62 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 44. 

3 Cf. Tac. Arm. ii. 85 ; iv. 55, 56 ; Suet. Tib. 35 ; Ov. Fast. ii. 497, seq. 

4 Such were the taurobolies and kriobolies — hideous blood baths. 

5 Valerius Maximus (I. iii. 3) relates that when the Senate had ordered the demolition 
of a Serapeum at Rome (A.U.C. 535), no workman could be induced to obey the order, 
and the Consul had himself to burst open the door with an axe (see, too, Liv. xxxix. 
8—18 ; Cic. Be Legg. ii. 8 ; Dion. Halic. ii. 20 ; Dio Cass. xl. 47 ; Tert. Apol. 6 ; Adv. 
Nat. i. 10, quoted by Renan, Les Apotres, p. 316, and for Isis worship, Appul. Metam. 
xi.). 

b Firmicius Maternus, in the days of Constantine, did not think it woi-th while to 
refute Greek and Roman mythology (De Errore Prqfanae Belig.}, but only the rites of 
law, Mithras, Cyhele, &c. 



188 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

exclusiveness, the despairing pride of Stoicism with the warmth, the glow, the 
radiant hope, the unbounded tenderness, the free natural emotion, the active 
charities, the peaceful, infinite contentment of Christianity as it shines forth 
with all its living and breathing sympathies in the Epistles of St. Paul. 

And this difference between Stoicism and Christianity is reflected in the 
lives of their disciples. While the last genuine representatives of Roman 
statesmanship and Roman virtue were thinking it a grand thing to hold 
aloof from the flatteries into which the other senators plunged with such 
headlong baseness — while they were being regarded as models of heroism for 
such acts as rising and walking out of the senate when some more than 
usually contemptible flattery was being proposed — while they were thus 
eating away their own hearts in the consciousness of an ineffectual protest, 
and finding it difficult to keep even their own souls from " the contagion of 
the world's slow stain " — two Jews of obscure name, of no position, without 
rank, without wealth, without influence, without either literary, political, or 
military genius, without any culture but such as a Roman noble would have 
despised as useless and grotesque — but mighty in the strength of a sacred 
cause, and irresistible in the zeal of a conscious inspiration — set forth 
unnoticed on the first of those journeys which were destined to convert the 
world. For He who made and loved the world, and knew the needs of the 
world which He died to save, had sent them forth ; and if He had sent them 
forth without any apparent means for the fulfilment of His great design, it 
was because He willed to choose " the foolish things of the world to confound 
the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty, and things which are 
not to bring to nought things which are, that no flesh should glory in His 
presence." 1 

Vast, then, as was the task before them, and hedged around by apparently 
insuperable difficulties, the elders of the Church of Antioch were convinced 
that Barnabas and Saul had indeed been summoned on a Divine mission, and 
that they dared no longer delay the distinct manifestation of the will of the 
Spirit. They held one more special prayer and fast, 2 laid on the heads of 
their two great brethren the hands of consecration, and sent them on their 
way. Already, in his vision, Paul had been predestined to be an Apostle o£ 
the Gentiles ; 3 henceforth, after this solemn ordination, he receives the title 
of an Apostle in its more special significance. 4 For a time, as in his Epistles 
to the Thessalonians, he modestly abstains from himself adopting it; but 
when his name was vilified, when his teaching was thwarted, when his 
authority was impugned, ho not only adopted it, 5 but maintained his indepen- 
dent position as a teacher, and his right to be regarded as in nowise inferior 
to the very chief est of the Twelve. «j 

» 1 Cor. i. 27, 28. \ 

2 Acts xiii. 3, vrjarevcravTes . . . npoffevi-afievoim \ 

3 Acts xxvi. 17, e£aipov/aei/6s <re en rov Aaow <al rtov e9vS>v eis ou? eyto <r£ a7ro<TTe'AAa>. 

4 Acts xiv. 4, 14 (cf. John xvii. 18 ; Heb. iii. 1). 

5 Except in the few purely private lines which he wrote to Philemon, and in the lettei 
to Ida beloved Philippians who needed no assertion of his claim. 



CYPBUS. 189 



33ook 91* 

THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CYPRUS. 

'A Aeyets] Kal TIav\os icpofielro kivSvvovs ; 'EQofie'tTO Kal a<p6dpa e'SeSot/ce*. Ei 

yy /col YlavAos ^y aAA' &j/0pa>7ros ^z> . . . Ei yap ovk ecpo&eiTO irola Kaprepia rb robs 

ivdvvovs (peptiv; 'Eyta yap Kal Sia rovro avrbv Qavp.afa on (pofiovfxevos Kal ov% airAws 

pofSovp.€vos aXKa. Kal rpe/j.wv robs kivSvvovs Sia iravrbs tdpa/ne crr^cpavovfjievos Kal 

Ttavraxov rb K-fjpvyfxa a-irdpoov. — Chrysost. Opp. x. 44, ed. Montfaucon. 

" The travelled ambassador of Christ, who snatched Christianity from the hands 
of a local faction, and turned it to a universal faith, whose powerful word shook all 
the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, who turned the tide of history and thought, 
giving us the organisation of Christendom for the legions of Rome, and for Zeno 
and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther.'' — Martineau, Hours of Thought, 
p. 88. 

"Sent forth by the Holy Spirit" — more conscious instruments, perhaps, of 
God's will than has ever been the case before or since, and starting on a 
journey more memorable in its issues than any which had ever been under- 
taken by man — Saul and Barnabas, accompanied by their more youthful 
attendant, John Mark, started on their way. What thoughts were in their 
minds as they turned their backs on the street Singon, where they had 
preached with such acceptance and success ? There were myriads of heathen 
and thousands of Jews in that gay voluptuous city who had not accepted 
Christianity ; but the two Apostles were summoned to other work. They 
passed between the theatre and the amrjhitheatre, 1 crossed the main thorough- 
fare of the city with its trees and statues and colonnades, passed the Roman 
sentries who guarded the residence of the Legate of Syria in the old palace of 
the Seleucidse, crossed the bridge over the Orontes, and leaving the grove of 
Daphne on their right upon the further bank of the river, made their way, 
through the oleanders and other flowering shrubs which form a gorgeous 
border to its purple rocks, along the sixteen miles which separated them from 
the port of Seleucia. History has contemptuously obliterated from her 
annals the names of countless kings who have set forth from their capitals 
for the scourge or conquest of nations at the head of armies, and with all the 
pomp and circumstance of glorious war ; but centuries after those conquerors 
are in their turn forgotten whom she still deigns to commemorate, she will 
preserve in the grateful memory of mankind the names of these two poor 
Jews, who started on foot, staff in hand, with little, perhaps, or nothing in 
their scrip but the few dates that suffice to satisfy the hunger of the Eastern 
traveller. 

From Antioch they might have made their way to Tarsus. But Paul had 

1 See the elaborate plans and pictures of ancient and modern Antioch in Mr. Lewin'e 
St. Paul, i„ pp, 92—95. 



190 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

in all probability preached already in bis native Oilicia, 1 and as Barnabas was 
by birth a Cypriote, they bent their voyage thitherward. It was towards the 
west, towards Chittini and the Isles of the Gentiles, that the course of missions 
naturally tended. All land routes were more or less dangerous and difficult. 
Roads were, with few exceptions, bad ; vehicles were cumbrous and ex- 
pensive ; robbers were numerous and insolent. But the total suppression of 
piracy by Pompey had rendered the Mediterranean safe, and in the growth 
of navigation it had become " the marriage-ring of nations." 2 Along the 
eastern coast of Asia Minor the Jews had long been scattered in numbers far 
exceeding those to be found there at the present day ; and while the extension 
of the Greek language furnished an easy means of communication, the power 
of Roman law, which dominated over the remotest provinces of the Empire, 
afforded the missionaries a free scope and a fair protection. Accordingly 
they descended the rocky stairs which led down to the port of Seleucia, 3 and 
from one of its two piers embarked on a vessel which was bound for Cyprus. 
And thus began " the great Christian Odyssey." 4 The Apostolic barque has 
spread her sails; the wind breathes low, and only aspires to bear upon its 
wings the words of Jesus. If Rome has but too good reason to complain of 
the dregs of moral contamination which the Syrian Orontes poured forth to 
mingle with her yellow Tiber, on this occasion, at any rate, the Syrian river 
made ample amends by speeding on their way with its seaward current these 
messengers of peace and love. 

As they sail south-westward over the hundred miles of that blue sea which 
one of them was destined so many times to traverse — the sea which four 
times wrecked him with its unregardful storms, and tossed him for a night 
and a day on its restless billows ; as they sit at the prow and cast their wistful 
gaze towards the hills which overshadow the scene of their future labours, — 
or, resting at the stern, not without a glance of disgust at its heathen images, 
look back on the rocky cone of Mount Casius, " on which three centuries later 
smoked the last pagan sacrifice," 5 they must have felt a deep emotion at the 
thought that now for the first time the Faith, on which depended the hopes of 
the world, was starting for fresh regions from its native Syria. Little did 
St. Paul know how trying in its apparent failures, how terrible in its real 
hardships, was the future which lay before him ! That future — the fire of 
the furnace in which the fine gold of his heroic spirit was to be purged from 
every speck of dross — was mercifully hidden from him, though in its broad 

1 Gal. i. 21 ; Acts ix. 30 ; xi. 25. That there were churches in Cilicia appears from 
Acts xv. 41. 

2 See some good remarks in Renan, Les Apdtres, p. 280, seq. ; and for an exhaustive 
treatment, Herzfeld, Gesch. d. judischen Handels. 

» Polyb. v. 59. 

4 Kenan, Les Apdtres, p. 386; cf. St Paul, p. 13, "Ce fut la seconde poesie du 
Christianisme. Le lac de Tiberiade et les barques de pecheurs avaient fourni la premiere. 
Maintenant un souffle plus puissant des aspirations vers les terres plus lointaines nous 
entniine en haute mer." 

6 El Djebel el Akra, "the bald mountain" (Chesney, EuphraL i. 386; Amm. MarcelL 
*xii. 14, § 8 ; Julian, Misop. 361). 



CYPEUS. 191 

outlines he must have "been but too well able to conjecture something of ita 
trials. But had he foreseen all that was before him — had he foreseen the 
scourgings, the flagellations, the stoning, the shipwrecks, 1 the incessant toil- 
ings on foot along intolerable and dangerous roads, the dangers from swollen 
rivers and rushing watercourses, the dangers from mountain brigands, the 
dangers from Jews, from Gentiles, from false Christians in city and wilder- 
ness and sea, — the frantic crowds that nearly tore him to pieces, the weary 
nights, the chill, naked, thirsty, famine -stricken days, the incessant wearing 
responsibility, the chronic disease and weakness, — all the outrages, all the 
insults, all the agitating bursts of indignation against those who put stumbling- 
blocks in the paths of the weak, 2 the severe imprisonments, the incessant 
death, and all ended by desertion, failure, loneliness, chains, condemnation, 
the chilly dungeon, 3 the nameless martyrdom — had he foreseen all this, could 
he have borne it ? His human spirit might indeed have shrunk at all the 
efforts and the agonies which lay before him — greater probably than have ever 
fallen to the lot of man; yet even at this early phase of his missionary 
career I doubt not that the hero's heart would have boldly uttered, " I hold 
not my life dear unto myself,'' and the faith of the Christian would have 
enabled him to say, " I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me." 

Yet to all human judgment how ill qualified, physically, was the Apostle 
for the vast and perilous work which lay before him. The strongest 
athlete might well have quailed as he thought of the toil, the sleeplessness, 
the manual labour, the mental anxiety. The most imposing orator might 
have trembled at the thought of facing so many hostile potentates and 
raging crowds. The finest moral courage might have entreated to be spared 
the combined opposition alike of false friends and furious enemies. But 
Paul was no Milo, no Demosthenes, no Scipio Af ricanus ; he was physi- 
cally infirm, constitutionally nervous, painfully sensitive. His bodily pre- 
sence was weak, his speech despised, his mind often overwhelmed with 
with fear. But over the feeble body and shrinking soul dominated a spirit 
so dauntless that he was ready all his life long to brave torture, to con- 
front mobs, to harangue tribunals, to quail as little before frowning tyrants 
as before stormy seas. He might have addressed his ailing body in the 
words of the great hero as he rode into the thick of battle, "Aha, you 
tremble ! but you would tremble far more if you knew whither I meant to 
take you to-day." 4 

The concurrent testimony of tradition, and the oldest attempts at repre- 
sentation, enable us to summon up before us the aspect of the man. A 
modern writer, who cannot conceal the bitter dislike which mingles with 
his unwilling admiration, is probably not far wrong in characterising him 
as a small and ugly Jew. 5 Tou looked on a man who was buffeted by an 

* 2 Cor. xi. 23 — 33. ^ 2 Cor. Xl. 29, ti's (Ticav8a\i£eTo.L, kol ovk eyw Trvpovfj.au. 

3 Clem. Bom. Up. ad loc. i. 5. 4 Marshal Turenne. 

5 Even Luther described St. Paul as "ein armes diirres Mannlein wie unser Philippus '' 
(Melancthon). 



192 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATJIi. 

angel of Satan. And yet when you spoke to him ; when the prejudice inspired 
by his look and manner had been overcome ; when, at moments of inspiring 
passion or yearning tenderness, the soul beamed out of that pale, distressful 
countenance ; when with kindling enthusiasm the man forgot his appearance 
and his infirmity, and revealed himself in all the grandeur of his heroic force ; 
when triumphing over weakness he scathed his enemies with terrible invective, 
or rose as it were upon the wings of prophecy to inspire with consolation the 
souls of those he loved — then, indeed, you saw what manner of man he was. 
It was Paul seated, as it were, on sunlit heights, and pouring forth the 
glorious paean in honour of Christian love ; it was Paul withstanding Peter 
to the face because he was condemned ; it was Paul delivering to Satan the 
insolent offender of Corinth ; it was Paul exposing with sharp yet polished 
irony the inflated pretensions of a would-be wisdom; it was Paul rolling 
over the subterranean plots of Judaisers the thunders of his moral indignation; 
it was Paul blinding Elymas with the terror of his passionate reproof ; it was 
Paul taking command, as it were, of the two hundred and seventy souls in the 
driven dismantled hulk, and by the simple authority of natural pre-eminence 
laying his injunctions on the centurion and the Roman soldiers whose captive 
he was ; it was Paul swaying the mob with the motion of his hand on the 
steps of Anton! a; it was Paul making even a Felix tremble; it was Paul 
exchanging high courtesies in tones of equality with governors and kings ; it 
was Paul " fighting with wild beasts " at Ephesus, and facing " the lion " 
alone at Rome. When you saw him and heard him, then you forgot that the 
treasure was hid in an earthen vessel; out of the shattered pitcher there 
blazed upon the darkness a hidden lamp which flashed terror upon his enemies 
and shone like a guiding star to friends. 

So that, if ugliness, and fear and trembling, and ill-health. 1 and the 
knowledge that he belonged to a hated sect, and was preaching a des- 
pised foolishness — if these were terrible drawbacks, they were yet more 
than counterbalanced by the possession of unequalled gifts. Among his 
slighter outward advantages were a thorough training in the culture of his 
own nation, a good mastery of Greek, the knowledge of a trade by which 
he could support himself, and familiarity with the habits of men of every class 
and nation, derived from long residence both in Jewish and Gentile cities. As 
widower and childless, he was unencumbered by any domestic ties, and could 
only suffer an individual anguish without risking those who depended on him. 
Lastly, the possession of the Roman citizenship, though inadequate to protect 
him against provincial tumults, and though he probably waived the appeal to 
it among his own countrymen, yet stood him in good stead in more than 
one dangerous crisis. But these would have been less than nothing without 
the possession of other and far higher gifts. Such were the astonishing 
endurance which no trials could exhaust, and which enabled the most physi- 
cally weak of the Apostles 2 to become the most ceaselessly active; the 

> See 2 Cor. x. 10 ; Gal. iv. 13 ; 1 Cor. ii. 3 ; 2 Cor. iv. 7 ; vii. 6 ; xi. 6 ; xn. pamm. 

* 'Ao-^.V is the key -note of 2 Cor. xiii. 3 — 9. 



CYPRUS. 193 

Mgh conviction that God had called him to a special Apostolate " to make 
the Gentiles obedient by word and deed ;" * the enthusiasm of humanity," 
which made him ready to associate, for their souls' sake, whether with men 
who had once been thieves and drunkards, or with sweet, innocent, and gentle 
women ; 2 the courtesy which made him equally at home among slaves and 
among kings ; the power of style which rose or fell with the occasion, some- 
times condescending to the humblest colloquialism, sometimes rising to the 
most impassioned eloquence ; the clearness of insight which always kept one 
end in view, and sacrificed all minor points to attain it; 3 the total emancipa- 
tion from that slavery to trifles which is the characteristic of small miuds> 
and is ever petrifying religion into formulae, or frittering it away into cere- 
monial ; the spirit of concession ; the tact of management ; the willingness to 
bear and forbear, descend and condescend ; the tolerance of men's prejudices ; 
the contented acceptance of less than was his due. — And there were in the 
soul of Paul qualities more precious for his life's work than even these. 
There was the tenderness for his converts which makes his words ever sound 
as though he were ready to break into sobs as he thinks on the one hand of 
their affection, on the other of their ingratitude ; 4 there was the conviction 
which makes him anticipate the very fiat of the throne of judgment, 5 and 
vehemently to exclaim that if an angel were to preach a different gospel it 
would be false ; 6 there was the missionary restlessness so often found in the 
great pioneers of salvation, which drives him from city to city and continent 
to continent in the cause of God ; there was the ardent and imaginative im- 
pulse which made it the very poetry of his life to found churches among the 
Gentiles as the first messenger of the Gospel of peace ; 7 and last, but per- 
haps most important of all, there was the perfect faith, the absolute self- 
sacrifice, self- obliteration, self-annihilation, which rendered him willing, nay 
glad, to pour out his whole life as a libation — to be led in triumph from city 
to city as a slave and a captive at the chariot-wheels of Christ. 

The immense personal ascendency of St. Paul has almost effaced the recol- 
lection of the fellow-workers to whose co-operation he owed so much ; but we 
must not forget that throughout the perilous initiatives of this great work, he 
had Barnabas ever at his side, to guide him by his calm wisdom, and support 
him by his steady dignity. Barnabas, the friend of his youth, perhaps the 
school-fellow of his studies, — who had taken him by the hand ; who had drawn 
him from his obscure retirement ; who had laboured with him at Antioch ; 
who had been his fellow-almoner at Jerusalem — was still sharing his difficul- 
ties, and never envied or murmured when he saw himself being gradually sub- 
jugated by the powerful individuality of a younger convert. To us Barnabas 
must always be a less memorable figure than Paul, but let us not forget that 
up to this time he had held a higher rank, and wielded a more authoritative 

J Kom. xv. 18. 2 1 Cor. vi. 9—11. 3 1 Cor. ix. 19. 

4 1 Thess. ii. 7, 11 ; Gal. iv. 19 ; 1 Cor. iv. 15 ; Philem. 10. 

5 Eom. ii. 16. 6 Gal. i. 8. 

* Rom. x. 18 ; xv. 18; Gal. i. 16 ; 1 Cor. i. 1 ; iii. 10; ix. 16 ; 2 Cor. xi. 2, 

V 



194 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

influence. As a Levite. as a prophet, as one who for the needs of the com- 
munity had cheerfully sacrificed his earthly goods, as one who enjoyed to a 
very high degree the confidence of the Apostles, Barnabas, in these early days^ 
was enabled to lend to St. Paul's conceptions a weight which they could 
hardly otherwise have won. It is only when the work has actually begun that 
Barnabas seems naturally to sink to a subordinate position. No sooner have 
they left Salamis than the very order of the names is altered. Sergius Paulus 
sends for " Barnabas and Saul," but it is Saul who instantly comes to the 
front to meet the opposition of Elymas ; it is " Paul and his company " who 
sail from Paphos to Perga ; it is Paul who answers the appeal to speak at 
Antioch in Pisidia ; it is Paul who is stoned at Lystra ; and thenceforth, it is 
" Paul and Barnabas " throughout the rest of the history, except in the circular 
missive from James and the Church at Jerusalem. 1 

Nor must we altogether lose sight of the younger of the three voyagers — 
John, whose surname was Mark, who went with them in the capacity of their 
minister, corresponding, perhaps, in part to our notion of a deacon. 2 The pre- 
sence of an active attendant, who could make all arrangements and inquiries, 
would be almost necessary to a sufferer like Paul. If Barnabas shared with 
Paul the reluctance to administer in person the rite of baptism, 3 we may sup- 
pose that this was one of the functions in which Mark would help them. Nor 
was it an unimportant circumstance to both of them that Mark, as the avowed 
friend and protege of Peter, would have been unlikely to share in any mission 
which did not command the entire approval of his illustrious leader. In this 
and many other ways, now as at the close of his life, Paul doubtless felt that 
Mark was, or could be, " profitable to him for ministry." His nature im- 
periously demanded the solace of companionship ; without this he found his 
work intolerable, and himself the victim of paralysing depression. 4 The prin- 
ciples which he adopted, his determination that under no circumstances would 
he be oppressive to his converts, the missionary boldness which constantly led 
him into such scenes of danger as none but a man could face, deprived him of 
that resource of female society — a sister, a wife — which other Apostles 
enjoyed, and which has been found so conducive to the usefulness of even 
such devoted missionaries as Adoniram Judson or Charles Mackenzie. But 
Paul was a missionary of the type which has been reproduced in Francis 
Xavier or Coleridge Patteson ; and whatever he may have been in the past, he 
was now, at any rate, a lonely man. 

Such were the three humble Christian emissaries whose barque, bending itg 
prow to the south-west, sailed towards the mountains of Cyprus, and, leaving 

1 Acts xv. 25 ; and Acts xiv. 14, where Barnabas is taken for the superior deity. 

2 Acts xiii. 5, vTnjpeVrjs. In Luke iv. 20 the vTnjpe'Trjs is the Ghazzan of the Synagogue. 
Mark, like Barnabas, may have been connected with the tribe of Levi; on the name 
koAo/3o8<£k™a.os and traditions about him, see Ewald, Gesch. vi. 445. 

8 1 Cor. i. 13—17. 

4 1 Thess. iii. 1 ; 2 Cor. ii. 13 ; Phil. ii. 19, 20 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11. It has been said that 
St. Paul "had a thousand friends, and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to live a 
thousand lives in them, and to die a thousand deaths when he must quit them." 



CYPRUS. 195 

the long promontory of Dinaretum on the right, sailed into the hay of Salamis. 
The scene must have been very familiar to Barnabas. Before them lay the 
flourishing commercial town, conspicuous for its temple of the Salaminian 
Jupiter, which tradition assigned to Teucer, son of Telamon. Beyond the 
temple there stretched away to the circle of enclosing hills a rich plain, watered 
by the abundant streams of the Pediaeus. The site of the town, which our 
recent acquisition of the island has rendered so familiar, is now marked by a 
few ruins about four miles to the north of the modern Famagosta. The 
ancient town never entirely recovered the frightful injuries which it under- 
went, first from an insurrection of the Jews in the reign of Trajan, and after- 
Arards from an earthquake. But when the Apostles stepped ashore, upon one 
of the ancient piers of which the ruins are still visible, it was a busy and 
important place, and we cannot doubt that Barnabas would find many to greet 
him in his old home. Doubtless, too, there would be some to whom their visit 
was peculiarly welcome, because, ever since the persecution of Stephen, Cyprus 
had been connected with the spread of Christianity. 1 

That Barnabas had had a considerable voice in thus repaying to his native 
island the service which it had rendered to Antioch, 2 may be conjectured 
from the fact that subsequently, when he had parted from Paul, he and 
Mark once more chose it as the scene of their missionary labours. After this 
first visit, Paul, often as he passed in sight of it, seems never to have landed 
there, disliking, perhaps, to build on other men's foundations; nor does he 
allude to Cyprus or to other Cypriotes in any of his Epistles. Whether there 
be any truth or not in the legend which says that Barnabas was martyred in 
the reign of Nero, and buried near Salamis, it is quite fitting that the church 
and grotto near it should be dedicated to him. 

But apart from any facilities which may have been derived from his 
connexion with the island, it was without doubt an excellent place to form a 
starting-point for the evangelisation of the world. One of the largest islands 
in the Mediterranean, possessed of a fertile soil, varied in physical formation, 
and within easy reach of the three great continents, it had been marked out 
by nature as a convenient centre for extensive traffic. The trade in natural 
products — chiefly metals and wine — together with the fact that Augustus had 
farmed the copper-mines to Herod the Great, had attracted a large Jewish 
population. So vast, indeed, were their numbers, that in the reign of Trajan 
(A.D. 116) they rose upon the native inhabitants, under a certain Artemio, and 
slew 240,000 of them in one terrible massacre. The revolt was suppressed by 
Hadrian with awful severity, and after that time no Jew might set foot upon 
the shore of Cyprus on pain of death. 3 

Of their work at Salamis we are told nothing, except that " they continued 

1 Acts xs± 16. 2 Acts xi. 20. 

8 Strabo, xiv. 682 ; Tac. H. ii. 2, 4 ; Jos. Antt. xiii. 10, § 4 ; xvi. 4, § 5 ; xvii. 12, §§ 
1, 2 ; B. J. ii. 7, §2 ; Philo, Leg., p. 587 ; Milman, Hist, of Jews, iM. 111. For its ancient 
history see Meursius, Opp. w. ; for its modern condition, now so interesting to us, see 
General Cesnola's Cyprus. 
N 2 



196 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

preaching the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews." * It appears 
from this that Salamis was one of the towns where the Jews' quarter was 
sufficiently populous to maintain several synagogues; and if the Apostles 
came in contact with the heathen at all, it would only be with proselytes. 
But the notices of this part of their journey are scant, nor is any indication 
given of the length of their stay in Cyprus. Any work among the Gentiles 
was doubtless hindered by the apotheosis of sensuality for which the island 
was noted. The contact of Greeks with Phoenicians had caused a fusion 
between the subtle voluptuousness of the Hellenic race and the more burning 
passion of the Phoenicians and other Orientals ; and the maritime population 
who touched at the island from every civilised country were ready learners in 
the school of degradation. Yenus was the presiding goddess; and as she 
received from this fact her name of Oypris, so she was most commonly 
alluded to in the poets as the Paphian, Amathusian, or Idalian, from her 
temples in various parts of the island. She was 

" Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, 
Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian wells." 

It was hitherward that she came as Aphrodite Anadyomene, when 

" From the sea 
She rose and floated in her pearly shell, 
A laughing girl." 

It was by these " purple island sides " that she first 

" Fleeted a double light in air and wave." 

Tet in the Paphian temple, where no blood was offered, where her immemorial 
shrine, famous even in the days of Homer, 2 breathed from a hundred altars 
the odour of perpetual incense, 3 and where kings and emperors turned aside to 
do her homage, the image which was enshrined in her adytum was no 
exquisite female figure sculptured by the hand of a Pheidias or a Scopas, but 
a coarse truncated cone of white marble 4 — a sort of Asherah — such as might 
naturally serve as the phallic symbol of the Assyrian and Sidonian deity from 
whom this form of nature- worship was derived. 5 And as her temples had the 
right of asylum — a right which was certain to crowd their vicinity with 
criminals of every variety — we might have conjectured, apart from direct 
testimony, that the worship was to the last degree debasing ; that the Paphian 

i Acts xiii. 5, Kwrfrr/eKkov. 2 Horn. Od. 8, 362. 8 Virg. jEn. i. 417. 

4 As it was white (to Se ayaA/ma ov/c av eiKacrai? a\\u> Tto r\ Trupa.fj.i8i Kevicfj) there cannot be 
much doubt that it was of marble, though Maximus Tyr. adds ^ Se vAtj dyvoetrai (Diss. 
8, 8). " Apud Cyprios Venus in modum umbilici, vel ut quidam volunt, Metae, colitur" 
(tterv. ad jEn. i. 724). 

6 Tac. H. ii. 3 ; Strabo, xiv. 683 ; Athen. xv. 18. The crescent and star represented 
on coins as adorning the front of the Temple are perhaps a trace of the Phoenician origin 
of the worship, and of the connexion between the Paphian Venus and the Phoenician 
Asherah (Movers. Phon. 607). The sun, at Emesa, had a similar *o»/oei8es wn (Herodian. 
v. 3), a sort of potTvAiof fiii'TreTes. Models of it were sold {aynAfi,a.Tiov a-7n.6aiJLia.lot . Athen. 
xv. 18). 



CYPRUS. 197 

divinity was no Aphrodite Ourania, 1 but the lowest kind of Aphrodite Pan- 
demos ; that her worship was simply the prostitution of religion to the excuse 
of lust. Nor is it strange that under such circumstances there should be 
deadly opposition between the Jews and the Greek or Phoenician inhabitants, 
such as existed of old between the Jews and Canaanites. The mutual hatred 
thus engendered culminated in the internecine war which so soon broke out 
between the rival populations ; it may have been one of the reasons why in 
Cyprus we read of no preaching to the heathen. 

After their residence in Salamis the three missionaries traversed the whole 
island. 2 It is about a hundred miles in length from Salamis to New Paphos ; 
and they probably followed a main road along the coast, diverging to places 
like Citium, the birthplace of Zeno the Stoic ; Amathus, one of the shrines of 
Yenus ; and any towns where they would find the little Ghettos, whose 
conversion to the faith was their prime object. But not one incident of their 
journey is preserved for us until they reached the town of Paphos. By this 
name is intended, as the narrative shows, not the old and famous Paphos, the 
modern Kuklia, to which wanton pilgrimages were yearly made in honour of 
the old shrine so "famous-infamous" for many ages, but Nea-Paphos, 3 the 
modern Baft'a, now a decayed and mouldering village, but then a bustling 
haven, and the residence of the Roman Proconsul Sergius Paulus. 4 

It does not in any way impugn the claim of Sergius Paulus to be regarded 
as a person of intelligence that he had with him, apparently residing in his 
house, a Jewish impostor named Bar- Jesus, who had arrogated to himself the 
complimentary title of Elymas, the Ulemah, or Wizard. 5 A notorious infidel 
like Philippe £galite\ though in other respects a man of ability, could yet try 
to presage his fate by the sort of cup-augury involved in examining the 
grounds of coffee (KuXiKOfiavreia ; cf. Gen. xliv. 5). A belief in some personal 
Power, the arbiter of man's destiny, above and beyond himself, is a primary 
necessity of the human mind. Mankind can never dispense with this belief, 
however superfluous, in certain cases, and for a time, it may seem to be to the 
individual. The noble Romans who had lost all firm hold on the national 
religion, felt themselves driven by a kind of instinctive necessity to get such a 
connexion with the unseen world as could be furnished them by the mysticism 
of Oriental quacks. A Marius had resorted to the prognostications of the 
Jewess Martha. At this particular epoch augurs, haruspices, Babylonians, 

1 The Virgin Mary is adored by Cypriotes under the name Aphroditissa I (Lohber, 
Cyprus, p. 105.) 

2 Acts xiii. 6, SteA.06vTes Se 5\tjv rqv vijaov N, A, B, C, D, E. In omitting oA»jv our version 
follows G, H. 

3 " The dance, music, and song of the sacred processions of 3,000 years ago have been 
replaced by the coo-coo-vaie of the owl, and wild cries of other night-birds, and the 
piteous bark of famished dogs, left behind by no less famished masters, to roam the 
Oriental village in search of carrion. This is the Papbos of to-day " (Cesnola's Cyprus, 
p. 216). 

4 See Excursus XVI., " The Proconsulate of Sergius Paulus." 

5 Kenan, bowever, says, " iSlim ou sage .... mot arabe dont le pluriel est oulema. 
Le mot n'existe ni en hebreu ni en arameen ; ce qui rend fort douteuse cette etymologie 
d'Elymas " (St, Paul, p. 15). Ewald thinks he was a Nabathaean (Gesch. vi. 45<>), 



198 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

niathomatici, astrologers, magians, soothsayers, casters of horoscopes, fortune, 
tellers, ventriloquists, dream-interpreters, 1 flocked to Rome in such multitudes, 
and acquired such vogue, as to attract the indignant notice of both satirists 
and historians. A few of them — like Apollonius of Tyana, and at a later 
period, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and the cynic Petcgrinus — attracted 
universal attention. There was scarcely a Roman family that did not keep or 
consult its own foreteller of the future ; and Juvenal describes the Emperor 
Tiberius as seated "with a herd of Chaldseans" on his rock at Capri. 2 Nothing 
would be more natural than that an intelligent and inquiring Roman, in the 
ennui of the smallest of the provinces, and finding himself amid a mixed popu- 
lation, half of Phoenician origin, and devoted to strange forms of religion, 
should have amused his leisure by inquiries into the bizarre superstitions by 
which he was surrounded. 3 The prevalence of earthquakes in Cyprus would 
be likely to give to the minds of the residents that gloomy and credulous tinge 
which is often found in countries liable to such terrible inflictions ; and New 
Paphos had been devastated by an earthquake sufficiently recent 4 to have left 
a deep impression. Perhaps from this, perhaps from other causes, Bar-Jesus 
had acquired unusual influence ; but it is an additional confirmation of the 
accuracy of St. Luke — one of those remote and incidental, and therefore 
unsuspected confirmations, which so often occur to establish the veracity of the 
sacred writers— that we find Cyprus to have been specially famous for its 
schools of religious imposture, of which one was professedly Jewish. Simon 
Magus was in all probability an inhabitant of Citium. 6 There is a most 
singular passage of Pliny, which, when we combine it with his reference to a 
Sergius Paulus, may be regarded as a confused echo in the mind of the Roman 
litterateur of these very events, heard from the very Proconsul about whom 
we are at present reading. He tells us that there were at Paphos two schools 
of soothsayers, one of which professed connexion with Moses, Jamnes, and 
Jotapes, who were Jews, and a much more recent Cyprian one. 6 To this 
school Bar- Jesus must have belonged, and Pliny's allusion throws once more 
a singular light on the fidelity of the careful Evangelist. 7 

The same feelings which had induced Sergius Paulus to domicile the Jewish 
sorcerer in the proconsular residence would naturally induce him to send for 
the new teachers, whose mission had evidently attracted attention by that 
loving earnestness which differed so widely from the contemptuous neutrality 

1 Juv. iii. 27. "Augur, schoenobates, medicus, magus." 

2 Tac. H. v. 3 ; Hor. Sat. I. ii. 1 ; Od. I. xi. 2 ; Juv. Sat. iii. 42, 60 ; vi. 543, 553, 562 ; 
x. 93 ; Suet. Tib. 36, 69 ; Aul. Gell. i. 9 ; Jos. Antt. viii. 2 ; xx. 5, § 1 ; B. J. vi. 5, § 1. 
Compare Matt. xxiv. 23, 24 ; Acts viii. 9 ; xvi. 16 ; xix. 19 ; 2 Tim. iii. 13 (yorjT^) ; Rev. 
xix. 20. 

3 See Jos. Antt. xx. 7, § 2. 

A In the reign of Augustus (Dio Cass. liv. 23). 6 Supra, p. 146. 

6 Tac. II. v. 3. Plin. H. N. xxx. 2, 6, "Est et alia f actio a Mose et Jamne et Jotape 
Judaeis pendens, sed multi.s inillibus post Zoroastrem. Tanto recentior est Cypria." In 
Jamnes and .Jotapes there seems to be some dim confusion of supposed Jews with the 
traditional Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim. iii. 8). 

7 Luke i. 3, aKpij3ws 7rap?}KoAov0>}Jc6TU 



CYPRUS. 199 

of the synagogue. But the position of soothsayer to a Roman Proconsul — 
even though it could only last a year x — was too distinguished and too lucrative 
to abandon without a struggle. Elymas met the Apostles in open controversy, 
and spared neither argument nor insult in his endeavour to persuade Sergius 
of the absurdity of the new faith. Instantly Saul — and this is the moment 
seized by the historian to tell us that he was also called by the name of Paul, 
which henceforth he exclusively uses — came to the front to bear the full force 
of the sorcerer's opposition. A less convinced or a less courageous man might 
well have shrunk from individual collision with a personage who evidently 
occupied a position of high consideration in the immediate household of the 
noble Roman. But to a spirit like St. Paul's, while there could be infinite 
compassion for ignorance, infinite sympathy with infirmity, infinite tenderness 
towards penitence, there could, on the other hand, be no compromise with im- 
posture, no tolerance for cupidity, no truce with Canaan. He stood up, as it 
were, in a flame of fire, his soul burning with inspired indignation, against a 
man whose cowardice, greed, and worthlessness he saw and wished to expose. 
Fixing on the false prophet and sorcerer that earnest gaze which was perhaps 
rendered more conspicuous by his imperfect sight, 2 he exclaimed, " O full of 
all guile and all villainy, thou son of the devil, 3 thou foe of all righteousness, 
cease, wilt thou, thy perversion of the Lord's straight paths." And then, 
perceiving the terror produced on the mind of the unmasked hypocrite by this 
bold and blighting invective, he suddenly added, " And now, see, the Lord's 
hand is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time." 4 
The denunciation instantly took effect ; the sorcerer felt in a moment that his 
impostures were annihilated, that he stood in the presence of an avenging 
justice. A mist swam before his eyes, followed by total darkness, and 
groping with outstretched hands he began to seek for some one to lead and 
guide him. 

Nor was it strange that a display of spiritual power so startling and so 
irresistible should produce a strong conviction on the mind of the Proconsul. 5 
How far his consequent belief was deep-seated or otherwise we have no evidence 
which would enable us to judge. But the silence of St. Luke would seem to 
indicate that he was not baptised, and we can hardly look on him as a deep and 
lifelong convert, since otherwise we should, in the rarity of great men in the 
Christian commuuity, have as certainly heard of him in their records as we 

1 Dio Cassius tells us that these senatorial appointments were eirerna-ioi. <ai ie\ripuiroi 
(liii. 13). 

2 Cf. Acts xxiii. 1. 

3 Possibly in allusion to his name Bar- Jesus — as though he had said, " called the son 
of the salvation of Jehovah, but really the son of the devil, and the enemy of all 
righteousness.'' For Siaj36Ao? cf. John viii. 44. The reading of the Peshito Bar-SMlma, 
"son of a wound" or "son of a name," is hard to account for, unless it be by euphemism 
(Castell, Lex Syr. s. v.). 

4 Acts xiii. 11, axpi Kaipov, literally, " until an opportunity," or, as we should say, " for 
the present." "Sciebar. Apostolus, sui memor exempli, de tenebris oculorum, mentis 
posse resurgere ad lucem ; " Bede, — following the hint of St. Chrysostom that ov KoAd^ovTQ? 

^v to prjp.a dAX' eirMTTpefyomos. 

5 Acts xiii. 12. 



200 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

hear of the very few who at this period — like Flavius Clemens of Flavia Domi- 
tilla — joined the Church from the ranks of the noble or the mighty. 

The question has been often asked why it is at this point in the narrative 
that the name Saul is finally replaced by the name Paul. 1 The old answer 
supplied by St. Jerome, that he took the name as a trophy of his conversion of 
Sergius Paulus, has long and deservedly been abandoned ; there would have 
been in it an element of vulgarity impossible to St. Paul. Nor is there any- 
thing to urge in favour of the fancy that he took the name as a token of 
his humility, to signify that he was " the least of the Apostles." 2 It is much 
more probable that he had either possessed from the first an alternative 
name for facility of intercourse among the heathen, or that this Roman 
designation may point to his possession of the Roman franchise, and perhaps 
to some bond of association between his father or grandfather and the 
^Emilian family, who bore the cognomen of Paulus. If he adopted the name 
on the present occasion it may have been because it was to a slight extent 
alliterative with his Hebrew name Shaul, which would, in its Grecised form, 
be represented by Saulos ; but that was a form which he could not use 
in intercourse with the Greeks, owing to the fact that the word in Greek 
would be a sort of slang term for " uppish," or wanton. The mere changing 
of his name was so little unusual that it had been from the earliest ages 
a custom among his countrymen. Joseph had been known to the Egyptians 
as Zaphnath Paaneah ; Daniel to the Assyrians as Belteshazzar ; Hadassah to 
the Persians as Esther ; Jesus, Hillel, Onias, Joseph, Tarpho to the Greeks 
as Jason, Pollio, Menelas, Hegesippus, and Trypho. When not assonant the 
name was sometimes a translation, as Peter is of Cephas, and Didymus 
of Thomas. Sometimes, however, this name for use among the Gentiles was 
due to accidental relations, as when Josephus took the praenomem of Flavius 
in honour of Yespasian. Of this we have other instances, in the Acts of the 
Apostles, in the persons of John and Joses, who were known by the Latin 
designations of Marcus and Justus. In Paul's case, however, as ancient 
Christian writers have pointed out, the change of name marks also a total 
change in all the conditions of his life. " Paul suffers what Saul had inflicted ; 
Saul stoned, and Paul was stoned ; Saul inflicted scourgings on Christians, 
and Paul five times received forty stripes save one ; Saul hunted the Church 
of God, Paul was let down in a basket ; Saul bound, Paul was bound." 3 

1 " Aprimo ecclesiae spolio Proc. Serg. Paulo victoriae suae trophaea retulit, erexitque 
vexillum ut Paulus a Saulo vocaretur " (Jer. ad Philem. 1). In the Toldoth Jeshu the 
name is connected with ^rj, "he worked." If so, both words being passive p?»rticiples, 
the change would be like a change from "sought" to "wrought;" and I cannot help 
thinking that the true explanation may lie here. Heimichs explains 2a.vA.os Se, 6 ko.1 
naviAo? der auch, so wie der Proconsul, ebenfalls Paulus hiess." 

2 Paulus, a contraction of Pauxillus, means "least." "Paulus enim parvus" (Aug. 
Serm. clxix.). " Non ob aliud, quantum mihi vidctur hoc nomen elegit nisi ut se osten- 
deret tamquam minimum Apostolorum " (Aug. De Spir. et Lit. xii.). "With his usual 
exuberance of fancy he contrasts the "little " Saul of Benjamin, with the tall persecuting 
king. Putin Conf. viii. 4 he leans to the other theory, "Ipse minimus Apostolorum 
tuoruin, &c. . . . Paulus vocari amavit ob tarn magnae insigne victoriae.' 

• Ap. Aug. Append. S'em. 204. 



ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 201 

CHAPTER XX. 

ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 

" Respondeat tibi Evangelica tuba, Doctor Gentium, vas aureum in toto orba 
x esplendens." — Jer. Adv. Pelag. Dial, iii., p. 545. 

Having now traversed Cyprus, " Paul and bis company" — to use tbe expres- 
sion by wbicb St. Luke so briefly intimates that the whole force of the 
mission was now identified with one man — weighed anchor from Paphos for 
Perga in Pamphylia. Whether they chose Perga as their destination in 
accordance with any preconceived plan, or whether it was a part of " God's 
unseen Providence by men nicknamed chance," we do not know. It was not 
easy for an ancient traveller to go exactly in what direction he liked, and he 
was obliged, in the circumscribed navigation of those days, to be guided in his 
movements by the accident of finding vessels which were bound for particular 
ports. 1 Now between Paphos, the political capital of Cyprus, and Perga, the 
capital of Pamphylia, there was in that day a constant intercourse, as would 
probably still be the case between Satalia and the western port of Cyprus but 
for the dangerous character of the now neglected harbour of Baffa. For Perga 
then, the missionaries embarked. They sailed into the deep bight of 
Attaleia, and up the broad, and in those days navigable, stream of the Cestrus, 
and anchored under the cliffs, which were crowned by the acropolis of the 
bright Greek city and the marble pillars of its celebrated Temple of 
Artemis. 

But at Perga they made no stay, and their visit was only marked by 
a single but disheartening incident. This was the desertion by John Mark of 
the mission cause ; " separating from them, he returned to Jerusalem." The 
causes which led him thus to look back after he had put his hand to the 
plough are not mentioned, but it is evident that to the ardent soul of Paul, at 
any rate, they appeared blameworthy, for we shall see that he subsequently 
refused the companionship of one who had shown such deficient resolution. 2 
It is, however, but too easy to conjecture the mixed motives by which 
Mark was actuated. He was young. The novelty of the work had worn off. 
Its hardships, even under the favourable circumstances in Cyprus, had not 
been slight. His mother was at Jerusalem, perhaps alone, perhaps exposed to 
persecution. It may be, too, that the young man saw and resented the growing 
ascendency of Paul over his cousin Barnabas. And besides all this, Mark, 
bred up in the very bosom of the Church at Jerusalem, may have felt serious 
misgivings about the tendency of that liberal theology, that broad 
universalism of proffered admission into the Church, which seemed to throw 
into the background the immemorial sanctity, not only of the oral but even of 
the written Law. Such may have been the yearnings, the misgivings, 
the half -unconscious jealousies and resentments which filled his mind, and 

1 See the chapter on ancient modes of travel in Friedlander, Sittenyesch. Rom** 

2 Acts xv. 38. 



202 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

whatever may have been the qualms of conscience which might otherwise 
have troubled his desertion of the sacred task, these excuses and arguments 
for doing so must have met with a powerful ally in the circumstances which 
were evidently before them. 

For as Mark gazed on the mighty chain of Taurus, and remembered that 
they were now about to penetrate countries of shifting languages, of unsettled 
government, of semi-barbarous populations, of strangely mingled worships, 
the brigand fastnesses of Pamphylians, Selgenses, Pisidians, Lycaonians, 
Isaurians, Cilicians, Oliti, Homodanenses, 1 he may not have been sorry to 
conceal dislike to the task on which he had entered under the plea of 
filial duty. At the time his defection must have been to Paul, even more 
than to Barnabas, a positive misfortune. Barnabas, though he clung to his 
friend and fellow-labourer with entire whole-heartedness, must yet have 
missed the genial brightness, the graphic utterance, the quick spirit of 
observation with which his cousin relieved the sombre absorption of Paul in 
his immediate purpose ; and Paul, who ever loved the personal services of 
younger companions, must have been a little embittered, as daily worries 
became more trying in the absence of a vigorous comrade. There must have 
been in his heart a feeling of indignation against one who forsook them at 
the very moment when he could least be replaced, and when the difficulties 
which he could so greatly have lightened began to assume their most formid- 
able shape. 

So Mark left them, and the Apostles at once made their way towards the 
interior. Although we are not told of any synagogue at Perga, yet, since 
they preached there on their return journey, there must have been some 
special reason for their now leaving the place. This reason has been found in 
the probability that they reached the town towards the middle of spring, 2 
when the entire population of the cities on the plain and sea- coast are in the 
habit of moving inland to the yailahs, or, as they would be called in Switzer- 
land, " alps," or mountain pastures, which enable them to escape the fierce 
and malarious heat of the lower regions. 3 It would be useless to preach in 
Perga at the very time that its main population were deserting it ; and any of 
the numerous caravans or family-migrations, which were filling the roads and 
passes with mules and camels and herds of cattle, would furnish the Apostles 
with company and protection. "Without such escort it would have been im- 
prudent, if not impossible, for them to make their way by those dangerous 
roads where it is probable that the snow-drifts still lay in many places, and 
they might often find the bridges shattered and swept away by the sudden 
spates of rushing streams. 

The few modern travellers who have visited these parts of Asia Minor 

» Strabo, xii. 6, 7 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. 23. See Lewin, i. 123. 

8 Con. and Howson, i. 177, who quote Spratt and Forbes, Travels in Lycia, i. 48, 242, 
248 ; Fellows, Lpcia, 238. 

8 A striking description of such a migration among the Kirghiz Tartars may be found 
in Mr. Atkinson's Travels. 






ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 203 

have furnished us with minute and picturesque descriptions of the abrupt 
stone-paved ascents; the sarcophagi and sculptured tombs among the pro- 
jecting rocks ; the narrowing valleys through which the rivers descend, and 
over which frown precipices perforated with many caves ; the sudden bursts 
of magnificent prospect in which you gaze "from the rocky steps of the 
throne of winter upon the rich and verdant plain of summer, with the 
blue sea in the distance ; " the constant changes of climate ; the zones of 
vegetation through which the traveller ascends ; the gleam of numberless 
cascades caught here and there amid the dark pine groves that clothe the 
lower slopes ; the thickets of pomegranate and oleander that mantle the river- 
beds ; the wild flowers that enamel the grass with their rich inlay ; the 
countless flocks of cattle grazing over pastures whose interminable expanses 
are only broken by the goat's-hair huts of the shepherd, made to this day of 
the same material as that by the manufacture of which St. Paul earned his 
daily bread. And when the traveller has emerged on the vast central plateau 
of Asia Minor they describe the enchanting beauty of the fresh and salt water 
lakes by which the road often runs for miles ; the tortoises that sun them- 
selves in the shallow pools ; the flights of wild swans which now fill the air 
with rushing wings, and now " ruffle their pure cold plumes " upon the 
waters ; the storks that stand for hours patiently fishing in the swampy pools. 
Such must have been the sights which everywhere greeted the eyes of Paul 
and Barnabas as they made their way from Perga to the Pisidian Antioch. 
They would have filled a modern missionary with rapture, and the feelings of 
gratitude and adoration with which a Martyn or a Heber would have " climbed 
by these sunbeams to the Father of Lights " would have gone far to help 
them in the endurance of their hard and perilous journeys. Mungo Park, in 
a touching passage, has described how his soul, fainting within him to the 
very point of death, was revived by seeing amid the scant herbage of the 
desert a single tuft of emerald moss, with its delicate filaments and amber 
spores ; and the journals of those whose feet in recent days have been 
beautiful upon the mountains over which they carried the message of peace, 
abound in passages delightfully descriptive of the scenes through which they 
passed, and which they regarded as aisle after aisle in the magnificent temple 
of the one true God. But, as we have already noticed, of no such feeling is 
there a single trace in the writings of the Apostle or of his historian. The 
love of natural scenery, which to moderns is a source of delight so continuous 
and so intense, was little known to the ancients in general, and in spite 
of a few poetic exceptions, was known perhaps to the Semites of that age 
least of all. 1 How often did Paul climb the mountain passes of the Taurus ; 
how often had he seen Olympus 

" Soaring snow- clad through its native sky;" 
how often had he passed on foot by "the great rivers that move like God's 

1 St. Paul was eminently a homo desideriorum ; a man who, like all the best Jewg, 
lived in the hopes of the future (Eom, viii. 24 j xv. 4 j Tit. ii. 13, &c). 



204 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

eternity ; " how often had his barque furrowed the blue waters of the iEgean, 
among those 

" Sprinkled isles, 

Lily on lily, which o'erlace the sea, 

And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps Greece!" 

But all these scenes of glory and loveliness left no impression upon his mind, 
or have at least left no trace upon his page. 1 We might pity the loss which 
he thus suffered, and regret the ineffectualness of a source of consolation 
which would otherwise have been ever at hand, were it not that to St. Paul 
such consolations were needless. The soul that lived in heaven, 2 the thoughts 
which were full of immortality, the conviction that the Lord was at hand, the 
yearning for the souls for which Christ died — made up to him for all besides. 
God would have granted all other consolations had he needed them ; but the 
steps which were ever on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem trod heed- 
lessly over the volcanic soil of a world treasured up with the stores of fire which 
should hereafter reduce it to ashes. 3 The goblet which was full of the new 
wine of the kingdom of heaven had no room in it for the fruit of the vine of 
even those earthly pleasures which are of all others the most innocent, the 
most universal, and the most blest. 

Nor must we fail to see that there was an advantage as well as a disadvan- 
tage in this absorption. If St. Paul never alludes to the transcendent beauties 
of the lands through which he travelled, so neither does one word escape him 
about the recurrent annoyances, the perpetual minor discomforts and vex- 
ations of travel. The journals of modern wanderers tell us of the drenching 
rains, the glaring heats, the terrible fatigues, the incessant publicity, the stings 
of insects, the blinding storms of dust, the trying changes of season, the 
scarcity and badness of provisions. But to Paul all these trivial burdens, 
which often, nevertheless, require more heroism for their patient endurance 
than those more serious perils which summon up all our fortitude for their 
conquest or resistance, were as nothing. He felt the tedium and the miseries 
of travel as little as he cared for its rewards. All these things had no bearing 
on his main purpose ; they belonged to the indifferent things of life. 

And so the Apostles made their way up the valley of the Oestrus, passed 
along the eastern shore of the large and beautiful lake Eyerdir, and after a 
journey of some forty leagues, which probably occupied about a week, they 
arrived at the flourishing commercial town of Antioch in Pisidia, or Antiochia 
Caesarea. We learn from Strabo that it had been founded by the Magnetos, 
re-founded by Seleucus, and subsequently made a Roman colony, with free 
municipal government, by Augustus. The centrality of its position on roads 

1 There are some excellent remarks on this subject in Friedlander, Sittengesch. Boms. 
vii. 5, 3. He shows that the ancients rather noticed details than general effects. They 
never allude to twilight colours, or the blue of distant hills, or aerial perspective. 
Landscape painting, the culture of exotic plants, and the poetry of natural histoiy have 
developed those feelings in the moderns (Humboldt's Cosmos, ii.). 

3 Phil, iii. 20 j Eph. ii. 6, &c. »2 Pet. iii. 7. 



ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 205 

which communicated southwards with Perga and Attaleia, westwards with 
Apamea, northwards with the great towns of Galatia, and eastwards with 
Iconium and the Cilician gates, made it a great commercial emporium for the 
trade of Asia Minor in wood, oil, skins, goat's hair, and Angola wool. Its 
true position — for it had long been confused with Ak-sher, the ancient Philo- 
melium — was discovered by Mr. Arundell in 1833. 1 Conspicuous among its 
ruins are the remains of a noble aqueduct, which shows its former importance. 
Its coins are chiefly remarkable for the prominence given on the one hand to, 
its colonial privileges, and on the other to its very ancient worship of the moon 
as a masculine divinity under the title of Men Archaios. This worship had in 
former days been very flourishing, and the temple of Men had been thronged 
with Hieroduli, who lived on its estates and revenues. Strabo tells us that, 
some seventy years before this time, on the death of King Amyntas, to whom 
Pisidia had been assigned by Mark Antony, this temple had been abolished ; 
but though the worship may have been entirely shorn of its ancient splendour, 
it probably still lingered among the ignorant and aboriginal population. 

But the message of the Apostles was not in the first instance addressed to 
the native Pisidians, nor to the Greeks, who formed the second stratum of the 
population, nor to the Romans, who were the latest occupants, but primarily to 
the Jews who had come thither with the stream of Latin immigration, which 
secured them equal privileges with the other inhabitants. Doubtless the first 
care of the Apostles — and this was the work in which Mark might have been 
specially useful — was to repair to the " strangers' rooms " attached to the 
synagogue, and then to find convenient lodgings in the Jews' quarter, and to 
provide means of securing a sale for the cilicium, by the weaving of which 
Paul honourably lived. The trade only occupied his hands, without interrupt- 
ing either his meditations or his speech, and we may reasonably suppose that 
not a few of the converts who loved him best, were won rather by the teach- 
ing and conversations of the quiet rooms where he sat busily at work, than by 
the more tumultuous and interrupted harangues in the public synagogues. 

But the mission of Paul and Barnabas was not meant for the few alone. 
They always made a point of visiting the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and 
seizing any opportunity that offered itself to address the congregation. The 
visit to Antioch in Pisidia is rendered interesting by the scenes which led to 
the first sermon of St. Paul of which the record has been preserved. 

The town possessed but a single synagogue, which must, therefore, have 
been a large one. The arrangements were no doubt almost identical with 
those which exist in the present day throughout the East. As they entered 
the low, square, unadorned building, differing from Gentile places of worship 
by its total absence of interior sculpture, they would see on one side the lattice- 
work partition, behind which sat a crowd of veiled and silent women. In front 
of these would be the reader's desk, and in its immediate neighbourhood, 

1 It is near the insignificant modern town of Jalobatz, and its identity is rendered 
certain by coins and inscriptions. (See Arundell, Asia Minor, ch. xii. ; Hamilton, 
Researches in Asia Minor, i., ch. xxvii. ; in Con. and Hows. L 182.) 



■\ 



206 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAXTIi. 

facing the rest of the congregation, those chief seats which Rabbis and 
Pharisees were so eager to secure. The Kibleh, or sacred direction towards 
which all prayer was offered, was Jerusalem ; and on that side would be the 
curtain, behind which was the ark containing the sacred rolls. 1 Paul, as a 
former Sanhedrist, and Barnabas, as a Levite, and both of them as men of 
superior Jewish education, might fairly have claimed to sit in the chairs or 
benches set apart for the elders. But perhaps they had been told what their 
Lord had said on the subject, and took their seats among the ordinary wor- 
shippers. 2 

Each as he entered covered his head with his Tallith, and the prayers 
began. They were read by the Sheliach, or " angel of the synagogue," 3 who 
stood among the standing congregation. The language employed was pro- 
bably Greek. Hebrew had long been to the Jews a learned language, under- 
stood only by the few, and in remote places, like Antioch of Pisudia, known 
possibly to only one or two. In spite of the stiff conservatism of a few 
Rabbis, the Jews as a nation had the good sense to see that it would be useless 
to utter prayers unless they were " understanded of the people." 4 After the 
prayers followed the First Lesson, or Parashah, and this, owing to the sanctity 
which the Jews attached to the very sounds and letters of Scripture, was read 
in Hebrew, but was translated or paraphrased verse by verse by the Meturge- 
man, or interpreter. The Chazzdn, or clerk of the synagogue, took the 
Thorah-roR from the ark, and handed it to the reader. By the side of the 
reader stood the interpreter, unless he performed that function for himself, as 
could be easily done, since the Septuagint version was now universally dis- 
seminated. After the Parashah, was read the short Haphtarah, or what we 
should call the Second Lesson, from the Prophets, the translation into the 
vernacular being given at the end of every three verses. After this followed 
the Midrash, the exposition or sermon. It was not delivered by one set 
minister, but, as at the present day any distinguished stranger who happens 
to be present is asked by way of compliment to read the Thorah, so in those 
days the Bosh ha-Keneseth might ask any one to preach who seemed likely to 
do so with profit to the worshippers. 6 

Accordingly on this occasion when the Haphtarah and Parashah were 
ended, the Batlantm — the " men of leisure " who managed the affairs of 
the synagogue, and corresponded to our churchwardens — sent the Chazzdn 
to ask the strangers if they had any word of exhortation to the people. 
Some rumour that they were preachers of a new and remarkable doctrine 
must already have spread in the little Jewish community, and it was evidently 

1 nzpn. 

2 Matt, xxiii. 6, TrpwroKotfeSpiou, pinp. Philo makes frequent allusions to the order and 
arrangements of synagogue-worship at this period. 

3 TQ2i TrtytD. 4 Berachdth, f . 3, 1 ; Sota, f. 21, 1. 

5 npoeKOwv 8e 6 7rpecrj3uTaT05 koX rSiv Soyixariov €/u.7T6tp6raTos Sia\eyerai (Phllo, Quod OffM. 

Prob. 12). Dr. Frankl, in his Jews in the East, tells us that he was constantly called 
upon to perform this function. Full details of synagogue worship may be found in 
Maimonides, Jad Hachezaka {Hilch. Tephil. viii. 1(^—12), and s. v. Haphtarah and 
Synagogue in Kitto's Cyclopaedia, by Dr. Ginsburg. 



. 



ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 207 

expected that they would be called upon. Paul instantly accepted the invi- 
tation. 1 Usually a Jewish preacher sat down during the delivery of his 
sermon, 2 as is freely done by Roman Catholics abroad; but Paul, instead of 
going to the pulpit, seems merely to have risen in his place, and with uplifted 
arm and beckoning finger 3 — in the attitude of one who, however much he 
may sometimes have been oppressed by nervous hesitancy, is proved by the 
addresses which have been preserved to us, to have been in moments of 
emotion and excitement a bold orator — he spoke to the expectant throng. 

The sermon in most instances, as in the case of our Lord's address at 
Nazareth, would naturally take the form of a Midrash on what the congre- 
gation had just heard in one or other of the two lessons. Such seems to 
have been the line taken by St. Paul in this his first recorded sermon. The 
occurrence of two words in this brief address, of which one is a most un- 
usual form, 4 and the other is employed in a most unusual meaning, 5 
and the fact that these two words are found respectively in the first of 
Deuteronomy and the first of Isaiah, combined with the circumstance that 
the historical part of St. Paul's sermon turns on the subject alluded to in 
the first of these chapters, and the promise of free remission is directly 
suggested by the other, would make it extremely probable that those were 
the two chapters which he had just heard read. His sermon in fact, or rather 
the heads of it, which can alone be given in the brief summary of St. Luke, 6 
is exactly the kind of masterly combination and application of these two 
Scriptrue lessons of the day which we should expect from such a preacher. 
And when turning to the Jewish Lectionary, and bearing in mind its ex- 
treme antiquity, we find that these two very lessons are combined as the 
Parashah and Haphtarah of the same Sabbath, we see an almost convincing 
proof that those were the two lessons which had been read on that Sabbath 
Day in the synagogue of Antioch more than 1,800 years ago. 7 Here again 
we find another minute and most unsuspected trace of the close faithfulness 
of St. Luke's narrative, as well as an incidental proof that St. Paul spoke 
in Greek. The latter point, however, hardly needs proof. Greek was at 
that time the language of the civilised world to an extent far greater than 

1 We can hardly imagine that he showed the feigned reluctance inculcated by the 
rabbis {Berachoth, 34, 1). 

2 Luke iv. 20. 3 Cf . Acts xii. 17 ; xxi. 40 ; xxvi. 1. 

4 Acts xiii. 18, hpo^ocfiop-qa-ev (A, C, E), "carried them as a man carries his little son." 
TiXX., Deut. i. 31; cf. Ex. xix. 4; Isa. lxiii. 9; Am. ii. 10, &c. He is not here 
reproaching them, but only speaking of God's mercy to them. The word also occurs in 
2 Mace. vii. 27. 

5 Acts xiii. 17, ttywo-ev, in the sense of "he brought them up" (Isa. i. 2) ; whereas 
elsewhere it means "elevated" or "raised up" (Luke i. 52; 2 Cor. xi. 7). In verse 19 
he uses KaT€K\t]pov6p.r\a-ev {a, A, B, C, D, E, G, H, &c.) in the rare sense of " divided as 
an inheritance " (where our text follows the correction, KareKXytpoSorricrev), as in Deut. i. 38. 

6 It should not be forgotten that no single address of St. Paul in the Acts would take 
more than five minutes in delivery. 

7 They are read on the Sabbath which, from the first word of the chapter in Isaiah, is 
called the Sabbath Hazon. In the present list of Jewish lessons, Deut. i. — iii. 22 and 
Isa. i. 1 — 22, stand forty-fourth in order under the Masoretic title of Dnai. This brilliant 
soujecture is due to Bengel. 



208 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

French is the common language of the Continent. It is quite certain that 
all the Jews would have understood it; it is very doubtful whether more 
than a few of them would have understood the Pisidian dialect ; it is to the 
last degree improbable that Paul knew anything of Pisidian; and that he 
suddenly acquired it by the gift of tongues, can only be regarded as an 
exploded fancy due to an erroneous interpretation. 

St. Paul's sermon is not only interesting as a sign of the more or less 
extemporaneous tact with which he utilised the scriptural impressions which 
were last and freshest in the minds of his audience, but far more as a 
specimen of the facts and arguments which he urged in his first addresses 
to mixed congregations of Jews and Proselytes. The numerous and exclu- 
sively Pauline expressions * in which it abounds, show that either notes of it 
must have been preserved by some Antiochene Christian, or that he must 
himself have furnished an outline of it to St. Luke. 2 It is further important 
as an indication that even at this early period of his career Paul had been led 
by the Spirit of God, if not to the full comprehension, at least to the germ, 
of those truths which he afterwards developed with such magnificent force 
and overwhelming earnestness. The doctrine of justification by faith, and of 
the inutility of the works of the law to procure remission of sins, lie clearly 
involved in this brief but striking sermon, which also gives us some insight 
into Paul's method of applying Scripture ; into his adoption of the current 
chronology of his nation ; 3 and, lastly, into the effects which had been pro- 

1 See (in the Greek) Acts xiii. 25 compared with xx. 24, 2 Tim. iv. 7 ; 26 with xx. 32 ; 
27 with xxiv. 21 ; 39 with Eom. vi. 7 ; 39 with Rom. v. 9, Gal. iii. 11, and others, in 
Alf ord's references. Compare, too, the thoughts and expressions of 33, 34 with Rom. i. 4, 
vi. 9 ; and 39 with Rom. viii. 3, Gal. iii. 11. 

2 Perhaps a better hypothesis is that in general outline the three main sections of it 
(Acts xiii. 16 — 22, 23 — 31, 32 — 41) may have been often repeated. (Ewald, vi. 658.) 

3 For instance, in verse 20 he makes the period of the Judges last 450 years. It is 
true that here the best uncial MSS. transpose the eVecri Terpa/coo-tois «al Tt-evT^Kovra to the 
previous verse (x, A, B, C, and the Coptic, Sahidic, and Armenian versions). But this 
is exactly one of the instances in which the "paradiplomatic" evidence entirely outweighs 
that of the MSS. For the reading of the text is found in E, G, H, and many other 
MSS. ; and while we see an obvious reason why it should have been altered, we see none 
why the other reading should have been tampered with. The case stands thus. The 
chronology which gives a period of 450 years to the Judges is in direct contradiction to 
1 Kings vi. 1, which makes the fourth year of Solomon's reign fall in the 480th year 
after the Exodus. Why, then, do modern editors adopt it in spite of the oldest 
uncials? Not, as Bishop Wordsworth says, out of "arbitrary caprice," or "to gratify 
a morbid appetite of scepticism by contradictions invented by itself, and imputed 
to Holy Writ," or "an inordinate love of. discovering discrepancies in Holy Scrip- 
ture;" but for reasons, of which he must surely have been aware — viz., because 
(1) the same erroneous chronology is also found in Josephus (Antt. viii. 3, § 1, and 
potentially in xx. 10, § 1), and is, therefore, obviously the current one among the 
Jews ; and was current (2) because it is the exact period given by the addition of 
the vague and often synchronous periods given in the Book of Judges itself. And (3) even 
if we accept the corrected reading — which can only be done in the teeth of the rule, 
" Difficiliori lectioni praestar. ardua " — we only create fresh chronological difficulties. 
On such subjects the knowledge of St. Paul and the Apostles never professes to be more 
than the knowledge of their time. To attribute to them a miraculous superiority to the 
notions of their day in subjects within the reach of man's unaided research, is an error 
which all the greatest modern theologians have rightly repudiated as pregnant with 
mischief. Similarly, in verse 33, iv r^ ir^nm ypa^S, though only found in D, is nn- 



ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 209 

dnced npon his mind by the speeches he had heard from St. Peter and from 
St. Stephen. From the latter of these he borrows his nse of what may be 
called the historic method ; from the former, the remarkable Xessianic 
argument for the Resurrection which he founds on a passage in the Second 
Psalm. 1 

Beginning with a courteous address to the Jews and Proselytes, and 
bespeaking their earnest attention, he touched first on that providence of God 
in the history of Israel of which they had just been reminded in the Hapht-irah. 
He had chosen them, had nurtured them in Egypt, had delivered them from its 
bondage, had carried them like a nursing father in the wilderness, had driven 
out. seven nations of Canaan before them, had governed them by judges for 
450 years, and then for forty years, as tradition said, had granted them for 
their king one whom — with an allusion to his own name and tribe which is 
inimitably natural — he calls " Saul, the son of Kish, of the tribe of 
Benjamin." Then fusing three separate passages of scriptural encomium on 
David into one general quotation ^13-"22 he announces the central truth which 
it was his mission to preach : that, of David's seed, God had raised up accord- 
ing to His promise One who, as His very name signified, was a Saviour, and to 
whom the great acknowledged prophet, John the Baptist, had borne direct 
witness. It was true that the rulers of Jerusalem — and on this painful side of 
the subject he dwells but lightly — had, less from deliberate wickedness than 
from ignorance, put Him to death, thereby fulfilling the direct prophecies of 
Scripture. But — and this was the great fact on which he relied to remove the 
terrible offence of the Cross — God had raised Him from the dead 23-31}. 
This was an historic objective fact, to which, as a fact tested by their living 
senses, many could bear witness. And lest they should hesitate about this 
testimony, he proceeded to show that it was in accordance with all those pro- 
phecies which had been for centuries the most inspiring part of their nation's 
faith. The Resurrection to which they testified was the highest fulfilment of 
the Psalm in which God had addressed David as His son. And there were 
two special passages which foreshadowed this great truth. One was in Isaiah, 
where the Prophet had promised to God s true children the holy, the sure, 
mercies of David; the other was that on which St. Peter had dwelt in his 
speech at Pentecost — the confident hope expressed in that Michtam or " Golden 
Psalm " — that God would not leave his soul in hell, or suffer His holy one to 
see corruption. More must have been involved in that yearning conviction 
than could possibly affect David himself. He had died, he had seen corrup- 
tion ; but He of the seed of David whom God had raised — of Him alone was 
it true that His soul was not left in the unseen world, and His flesh had not 
seen corruption. What they had to preach, then, was forgiveness of sins 



doubtedly the right reading, as against Sevripw, which is found in N and the other uncials, 
which is simply a correction, because the quotation is from Psalm ii. 7 ; and it was over- 
looked that among the Jews in St. Paul's time the Second Psalm was regarded as the 
First, the First being " an introduction to the Psalter." 

1 Compare Acts ^iii T 35 — 37 with St. Peter's speech in Acts ii, 27. 
O 



■\ 



210 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

through Him. In the Mosaic Law — and once more Paul touched but lightly, 
and in language least likely to cause offence, upon this dangerous ground- 
remission of sins was not to be found ; but there was not only remission, but 
justification, for all who believed in Jesus. A quotation from Habakkuk 
formed the striking peroration of a sermon which had been thus weighted with 
awful truths and startling testimony. It warned them that however startling 
that testimony might be, yet if they disbelieved it as their fathers had dis- 
believed the threat of Chaldean retribution, the contempt of insolent derision 
might be followed by the astonishment of annihilating doom (32-41). 1 

Thus, from the standpoint of those who heard him — commenting on the 
passages which had just sounded in their ears — appealing to the prophecies in 
which they believed — quoting, or alluding to, the Scriptures which they held 
so sacred — relying on the history to which they clung with such fond affection, 
and pouring his flood of light on those " dark speeches upon the harp " which 
had hitherto wanted their true explanation — thus mingling courtesy and warn- 
ing, the promises of the past and their fulfilment in the present — thus drowning 
the dark horror which lay in the thought of a crucified Messiah in the dawning 
light of His resurrection — did St. Paul weave together argument, appeal, and 
testimony to convince them of the new and mighty hope which he proffered, 
and to foreshadow that which was so difficult for them to accept — the doing 
away of the old as that which, having received its divine fulfilment, must now 
be regarded as ineffectual symbol and obsolete shadow, that in Christ all things 
might become new. 2 

It was not surprising that a discourse so powerful should produce a deep 
effect. Even the Jews were profoundly impressed. As they streamed out of 
the synagogue, Jew and Gentile alike 3 begged that the same topics might be 
dwelt on in the discourse of the next Sabbath ; 4 and after the entire breaking 
up of the congregation, many both of the Jews and of the Proselytes of the 
Gate followed Paul and Barnabas for the purpose of further inquiry and con- 
versation. Both at that time and during the week the Apostles did all they 
could to widen the knowledge of these inquirers, and to confirm their nascent 
faith. 5 Meanwhile the tidings of the great sermon spread through the city. 

1 Acts xiii. 41, "ye despisers " corresponds to "among the heathen " in the original of 
Hab. i. 5, because the LXX. which St. Paul here quotes seems to have read DH?ia 
(bogMim), " arrogantes," for D'isa {baggotm), by one of the numberless instances of variant 
readings in the Hebrew of which the Greek version affords so striking a proof. 

2 Paul speaks slightingly of his own eloquence ; but we see by the recorded specimens 
of his sermons to barbarians in Pisidia, to philosophers at Athens, and to Jews at Jeru- 
salem, how powerful was his method ; and we are sure that there must also have been 
the "vividus vultus, vividae manus, vividi oculi, denique omnia vivida." 

3 Acts xiii. 42. The E. V. has " the Gentiles besought ; " but tA £Qvt\ is an idle gloss, 
not found in «, A, B, C, D, E, &c. 

4 eis to iJ.tTa.iiv o-6.ppo.Tov. The use of ^to^v for "next following " has puzzled comm.en« 
tators, and led them to such erroneous renderings as " for the intervening week ; " but it 
is found in late Greek (Jos. B. J. v. 4, , § 2 ; c. Ap. i. 21 ; Plut. Inst. Lac. 42), and ia 
a mere extension of the classical Greek idiom. (See my Brief Greek Syntax, § 82, iv.) 

5 Acts xiii. 43, " urged them to abide by the grace of God ; " of. xx. 24. The expres- 
sion in thoroughly Pauline. (1 Cor. xv. 10 ; 2 Cor. vi. 1, &o.) 



ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 211 

On the following Sabbath a vast crowd, of all ranks, nationalities, and classes, 
thronged the doors of the synagogue. Immediately the haughty exelusiveness 
of the Jews took the alarm. They were jealous that a single address of this 
dubious stranger, with his suspicious innovations, should have produced a 
greater effect than their years of proseij iism. They were indignant that one 
who seemed to have suddenly dropped down among them from the snows of 
Taurus with an astonishing gospel should, at a touch, thrill every heart with 
the electric sympathy of love, and achieve more by one message of free salva- 
tion than they had achieved in a century by raising a prickly hedge around the 
exclusive sanctity of their Law. Paul — again the chief speaker — no longer 
met with attentive and eager listeners ; he was interrupted again and again by 
flat contradiction and injurious taunts. 1 At last both the Apostles saw that 
the time was come to put an end to the scene, and to cease a form of ministra- 
tion which only led to excited recriminations. Summoning up all their courage 
— and few acts are more courageous than the unflinching announcement of a 
most distasteful intention to an infuriated audience — they exclaimed that now 
they had done their duty, and discharged their consciences towards their own 
countrymen. They had made to them the offer of eternal life, and that offer 
had been disdainfully repudiated. 2 " Lo ! you may be astonished and indig- 
nant, but now we turn to the Gentiles. In doing so we do but fulfil the 
prophecy of Isaiah, who said of our Lord that He was ordained for a Light of 
the Gentiles, and for salvation to the ends of the earth." 

Gladly and gratefully did the Gentiles welcome the mission which now 
to them exclusively made free offer of all, and more than all, the blessings 
of Judaism without its burdens. All who, by the grace of God, decided to 
range themselves in the ranks of those who desired eternal life 3 accepted the 
faith. More and more widely 4 the word of the Lord began to spread. But 
the Jews were too powerful to be easily defeated. They counted among 
their proselytes a large number of women, of whom some were of high 
rank. 5 Their commercial ability had also secured them friends among 
the leading people of the city, who were the municipal Roman authorities. 
Tolerant of every legalised religion, the Romans had a profound distaste 
for religious embroilments, and so long as the Jews behaved peaceably, were 
quite willing to afford them protection. Knowing that all had gone smoothly 

1 Acts xiii. 45, avr4\eyov. 

* Acts xill. 46, ovk a£tovs tcpivere lauTovs tt}s alwviov fcoi}?. 

3 oo-ot ri<rav reray/xeVoi els £. ai. Those only will find in this expression a hard Calvinism 
who overlook the half- middle usage of the participle which is foimd in xx. 13 (cf. ii. 47) 
and in Philo. In a Calvinistic sense, moreover, the words are in direct antinomy with 
xiii. 46. The E.V. followed Tyndale, but the Khemish "pre-ordained" is even stronger. 
The close juxtaposition of the two phrases shows the danger of building unscriptural 
systems on the altered perspective of isolated expressions. 

4 Acts xiii. 49, Sie<J>e'peTo. 

Jos. B. J. ii. 20, § 2 ; cf . Strab. vii. 2 ; airavres ttjs SeicriSaijuovias apxyyovs otovTai xas 

yuvcuxa? ; cf. Juv. Sat. vi. 542. In Ps. lxviii. 11, " The Lord gave the word : great was 
the company of the preachers" (lit. "the female messengers," evayyeXLo-rpCai., LXX.), 
fantastic commentators of the literalist type find in the fact that nvVtelon is feminine, an 
indication of the prominent agency of women in the spread of the Gospel. 
O 2 



212 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

till these new-comers had appeared, they were readily induced to look on 
them with dislike, especially since they were viewed with disfavour by the 
ladies of their families. 1 They joined in the clamour against the Apostles, 
and succeeded in getting them banished out of their boundaries. The Apostles 
shook off their feet the deep dust of the parched roads in testimony against 
them, 2 and passed on to Iconium, where they would be under a different 
jurisdiction. 3 But the departure did not destroy the infant Church which 
they had founded. It might have been expected that they would leare 
gloom and despondency among their discouraged converts ; but it was not 
so. They left behind them the joy of a new hope, the inspiration of a new 
faith, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who had 
learnt of the heavenly promise. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CLOSE OP THE JOURNEY. 
'AiricrToi yap Avu&oves &s /col 'Apto'TOTeA.Tjs jxaprvpei. — SCHOL. in H. iv. 88. 

" When they persecute you in this city, nee ye to another," our Lord had 
said to His twelve Apostles when He sent them forth as lambs among 
wolves. 4 Expelled from Antioch, 5 the Apostles obeyed this injunction. They 
might have crossed the Paroreian range to Philomelium, and so have made 
their way westwards to Synnada and the Phrygian cities, or eastwards to 
Laodicea. What circumstances determined their course we cannot tell, but 
they kept to the south of the Paroreia, and, following a well-traversed road, 
made their way to the pleasant city of Iconium. For a distance of about sixty 
miles the road runs south-westwards over bleak plains, scoured by wild asses 
and grazed by countless herds of sheep, until it reaches the green oasis on 
which stands the city of Iconium. 6 It is the city so famous through the 
Middle Ages, under the name of Konieh, as the capital of the Sultans of Roum, 
and the scene of the romantic siege by Godfrey of Bouillon. Here, on the 
edge of an interminable steppe, and nearly encircled by snow- clad hills, they 
had entered the district of Lycaonia, and found themselves in the capital city 
of an independent tetrarchy. The diversity of political governments which at 
this time prevailed in Asia Minor was so far an advantage to the Apostles, 

1 avrax he koX tovs avSpa? Trpo/caXovi/Tat (Strabo, I.e.). For the indulgence of the Romans 
towards the Jews in the provinces, Renan refers to Jos. Antt. xiv. 10, § 11 ; xvi. 6, §§2, 
4, 6, 7 ; Cic. pro Flacco, 28, &c. 

2 Matt. x. 14. 

3 Antioch was a Roman colony, under the general jurisdiction of the Propraetor of 
(Jalatia. Iconium was under a local tetrarch. (Plin. H. N. v. 27.) 

4 Matt. x. 25. 5 Acts xiii. 51, ki-ifiakov avTous. 

6 Strabo, xii. 6. Mentioned in Xen. Avab. i. 2, 19 ; Cic. ad Fam. iii. 8 ; v. 20; xv. 4, 
M lyin^ at the intersection of important roads between Ephesus and Tarsus, &0. 



THE CLOSE OP THE JOURNEY. 213 

Hat it rendered them more able to escape from one jurisdiction to another. 
Their ejection from Antioch must have received the sanction of the colonial 
authorities, who were under the Propraetor of Galatia ; but at Iconium they 
were beyond the Propraetor's province, in a district which, in the reign of 
Augustus, belonged to the robber-chief Amyntas, and was still an independent 
tetrar: hy of fourteen towns. 1 

Doubtless, as at Antioch, their first care would be to secure a lodging among 
their fellow-countrymen, and the means of earning their daily subsistence. On 
the Sabbath they entered as usual the one synagogue which sufficed the Jewish 
population. Invitations to speak were at first never wanting, and they preached 
with a fervour which won many converts both among Jews and proselytes. 
The Batlanim, indeed, and the Ruler of the Synagogue appear to have been 
against them, but at first their opposition was in some way obviated. 2 Some 
of the Jews, however, stirred up the minds of the Gentiles against them. 3 
Over the Proselytes of the Gate the Apostles would be likely to gain a strong 
influence. It would not be easy to shake their interest in such teaching, or their 
gratitude to those who were sacrificing all that made life dear to their desire 
to proclaim it. But when Jewish indignation was kindled, when the synagogue 
became the weekly scene of furious contentions, 4 it would be easy enough to 
persuade the Gentile inhabitants of the city that these emissaries, who had 
already been ejected from Antioch, were dangerous incendiaries, who every- 
where disturbed the peace of cities. In spite, however, of these gathering 
storms the Apostles held their ground, and their courage was supported by the 
evident blessing which was attending their labour. So long as they were able 
not only to sway the souls of their auditors, but to testify the power of their 

1 Plin. N.H. v. 25. Some doubt seems to rest on this, from the existence of a coin 
of the reign of Nero in which it is called Claudiconium, and of a coin of Gallienus in 
which it is called a colony ; but the adoption of the name of Claudius may have been 
gratuitous flattery, and the privilege conceded long afterwards. 

2 Although not authentic, there may be some basis of tradition in the reading of D 

and (in part) Syr. marg., oi fie apxtcrvvdywyoi rwv 'IovSaiwe k<xi oi apxovTes ttj? o-uvaywyr]? e-rr^yayov 
OUT019 fiicoyjubi/ tcara tuv Si/cauov .... 6 fie iciipios eSco/cef Ta\i) elprjv7)v. 

3 This seems to be suggested by the contrast of 'EAAtjiw in verse 1 with e 0iw in verse 2. 

4 Eenan compares the journey of the Apostles from Ghetto to Ghetto to those of the 
Arab Ibn Batoutah, and the mediaeval traveller Benjamin of Tudela. A more recent 
analogy may be found in Dr. FrankTs Jews in the East. The reception of these Christian 
teachers by remote communities of Jews has been exactly reproduced in modern times by 
the bursts of infuriated curses, excommunications, mobs, and stone-throwings with which 
modern Jews have received missionaries in some of their larger Moldavian communities. 
Here is the description of one such scene by a missionary : — " Fearful excommunications 
were issued in the synagogue, pronouncing most terrible judgments on any Jew holding 
communication with us; or who, on receiving any of our publications, did not at once 
consign them to the flames. The stir and commotion were so great that I and my brother 
missionaries were obliged to hold a consultation, whether we should face the opposition 
or fly from the town. We resolved to remain and face the danger in the name of God, 
and the next day being Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, we went out with a stock of our 

Eublications. "When we got near the synagogue we were driven away by a yelling, cursing, 
laspheming crowd, who literally darkened the air with the stones they threw at us. 
We were in the greatest danger of being killed. Ultimately, however, we faced them, 
and by dint of argument and remonstrance gained a hearing." {Speech of the Rev, M* 
Wolkeiiberg at Salisbury, August 8, 1876.) 



214 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

mission by signs and wonders, they felt that it was not the time to yield to 
opposition. Their stay, therefore, was prolonged, and the whole population of 
the city was split into two factions — the one consisting of their enemies, the 
other of their supporters. At length the spirit of faction grew so hot that the 
leaders of the hostile party of Jews and Gentiles made a plot to murder 
the Apostles. 1 Of this they got timely notice, and once more took flight. 
Leaving the tetrarchy of Iconium, they still pursued the great main road, and 
made their way some forty miles into the district of Antioclras TV., King cf 
Commagene, and to the little town of Lystra in Lycaonia. 

The site of Lystra has never been made out with perfect certainty, but 
there is good reason to believe that it was at a place now known as Bin Bir 
Kilisseh, or the Thousand and One Churches, — once the see of a bishop, and 
crowded with the ruins of sacred buildings. It lies in the northern hollows of 
the huge isolated mass of an extinct volcano, " rising like a giant from a plain 
level as the sea." 2 It is called the Kara Dagh, or Black Mountain, and is 
still the haunt of dangerous robbers. 

Both at Lystra and in the neighbouring hamlets the Apostles seem to 
have preached with success, and to have stayed for some little time. On one 
occasion Paul noticed among his auditors a man who had been a cripple from 
his birth. His evident eagerness 3 marked him out to the quick insight of the 
Apostle as one on whom a work of power could be wrought. It is evident on 
the face of the narrative that it was not every cripple or every sufferer that 
Paul would have attempted to heal ; it was only such as, so to speak, met 
half-way the exertion of spiritual power by their own ardent faith. Fixing 
his eyes on him, Paul raised his voice to its full compass, and cried — " Rise 
on thy feet upright." Thrilled with a divine power, the man sprang up ; he 
began to walk. The crowd who were present at the preachings, which seem 
on this occasion to have been in the open air, were witnesses of the miracle, 
and reverting in their excitement, perhaps from a sense of awe, to their rude 
native Lycaonian dialect 4 — just as a Welsh crowd, after being excited to an 
overpowering degree by the English discourse of some great Methodist, might 
express its emotions in Welsh — they cried : ' The gods have come down to us 
in the likeness of men. The tall and venerable one is Zeus ; the other, the 
younger and shorter one, who speaks so powerfully, is Hermes.' 6 Ignorant 

1 The Acta Pauli et Theclae, of which the scene is laid at Iconium, are so purely 
apocryphal as hardly to deserve notice. They are printed in Grabe, Spicileg. 1 ; Teschen- 
dorf, Acta Apost. Apocr. p. 40. Tertullian says that a presbyter in Asia was deposed for 
having forged the story out of love for Paul (De Bapt. 17) ; St. Jerome adds that it was 
St. John who deposed him. 

2 Kinneir, Travels in Karamania, p. 212. 

8 Acts xiv. 9, Tj/coue tov IlaiiAov AaAovvros. 

4 Jablonski, in his monograph De Lingud Lycaonid, concluded that it was a corrupt 
Assyrian, and therefore Semitic dialect ; Guhling, that it was Greek, corrupted with 
Syriac. The only Lycaonian word we know is Se'A^eia, which means "a juniper," as we 
find in Steph. liyzant. 

6 It is hardly worth while to produce classical quotation to show that Hermes was the 
god of eloquence (Hor. Od. i. 10 ; Macrob. Saturn, i. 8). Hence his epithet Aoywt (OrpA, 
llyrtm, xxvii. 6). " Quo didicit culte lingua favente loqui " (Ov. F. v. 665). 



THE CLOSE OF THE JOURNEY. 215 

of the native dialect, the Apostles did not know what the crowd were saying, 1 
and withdrew to their lodging. But meanwhile the startling rumour had 
spread, Lycaonia was a remote region where still lingered the simple faith 
in the old mythologies. 3 Not only were there points of resemblance in Central 
Asia between their own legends and the beliefs of the Jews, 3 but this region was 
rendered famous as the scene of more than one legendary Epiphany, of which 
the most celebrated — recorded in the beautiful tale of Philemon and Baucis 4 — 
>ras said to have occurred in this very neighbourhood. Unsophisticated by the 
prevalent disbelief, giving ready credence to all tales of marvel, and showing 
intense respect for any who seemed invested with special sacredness, 5 the 
Lycaonians eagerly accepted the suggestion that they were once more favoured 
by a visit from the old gods, to whom in a faithless age they had still been 
faithful. And this being so, they at least would not be guilty either of the 
impious scepticism which had ended in the transformation into a wolf of their 
eponymous prince Lycaon, or of the inhospitable carelessness which for all 
except one aged couple had forfeited what might have been a source of 
boundless blessings. Before the gate of the town was a Temple of Zeus, their 
guardian deity. The Priest of Zeus rose to the occasion. While the Apostles 
remained in entire ignorance of his proceedings he had procured bulls and 
garlands, and now, accompanied by festive crowds, came to the gates to do 
them sacrifice. 6 Paul and Barnabas were the last to hear that they were 
about to be the centres of an idolatrous worship, but when they did hear it 
they, with their sensitive conceptions of the awful majesty of the one true 
God, were horror-stricken to an extent which a Gentile could hardly have 
understood." Rending their garments, they sprang out with loud cries among 
the multitude, expostulating with them, imploring them to believe that they 
were but ordinary mortals like themselves, and that it was the very object of 
their mission to turn them from these empty idolatries to the one living and 
true God, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in 
them is. And so, as they gradually gained more of the ear of the multitude, 
they explained that during past generations God had, as it were, suffered all 
the heathen to walk in their own ways, 8 and had not given them special 

1 See Chrysost. Horn. xxx. The notion of St. Jerome, that the power of the Apostles 
to speak to the Lycaonians in their own language was one of the reasons why the people 
took them for gods, is utterly baseless. 

2 Some remarkable proofs are given by Dollinger (Judenth. v.. Heidentk. bk. viii. 2, § 5). 

3 For instance, the sort of dim tradition of the Deluge at Apamea Kibotos. 

< Ov. Met. viii. 626, seqq. ; Fast. v. 495 ; Dio. Chrysost. Orat. xxxiii. 408. On the 
common notion of these epiphanies, see Horn. Od. xvi. 484 ; Hes. Opp. et D. 247 ; 
Cat. Ixt. 384. 

5 Tyana, the birthplace of the contemporary thaumaturge, Apollonius, who was 
•verywhere received with so deep a reverence, is not far to the east of Lystra and Derbe. 

6 * Probably the gates of the house, cf. xii. 13, Jul. Poll. Onomast. i. 8, 77 (cf. Tirg. 
Ecl._m. 487 ; Tert, Be Cor. Mil. x.). 

" Menexenus, the physician of Alexander, claimed to be a god, as did Alexander of 
Abonoteichus, to say nothing of the Divi Ccesares. — "EgeTrrjS-iio-av, a, A, B, C, D, E, &c. 
Barnabas is put first because he is most reverenced as Zeus Poliouchos. In the story of 
Baucis and Philemon the -miracle at once led to a sacrifice, 

* Acts iiv. 16. tr«ra to. e8vq. 



216 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

revelation 3; and yet even in those days He had not left Himself without 
witness by the mercies which He then sent, as He sends them now, "by 
giving us from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, by filling our hearts with 
food and gladness." 

Such was the strong yet kindly and sympathetic protest uttered by the 
Apostles against the frank superstition of these simple Lycaonians. It was 
no time now, in the urgency of the moment, to preach Christ to them, the sole 
object being to divert them from an idolatrous sacrifice, and to show the futile 
character of the polytheism of which such sacrifices formed a part. Paul, 
who was evidently the chief speaker, does this with that inspired tact which 
can always vary its utterances with the needs of the moment. No one can 
read the speech without once more perceiving its subtle and inimitable coin- 
cidence with his thoughts and expressions. 1 The rhythmic conclusion is not 
unaccordant with the style of his most elevated moods ; and besides the appro- 
priate appeal to God's natural gifts in a town not in itself unhappily situated, 
but surrounded by a waterless and treeless plain, we may naturally suppose 
that the " filling our hearts with food and gladness " was suggested by the 
garlands and festive pomp which accompanied the bulls on which the people 
would afterwards have made their common banquet. Nor do I think it 
impossible that the words may be an echo of lyric songs 2 sung as the pro- 
cession made its way to the gates. To use them in a truer and loftier con- 
nexion would be in exact accord with the happy power of seizing an argument 
which St. Paul showed when he turned into the text of his sermon at Athens 
the vague inscription to the Unknown God. 

But the Lystrenians did not like to be baulked of their holiday and of 
their banquet ; and those who had been most prominent in proclaiming the 
new epiphany of Zeus and Hermes were probably not a little ashamed. 
M. Renan is right in the remark that the ancient heathen had no conception 
of a miracle as the evidence of a doctrine. If, then, the Apostles could work 
a miracle, and yet indisputably disclaim all notion of being gods in disguise, 
what were they, and what became of their miracle ? The Lycaonians, in the 
sulky revulsion of their feelings, and with a somewhat uneasy sense that they 
had put themselves into a ridiculous position, were inclined to avenge their 
error on those who had innocently caused it. They were a faithless and 
fickle race, liable, beyond the common wont of mobs, to sudden gusts of feeling 

1 Compare xiv. 15, anb Tovroiv tS)V fj.ara.Kav eni<TTpe(pei.v enl ®ebv ^otvra with 1 Thess. i. 9, 
enearpexpaie 7rpbs rbv ®ebv anb Ttuv eiSoSAwv, /c.t.A.., and the anarthrous ®ebv £u>i/Ta with Rom. IX. 

26, &c. Compare too the very remarkable expression and thought of ver. 16 with 
the speech at Athens, xvii. 30, Rom. i. 20, ii. 15, &c, and ver. 17 with Rom. i. 19, 20. 
The readings "us" and "our hearts" (rnj.lv and ri^v, A, B, G, H, and the Coptic and 
Ethiopian versions) are not certain, since these are exactly points in which diplomatic 
evidence can hardly be decisive ; but they are surely much more in St. Paul's manner, 
and illustrate the large sympathy with winch he was always ready to become all things 
to all men, and therefore to Gentiles to speak as though he too were a Gentile. 

2 Mr. Humphry in loc. not unnaturally took this for the fragment of some lyric 
song, and though most editors have rejected his conjecture, I think that its apparent 
improbability may partly be removed by the suggestion in the text (mfra, Excursus III., 



JHE CLOSE OP THE JOURNEY. 217 

and impulse. 1 In their disappointment they would be inclined to assume 
that if these two mysterious strangers were not gods they were despicable 
Jews ; and if their miracle was not a sign of their divinity, it belonged to the 
malefic arts of which they may well have heard from Roman visitors. And 
on the arrival of the Jews of Antioch and Iconium at Lystra, with the express 
purpose of buzzing their envenomed slanders into the ears of these country 
people, the mob were only too ripe for a tumult. They stoned Paul and, when 
they thought he was dead, dragged him outside their city gates, leaving him, 
perhaps, in front of the very Temple of Jupiter to which they had been about 
to conduct him as an incarnation of their patron deity. But Paul was not 
dead. This had not been a Jewish stoning, conducted with fatal deliberate- 
ness, but a sudden riot, in which the mode of attack may have been due to 
accident. Paul, liable at all times to the swoons which accompany nervous 
organisations, had been stunned, but not killed ; and while the disciples stood 
in an agonised group around what they thought to be his corpse, he recovered 
his consciousness, and raised himself from the ground. The mob meanwhile 
had dispersed; and perhaps in disguise, or under cover of evening — for all 
these details were as nothing to Paul, and are not preserved by his biographer 
— he re-entered the little city. 

"Was it in the house of Eunice and Lois that he found the sweet repose 
and tender ministrations which he would need more than ever after an 
experience so frightful? If Lystra was thus the scene of one of his intensest 
sufferings, and one which, lightly as it is dwelt upon, probably left on his 
already enfeebled constitution its lifelong traces, it also brought him, by the 
merciful providence of Gk>d, its own immense compensation. For it was at 
Lystra that he converted the son of Eunice, then perhaps a boy of fifteen, 2 for 
whom he conceived that deep affection which breathes through every line of 
the Epistles addressed to him. This was the Timotheus whom he chose as the 
companion of his future journeys, whom he sent on his most confidential 
messages, to whom he entrusted the oversight of his most important churches, 
whom he summoned as the consolation of his last imprisonment, whom he 
always regarded as the son in the faith who was nearest and dearest to his 
heart. If Luke had been with St. Paul in this his first journey, ho would 
probably have mentioned a circumstance which the Apostle doubtless regarded 
as one of God's best blessings, and as one which would help to obliterate in a 
feeling of thankfulness even the bitter memories of Lystra. 3 But we who, 
from scattered allusions, can see that it was here and now that St. Paul first 
met with the gentlest and dearest of all his converts, may dwell with pleasure 
on the thought that Timotheus stood weeping in that group of disciples who 

1 Commenting on the treachery of Pandarus, in II. iv. 88 — 92, the Scholiast quotes 
the testimony of Aristotle to the untrustworthy character of the Lycaonians ; and see 
Cic. Epp. ad Att. v. 21, &c, who speaks of the natives of these regions with great 
contempt. 

3 This can hardly be regarded as in any way doubtful if we compare 1 Tim. i. 2, 18 
wad 2 Tim. ii. 1 with Acts xvi 1* 

a 2 Tim. iii. 11. 



218 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

surrounded the bleeding missionary, whose hearts glowed with amazement 
and thankfulness when they saw him recover, who perhaps helped to convey 
him secretly to his mother's house, and there, it may he, not only bound his 
wounds, but also read to him in the dark and suffering hours some of the 
precious words of those Scriptures in which from a child he had been trained. 

But after so severe a warning it was scarcely safe to linger even for a 
single day in a town where they had suffered such brutal violence. Even if 
the passion of the mob had exhausted itself, the malignity of the Jews was 
not so likely to be appeased. Once more the only safety seemed to be in 
flight; once more they took refuge in another province. From Lystra in 
Lycaonia they started, under the grey shades of morning, while the city was 
yet asleep, for the town of Derbe, 1 which was twenty miles distant, in the 
district of Isaurica. It is grievous to think of one who had been so cruelly 
treated forced to make his way for twenty miles with his life in his hand, and 
still all battered and bleeding from the horrible attack of the day before. 
But if the dark and rocky summit of Kara Dagh, the white distant snows of 
Mount -ZEgaeus, 2 and the silver expanse of the White Lake had little power 
to delight his wearied eyes, or calm his agitated spirit, we may be sure that 
He was with him whom once he had persecuted, but for whose sake he was 
now ready to suffer all ; and that from hour to hour, as he toiled feebly and 
wearily along from the cruel and fickle city, " God's consolations increased 
upon his soul with the gentleness of a sea that caresses the shore it covers." 

At Derbe they were suffered to rest unmolested. It may be that the 
Jews were ignorant that Paul was yet alive. That secret, pregnant with 
danger to the safety of the Apostle, would be profoundly kept by the little 
band of Lystrenian disciples. At any rate, to Derbe the Jews did not follow 
him with their interminable hate. The name of Derbe is omitted from the 
mention of places where he reminds Timothy that he had suffered afflictions 
and persecutions. His work seems to have been happy and successful, 
crowned with the conversion of those disciples whom he ever regarded as 
" his hope and joy and crown of rejoicing." Here, too, he gained one more 
friend in Gaius of Derbe, who afterwards accompanied him on his last visit to 
Jerusalem. 3 

And now that they were so near to Cybistra (the modern Eregli), through 

1 It appears from the evidence of coins compared with Dio Cass. lix. 8, that both 
Derbe and Lystra were under Antiochus IV. of Commagene (Eckhel, iii. 255 ; Lewin, 
Fasti Sacrif p. 250). If the inference be correct they could not, even in a political sense, 
be called " Churches of Galatia." 

2 The site of Derbe is still doubtful. Strabo (xii. 6) calls it a fypovpiov Io-avptas ko! \iix-qv, 
where it has long been seen that the true reading must be Atjavrj, and if so the lake must 
he Ak Ghieul, or the "White Lake." Near this place Hamilton found a place called 
Divle, which would be an easy metath sis for the name AeAjSeta, by which the town was 
sometimes called ; but another site much more to the north, where he found the ruins of 
an Acropolis, seems more likely. This, which is the site marked in Kiepert's map, 
answers the requirements of Strabo, xii. 6, since it is on the confines of Isaurica and 
Cappadocia, on a lake, and not far from Laranda (KaraWan). See Lewin, i. 151. 

3 Acts xx. 4. The Gaius of xix. 29 was a Macedonian, and of Rom. xvi. 23 and 1 C<« 
I. 14 a Corinthian. 



THE CLOSE OP THE JOURNEY. 219 

which a few stages would have brought them to the Oilician gates, and so 
through Tarsus to Antioch, it might have been assumed that this would have 
been the routo of their return. Why did they not take it ? There may be 
truth in the ingenious suggestion of Mr. Lewiu. 1 " that the road — as is some- 
times still the case — had been rendered impassable by the waters of Ak Ghieul, 
swollen by the melting of the winter snows, aud that the way through the 
mountains was too uncertain and insecure." 2 But they may have had no 
other reason than their sense of what was needed by the infant Churches 
which they had founded. Accordingly they went back, over the wild and 
dusty plain, the twenty miles from Derbe to Lystra, the forty miles from 
Lystra to Iconium, the sixty miles from Iconium to Antioch. It may well 
be supposed that it needed no slight heroism to face once more the dangers 
that might befall them. But they had learnt the meaning of their Lord's 
saying, " He who is near Me is near the fire." Precautions of secrecy they 
doubtless took, and cheerfully faced the degrading necessity of guarded 
movements, and of entering cities, perhaps in disguise, perhaps only at late 
nightfall and early dawn. The Christians had early to learn those secret 
trysts and midnight gatherings and private watchwords by which alone they 
could elude the fury of their enemies. But the Apostles accomplished their 
purpose. They made their way back in safety, everywhere confirming the 
disciples, exhorting them to constancy, preparing them for the certainty and 
convincing them of the blessing of the tribulations through which we must 
enter the kingdom of God. 3 And as some organisation was necessary to 
secure the guidance and unity of these little bodies of converts, they held 
solemn meetings, at which, with prayer and fasting, they appointed elders, 4 
before they bestowed on them a last blessing and farewell. In this manner 
they passed through Lycaonia, Iconium, and Pisidia, and so into Pamphylia ; 
and since on their first journey they had been unable to preach in Perga, they 
did so now. Possibly they found no ship ready to sail down the Cestrus to 
their destination. They therefore made their way sixteen miles overland to 
the flourishing seaport of Attaleia, at the mouth of the Katarrhaktes, which at 
that time found its way to the sea over a range of cliffs in floods of foaming 
waterfall ; and from thence — for they never seem to have lingered among the 
fleeting and mongrel populations of these seaport towns — they took ship to 
Seleucia, saw once more the steep cone of Mount Casius, climbed the slopes of 
Coryphaeus, and made their way unier the pleasant shade of ilex, and myrtle, 
and arbutus, on the banks of the Orontes, until once more they crossed the 
well-known bridge, and saw the grim head of Charon staring over the street 
Singon, in which neighbourhood the little Christian community were prepared 
to welcome them with keen interest and unbounded love. 

1 Referring to Hamilton {Researches, ii. 313), who found the road from Eregli im- 
passable from this cause. 

2 Strabo, xn. vi. 2—5 ; Tac. Ann. iii. 48 ; xii. 55 ; Cic. ad Att. v. 20, 5, &c. 

3 Acts xiv. 22. The ^*£s may imply a general Christian sentiment. It cannot in this 
oonnexion be relied on as showing the presence of St. Luke. 

4 Acts xiv. 23, xetporo^owes is perfectly general, as in 2 Cor. Tin. 19. 



220 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

So ended the first mission journey of the Apostle Paul — the first flight aa 
it were of the eagle, which was soon to soar with yet bolder wing, in yet wider 
circles, among yet more raging storms. We have followed him by the brief 
notices of St. Luke, but we have no means of deciding either the exact date 
of the journey, or its exact duration. It is only when the crises in the history 
of the early Church synchronise with events of secular history, that we can 
ever with certainty ascertain the date to which they should be assigned. 1 
"We have seen that Paul and Barnabas visited Jerusalem about the time of 
Herod Agrippa's death, and this took place in April A.D. 44. After this 
they returned to Antioch, and the next thing we are told about them is their 
obedience to the spiritual intimation which marked them out as Evangelists to 
the heathen. It is reasonable to believe, therefore, that they spent about a 
year at Antioch, since they could not easily find vessels to convey them from 
place to place except in the months during which the sea was regarded as 
open. Now navigation with the ancients began with the rising of the 
Pleiades, that is, in the month of March; and we may assume with fair 
probability that March, A.D. 45, is the date at which they began their 
evangelising labours. Beyond this all must be conjecture. They do not seem 
to have spent more than a month or two in Cyprus; 2 at Antioch in Pisidia 
their stay was certainly brief. At Iconium they remained " a considerable 
tmie ; " but at Lystra again, and at Derbe, and on their return tour, and at 
Perga and Attaleia, the narrative implies no long residence. Taking into 
account the time consumed in travelling, we are hardly at liberty to suppose 
that the first circuit occupied much more than a year, and they may have 
returned to the Syrian Antioch in the late spring of A.D. 46. 3 

1 See Chronological Excursus, infra, . 

2 Acts xiv. 3, Uavw xpovov. This may mean anything, from a month or two, up to a 
year or more. It is a phrase of frequent occurrence in St. Luke (see Acts viii. 11 ; xxvii. 
9 ; Luke viii. 27 ; xx. 9). 

3 That Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Derbe, and Lystra were not the churches of 
Galatia, as has been suggested by BiJttger {Beitrage, i. 28, sq.), Renan, Hausrath, and 
others, is surely demonstrable. Galatia had two meanings — the first ethnographical, the 
second political. The ethnographic use was the popular and the all but universal one. 
It meant that small central district of Asia Minor, about 200 miles in length, which was 
occupied by the three Gallic tribes — the Trocmi, the Tolistobogii, the Tectosages — with 
the three capitals, Tavium, Pessinus, and Ancyra. Politically it meant a "department," 
an "administrative group," a mere agglomeration of districts thrown into loose cohesion 
by political accidents. In this political meaning the Roman province of Galatia was 
based on the kingdom of Amyntas (Dio Cass. liii. 26), a wealthy grazier and freebooter, 
who had received from Mark Antony the kingdom of Pisidia, and by subsequent additions 
had become possessed of Galatia Proper, Lycaonia, parts of Pamphylia, and Cilicia 
Aspera. On his death various changes occurred, but when Paul and Barnabas were on 
their first journey Pamphylia was under a propraetor ; Iconium was a separate tetrarchy ; 
Lystra and Derbe belonged to Antiochus IV. of Commagene. Galatia, Pisidia north of 
the Faroreia, and the greater part of Lycaonia formed the Roman province of Galatia. 
But even if we grant that St. Paul and St. Luke might have used the word Galatia in 
its artificial sense, even then Antioch in Pisidia appears to be the only town mentioned 
in this circuit which is actually in the Roman province. This alone seems sufficient to 
disprove the hypothesis that in the first journey we have a narrative of the founding of 
the Galatian Church. Further, ;ia far as St. Luke is concerned, it would be a confused 
method, unlike his careful accuracy, to use the words Pisidia, Lycaonia, Pamphylia, and 
later in his narrative Mysia, and other districts in their geographical sense, and then 



THE CLOSE OF THE JOURXET. 221 

But brief as was the period occupied, the consequences were immense. 
For though Paul returned from this journey a shattered man — though twenty 
years afterwards, through a vista of severe afflictions, he still looks hack, as 
though they had happened but yesterday, to the '"'persecutions, afflictions, 
which came upon him at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra ; what persecutions 
he endured, and yet from all the Lord delivered him'' 1 — though the journey - 
ings and violence, and incessant menace to life, which has tried even men 
of such iron nerves as Oliver Cromwell, had rendered him more liable than 
ever to fits of acute suffering and intense depression, 2 yet, in spite of all, he 
returned with the mission-hunger in his heart; with the determination 
more strongly formed than ever to preach the word, and be instant in season 
and out of season ; with the fixed conviction that the work and destiny in life 
to which God had specially called him was to be the Apostle of the heathen. 3 

That conviction had been brought unalterably home to his soul by the 
experience of every town at which they had preached. Up to a certain point, 
and that point not very far within the threshold of his subject, the Jews were 
willing to give him a hearing; but when they began to perceive that the 
Gospel was universal — that it preached a God to whom a son of Abraham 
was no whit dearer than any one in any nation who feared Him and loved 
righteousness— that it gave, in fact, to the title of "son of Abraham" a 
significance so purely metaphorical as to ignore all special privilege of blood— 
their anger burnt like flame. It was the scorn and indignation of the elder 
brother against the returning prodigal, and his refusal to enjoy privileges 
which henceforth he must share with others. 4 The deep-seated pride of the 

suddenly, without any notice, to use Galatia in Acts xvi. in its political sense, especially 
as this political sense was shifting and meaningless. It can hardly be supposed that 
since he must hundreds of times have heard St. Paul mention the churches of Galatia, 
he should, if these were the churches of Galatia, never drop a hint of the fact, and, 
ignoring the Eonian province altogether, talk of Antioch "of Pisidia,'' and Lystra and 
Derbe, "cities of Lycaonia." I should be quite content to rest an absolute rejection of 
the hypothesis on these considerations, as well as on the confusion which it introduces 
into the chronology of St. Paul's life. The few arguments advanced in f avour of this view 
— e.g., the allusion to Barnabas in Galatians ii. 1 — are wholly inadequate to support it 
against the mariy counter improbabilities. Indeed, almost the only serious consideration 
urged in its favour — namely, the very cursory mention in Acts xvi. 6 of what we learn 
from the Epistle was the founding of a most important body of churches — is nullified by 
the certainty which meets us at every step that the Acts does not furnish us with a 
complete biography. In other instances also — as in the case of the churches in Syria 
and Cilicia — he leaves us in doubt about the time and manner of their first evangeli- 
sation. The other form of this theory, which sees the founding of the Galatian churches 
in the words K al rqv irepixwpov (Acts xiv. 6), escapes some of these objections, but offers 
far greater difficulties than the common belief which sees the evangelisation of Galatia 
in the cursory allusion of Acts xvi. 6. 

i 2 Tim. iii. 11. 2 q^ i io ; vi. 17. 

3 1 Cor. ix. 21 ; Gal. v. 11 ; Eom. xv. 16 ; Eph. iii. 6, &c. 

4 The Eabbis who spoke in truer and more liberal tones were rare. "We find, indeed, 
in Berachoth, f. 34, 2, a remarkable explanation of the verse " Peace, peace to him that 
is far off, and to him that is near," which amounts to an admission that penitents and 
prodigals are dearer to God (as being here addressed first) than Pharisees and elder 
brothers ; but it is the penitents of Israel who are contemplated, just as some of the 
Fathers held out hopes to Catholics and Christians (merely on the ground of that 
privilege) which they denied to others. (Jer. in Isa. lxvi. 16, m Eph. iv. 12, &c.) 



222 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Jews rose in arms. Who were these obscure innovators who dared to run 
counter to the cherished hopes and traditional glories of well-nigh twenty 
centuries ? Who were these daring heretics, who, in the name of a faith 
which all the Rabbis had rejected, were thus proclaiming fco the Gentiles the 
abandonment of all exclusive claim to every promise and every privilege which 
generations of their fathers had held most dear ? 

But this was not all. To abandon privileges was unpatriotic enough; but 
what true Jew, what observer of the Halachah, could estimate the atrocity of 
apostatising from principles? Had not Jews done enough, by freely ad- 
mitting into their synagogues the Proselytes of the Gate ? Did they not 
even offer to regard as a son of Israel every Gentile who would accept the 
covenant rite of circumcision, and promise full allegiance to the Written and 
Oral Law ? But the new teachers, especially Paul, seemed to use language 
which, pressed to its logical conclusion, could only be interpreted as an 
utterly slighting estimate of the old traditions, nay, even of the sacred rite of 
circumcision. It is true, perhaps, that they had never openly recommended 
the suppression of this rite ; but it was clear that it occupied a subordinate 
place in their minds, and that they were disinclined to make between their 
Jewish and Gentile converts the immensity of difference which separated a 
Proselyte of Righteousness from a Proselyte of the Gate. 

It is very possible that it was only the events of this journey which finally 
matured the views of St. Paul on this important subject. The ordinary laws 
of nature had not been reversed in his case, and as he grew in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, so his own Epistles, 1 though each has 
its own divine purpose, undoubtedly display the kind of difference in his way 
of developing the truth which we should ordinarily attribute to growth of 
luind. And it is observable that St. Paul, when taunted by his opponents 
with having once been a preacher of circumcision, does not meet the taunt by 
a denial, but merely by saying that at any rate his persecutions are a sign that 
now that time is over. In fact, he simply thrusts aside the allusion to the past 
by language which should render impossible any doubts as to his sentiments in 
the present. In the same way, in an earlier part of his Epistle, 2 he anticipates 
the charge of being a time-server — a charge which he knew to be false in 
spirit, while yet the malignity of slander might find some justification of it in 
his broad indifference to trifles — not by any attempt to explain his former line 
of action, but by an outburst of strong denunciation which none could mistake 
for men-pleasing or over-persuasiveness. Indeed, in the second chapter of 
the Galatians, St. Paul seems distinctly to imply two things. The one is that 
it was the treacherous espionage of false brethren that first made him regard 
the question as one of capital importance; the other that his views on 
the subject were at that time so far from being final, that it was with a 
certain amount of misgiving as to the practical decision that he went up to the 

1 2 Cor. v. 16 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 9 — 12. Bengel says that when the Epistles axe arranged 
chronologically, " incrementum apostuli spirituale cognoscitur " (p. 583). 
8 Gal. i. 10. 



THE CLOSE OF THE JOUBHBT. 223 

consultation at Jerusalem. It was the result of this interview — the discovery 
that James and Kephas had nothing to contribute to any further solution of 
the subject — which first made him determined to resist to the utmost the 
imposition of the yoke on Gentiles, and to follow the line which he had 
generally taken. But he had learnt from this journey that nothing but the 
wisdom of God annihilating human foolishness, nothing but the gracious 
Spirit of God breaking the iron sinew in the neck of carnal obstinacy, could 
lead the Jews to accept the truths he preached. Paul saw that the husband- 
men in charge of the vineyard would never be brought to confess that they 
had slain the Heir as they had slain well-nigh all who went before Him. 
Though He had come first to His own possessions.. His own people refused to 
Him. 1 Israel after the flesh would not condescend from their haughty 
self-satisfaction to accept the free gift of eternal life. 

And, therefore, he was now more than ever convinced that his work would 
lie mainly among the Gentiles. It may be that the fury and contempt of the 
Jews kindled in him too dangerously for the natural man — kindled in him in 
spite of all tender yearnings and relentings — too strong an indignation, too 
fierv a resentment. It may be that he felt how much more adapted others 
were than himself to deal with these ; others whose affinities with them were 
stronger, whose insight into the inevitable future was less clear. The Gentiles 
were evidently prepared to receive the Gospel. For these other sheep of God 
evidently the fulness of time had come. To those among them who were 
disposed for eternal life the doctrine of a free salvation through the Son of God 
was infinitely acceptable. Not a few of them had found in the Jewish 
teaching at least an approach to case.- But the acceptance of Judaism could 
only be accomplished at the cose of a heavy sacrifice. Even to become a 
'"' Proselyte of the Gate '' subjected a man to much that was distasteful ; but 
.me a Proselyte of the Gate was nothing. It was represented by all the 
sterner bigots of Judaism as a step so insignificant as to be nearly worthless- 
And yet how could any man stoop to that which could alone make him 
a Proselyte of Righteousness, and by elevating him to this rank, place on him 
a load of observances which were dead both in the spirit and in the letter, 
and which yet would most effectually make his life a burden, and separate 
him— not morally, but externally — from all which he had loved and valued 
most r 3 The sacrifices which an African convert has to mi ke by abandoning 
polygamy — which a Brahmin has to make by sacrificing caste — are but a small 
measure of what a Gentile had to suffer if he made himself a Jew. How 

1 John. L 11, ets to. i&ia . . . oi l&ot. 

2 Further than the outermost pale of Judaism they could not approach. Keligious 
thoughtfulness in a Gentile was a crime, "A Gentile who studies the Law (beyond the 
seven Xoachian precepts j is guilty of death;'* for it is said ;Deut. xxsiii. 4) "Moses 
commanded us a Law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob y' but not of 
Gentiles (and, therefore, Rashi adds U :s robbery for a Gentile to study the Law). 

So : 39, "LJ This is embodied by Maimonides, Dig. Hi'.choth Jfenadbm, x. 9. 

""A Gentile who offers to submit to all the words of the Law except one is not 
received."" Eabbi Jose Ben Eabbi Jehudah said, "Even if he rejects one oi the 
Halachoth of the Scribes ,: [BencharCth* £ 30 2 L 



224 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUIi. 

eagerly then would such an inquirer embrace a faith which, while it offered 
him a purer morality, and a richer hope for the future, and a greater strength 
for the present, and a more absolute remission for the past, offered him these 
priceless boons unaccompanied by the degradation of circumcision and the 
hourly worry of distinctions between meats ! Stoicism might confront him 
with the barren inefficiency of " the categorical imperative ; " the Gospel 
offered him, as a force which needed no supplement, the Spirit of the living 
Christ. Tes, St. Paul felt that the Gentiles could not refuse the proffered 
salvation. He himself might only live to see the green blade, or at best to 
gather a few weak ears, but hereafter he was confident that the full harvest 
would be reaped. Henceforth he knew himself to be essentially the Apostle 
of the Gentiles, and to that high calling he was glad to sacrifice his life. 



CHAPTER XXn. 

THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 



'EKevOepos &v e/e irdvrcov, iracriv ifxavrbv 'EAOTA02A, %va robs irXtiovas KepSijort*. — 
1 Cor. ix. 19. 

The first step of Paul and Barnabas on their arrival at Antioch had been to 
summon a meeting of the Church, and give a report of their mission and its 
success, dwelling specially on the proof which it afforded that God had now 
opened to the Gentiles " a door of faith." God Himself had, by His direct 
blessing, shown that the dauntless experiment of a mission to the heathen was 
in accordance with His will. 

For some time the two Apostles continued to rest from their toils and 
perils amid the peaceful ministrations of the new metropolis of Christianity. 
But it is not intended that unbroken peace should ever in this world continue 
for long to be the lot of man. The Church soon began to be troubled by a 
controversy which was not only of pressing importance, but which seemed 
likely to endanger the entire destiny of the Christian faith. 

Jewish and Gentile converts were living side by side at Antioch, waiving 
the differences of view and habit which sprang from their previous training, 
and united heart and soul in the bonds of a common love for their common 
Lord. Had they entered into doubtful disputations, 1 they would soon have 
found i hemselves face to face with problems which it was difficult to solve ; 
but they preferred to dwell only on those infinite and spiritual privileges of 
which regarded themselves as equal sharers. 

Into this bright fraternal community came the stealthy sidelong intrusion 
of certain personages from Judaea, 2 who, for a time, profoundly disturbed the 
peace of the Church. Pharisees scarcely emancipated from their Pharisaism 

1 Rom. xiv. 1, /it} eis SiaKpurcis SiaXoy tafxiop. 

2 Gal. ii 4, irapet<rq\Bov ', cf. Jude 4, napetaeSvaai', "sneaked in.* 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 225 

— Jews still in bondage to their narrowest preconceptions — brethren to whom 
the sacred name of brethren could barely be conceded 1 — they insinuated 
themselves into the Church in the petty spirit of jealousy and espionage, 2 not 
with any high aims, but with the object of betraying the citadel of liberty, 
and reducing the free Christians of Antioch to their own bondage. St. Luke, 
true to his conciliatory purpose, merely speaks of them as "certain from 
Judaea;" but St. Paul, in the heat of indignant controversy, and writing 
under a more intense impression of their mischievous influence, vehemently 
calls them "the false brethren secretly introduced." 3 But though, through- 
out their allusions to this most memorable episode in the history of early 
Christianity, the Apostle and the Evangelist are writing from different points 
of view, they are in complete accordance as regards the main facts. The 
combination of the details which they separately furnish enables us to re- 
produce the most important circumstances of a contest which decided for 
ever the future of the Gentile Church. 4 

These brethren in name, but aliens in heart, came with a hard, plausible, 
ready-made dogma — one of those shibboleths in which formalists delight, and 
which usually involve the death-blow of spiritual religion. It demanded 
obedience to the Law of Moses, especially the immediate acceptance of cir- 
cumcision 6 as its most typical rite; and it denied the possibility of salvation 
on any other terms. It is possible that hitherto St. Paul may have regarded 
circumcision as a rule for Jews, and a charitable concession on the part of 
Gentiles. On these aspects of the question he was waiting for the light of 
God, which came to him in the rapid course of circumstances, as it came to 
the whole world in the fall of Jerusalem. But even among the Jews of the 
day, the more sensible and the more enlightened had seen that for a pious 
Gentile a mere external mutilation could not possibly be essential. Ananias, 
who had the honour of converting the royal family of Adiabene, had distinctly 
advised Izates that it was not desirable to risk his crown by external com- 
pliance to a needless rite. 6 It was only when men like Eleazar — fierce and 

1 This is expressly stated in the margin of the later Syriac version, and in two cursive 
MSS. 8, 137. Epiphanius says that "their leaders were Cerinthus, the subsequent 
Gnostic opponent of St. John, and 'Ebion'" {Haer. 28, 30). But Ebion is a mere 
"mythical eponymus" (Mansel, Gnostic Her. 125 ; Tert. De praescr. Haeret. 33). Ebionite 
is fvn epithst (Epiphan. Haer. xxx.), and means "poor" (Orig. c. Gels. ii. 1; Neander, 
Ch. Hist. ii. 14). 

2 Gal. ii. 4, Karao-KOTnjcrai. I suppose that the title r\T\iyvQ {moomhah)— one authorised 
by a diploma to give decisions — would have been technically claimed by these visitors. 

3 Gal. ii. 4, tov? Trapeio-aKTous ^evSaSe'^ovs, "falsos et superinducticios f ratres " (Tert. adv. 
Marc. v. 3). The strongly indignant meaning of napeia-dyeiv may be seen in 2 Pet. ii. 1, 
"false teachers who shall privily bring in (7rapeio-a|ov<nv) heresies of perdition." 

4 The addition in D and the margin of the Syriac, nal tw I0ei Mwvo-eco? 7repi7rd-n)Te, and in 
tne Constitutiones Apostolicae, koX tow efleo-iv ots Siera^aTo, though not genuine, yet show 
what was felt to be implied. 

5 Acts xv. 1, TrepiTjarj^Te, "be once circumcised ; " X, A, B, C, D. Even Josephus (see 
next note) seems to think that the horrible death of Apion was a punishment in kind for 
his ridicule of circumcision {c. Ap. ii. 14). From this anecdote we can measure the courage 
of St. Paul, and the intense hatred which his views excited. 

6 Josephus, as a liberal Pharisee, held the same view [Antt. xx. 2; Vit. 23, 31). The 
Talmud mentions a certain Akiles (whom some identify with Aquila, the Greek translator 

P 



226 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

narrow literalists of the school of Shaininai — intervened, that Proselytes of 
the Gate were taught that their faith and their holiness were valueless unless 
they assumed the badge of Proselytes of Righteousness. 1 Izates and Mono- 
bazus, as was sure to be the case with timid and superstitious natures, had 
risked all to meet the views of these uncompromising zealots, just as from 
baser motives Aziz, King of Emesa, and Polemo of Cilicia had yielded in 
order to win the hands of the wealthy and beautiful princesses of the house of 
Herod. 2 But it was quite certain that such an acceptance of Mosaism would 
continue to be, as it always had been, extremely exceptional ; and Paul saw 
that if Christianity was to be degraded into the mere superimposition of a 
belief in Christ as the Jewish Messiah upon the self-satisfaction of Sham- 
maite fanaticism, 3 or even on the mere menace of the Law, it was not possible, 
it was not even desirable, that it should continue to exist. The force of habit 
might, in one who had been born a Jew, freshen with the new wine of the 
Gospel the old ceremonialism which had run to the lees of Rabbinic tradition. 
In Jerusalem a Christian might not be sensible of the loss he suffered by 
chaining his new life to the corpse of meaningless halachoth ; but in Antioch, 
at any rate, and still more in the new missionfields of Asia, such bondage 
could never be allowed. 

We can imagine the indignant grief with which St. Paul watched this 
continuous, this systematic 4 attempt to undo all that had been done, and to 
render impossible all further progress. Was the living and life-giving spirit 
to be thus sacrificed to the dead letter ? Were these new Pharisees to com- 
pass sea and land to make one proselyte, only that they might add the pride 
of the Jew to the vice of the Gentile, and make hiin ten times more narrow 
than themselves ? Was the superstitious adoration of dead ordinances to 
dominate over the heaven-sent liberty of the children of God ? If Moses 
had, under Divine guidance, imposed upon a nation of sensual and stiff- 
necked slaves not only a moral law of which Christ Hhnself had indefinitely 
deepened the obligation, but also the crushing yoke of " statutes which were 

of the Bible) as having submitted to circumcision, and also a Roman senator {Abhdda Zara, 
10 ; Hamburger, s.v. "Beschneidung"). The Roman Metilius saved his life by accepting 
circumcision (Jos. B. J. ii. 17, § 10). Antoninus forbade it in the case of Gentile proselytes 
(Gieseler, L, §38). 

1 "So great is circumcision," said Rabbi [Jehuda Hakkadosh], "that but for it the 
Holy One, blessed be He, would not have created the world; for it is said (Jer. xxxiii. 25), 
'But for My covenant [i.e., circumcision] I would not have made day and night, and the 
ordinance of heaven and earth'" {Nedarim, f. 31, 2). "Abraham was not called 
'perfect' till he was circumcised. It is as great as all the other commandments " (Exod. 
xxxiv. 27), {Id. f. 32, 1). It was one of the laws in the case of which the Jews preferred 
death to disobedience (Shabbath, f. 130, 1). The "good king" in Pseudo-Baruch (§§ 61, 
66) is one who does not allow the existence of an uncircumcised person on the earth. 

2 Izates and Monobazus would have been called " Hon -proselytes," and Aziz and 
Polemo "Shechemite prosely tes. " 

3 " How many laws have you ? " asked a Gentile of Shammai. "Two," said Shammai, 
" the written and the oral." " I believe the former," said the Gentile, " not the latter ; 
accept me as a proselyte on condition of learning the written law only." Shammai 
ejected him with a curse {Shabbath, f. 31, 1). 

4 ActB XV. 1 iSCSaVKW, 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 227 

not good, and ordinances whereby they could not live," 1 was this yoke — now 
that it had been abolished, now that it had become partly impossible and mostly 
meaningless — to be disastrously imposed on necks for which its only effect 
woul i be to madden or to gall ? 2 "Was a Titus, young, and manly, and free, 
and pure, with the love of Christ burning like a fire on the altar of his soul, 
to be held at arm's length by some unregenerate Pharisee, who while he wore 
broad tephillin, and tsitsith with exactly the right number of threads and 
knots, was yet an utter stranger to the love of Christ, and ignorant as a child 
of His free salvation ? Were Christians, who were all brethren, all a chosen 
generation and a royal priesthood, to be treated by Jews, who had no merit 
beyond the very dubious merit of being Jews, as though they were unclean 
creatures with whom it was not even fit to eat ? The Jews freely indulged in 
language of contemptuous superiority towards the proselytes, but was such 
language to be for one moment tolerated in the brotherhood of Christ ? 3 

It is easy to understand in what a flame of fire Paul must often have stood 
up to urge these questions during the passionate debates which immediately 
arose. 4 It may be imagined with what eager interest the Gentile proselytes 
would await the result of a controversy which was to decide whether it was 
enough that they should bring forth the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — or whether 
they must also stick up mezuzoth on their houses, and submit to a concision, 
and abstain from the free purchases of the market, and not touch perfectly 
harmless kinds of food, and petrify one day out of every seven with a rigidity 
of small and conventionalised oh ervances. To us it may seem amazing that 
the utterances of the prophets were not sufficient to show that the essence of 
religion is faith, not outward service ; and that so far from requiring petty 
accuracies of posture, and dress, and food, what the Lord requires of us is that 
we should do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our G-od. 5 But 
the Judaisers had tradition, authority, and the Pentateuch on their side, and 
the paralysis of custom rendered many Jewish converts incapable of resisting 
conclusions which yet they felt to be false. So far as they were true Christians 
at all, they could not but feel that the end of the commandment was love out 
of a good heart and a pure conscience, and faith unfeigned ; but when their 
opponents flourished in their faces the Thorah-rolls, and asked them whether 
they dared to despise the immemorial sanctities of Sinai, or diminish the 
obligation of laws uttered by Moses amid its burning glow, the ordinary Jew 

i Ezek. xx. 25. 

2 " Circumcidere genitalia instituere ut diversitate noscantur," says Tacitus {H. V. 5), 
and adds it is an aggravation, " Transgressi in morem eorum idem usurpant." 

3 Here is a specimen of the language of Jewish Rabbis towards proselytes : "Prose 
lytes and those who sport with children [the meaning is dubious] delay the coming of the 
Messiah. As for proselytes, it is explained by Eabh Chelbo's remark, that they are as 
injurious to Israel as a scab (since in Isa. xiv. 1 it is said, ' strangers' icill be joined to 
them (inEDji), and nnCD means ' a scab ') ; because, says Rashi, they are not up to tht 
precepts, and cause calamities to Israel " {Niddah, f. 13, 2). 

4 Acts xv. 2. 

* Mic. vi. 8 ; Deut. x. 12 ; Hos. vL 6 ; 1 Sam. xv. 22. 
p 2 



228 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

and the ordinary Gentile were perplexed. On these points the words of Jesus 
had been but a beam in the darkness, certain indeed to grow, but as yet only 
shining amid deep midnight. They did not yet understand that Christ's fulfil- 
ment of the Law was its abrogation, and that to maintain the type in the 
presence of the antitype was to hold up superfluous candles to the sun. From 
this imminent peril of absorption in exclusive ritual one man saved the Church, 
and that man was Paul. With all the force of his argument, with all the 
weight of his authority, he affirmed and insisted that the Gentile converts 
should remain in the free conditions under which they had first accepted the 
faith of Christ. 1 

When there appeared likely to be no end to the dispute, 2 it became 
necessary to refer it to the decision of the Church at Jerusalem, and especially 
of those Apostles who had lived with the living Jesus. It is far from im- 
probable that this plan was urged — nay, demanded — by the Judaisers them- 
selves, 3 who must have been well aware that the majority of that Church 
looked with alarm and suspicion on what they regarded as anti-Judaic innova- 
tions. There may even have been a certain insolence ( which accounts for the 
almost irritable language of St. Paul long afterwards) in their manner of 
parading their immensely superior authority of living witnesses of the life of 
Jesus like James and Kephas. They doubtless represented the deputation to 
Jerusalem as a necessary act of submission, a going up of Paul and Barnabas 
to be judged by the Jerusalem synod. 4 At this period Paul would not openly 
repudiate the paraded superiority of the Twelve Apostles. When he says to 
the Galatians that " he consulted them about the Gospel he was preaching, lest 
he might be, or had been, running to no purpose," he shows that at this period 
he had not arrived at the quite unshaken conviction, which made him subse- 
quently say that " whether he or an angel from heaven preached any other 
gospel, let him be anathema." 6 In point of fact it was at this interview that 

1 Comp. MS. D. e\eyev yap 6 IIa{)A.os fxeveiv ovtws Ka.Qm eirCarevtrav &u<rxypi£6ii.evos. 

2 The expressions of Acts XV. 2, yei/Oju-eVr)? o$v (rra<rew? kou o-v£fjnj<7ea>s ovk oAcyjjs, k.t.A., 

are very strong. Si-aon? is "insurrection" (Mark xv. 7; Luke xxiii. 19). For ot/^ttjo-cs 
see Acts vi. 9 ; xxviii. 29 ; Mark ix. 14. 

3 As is again asserted in D, Trap-qyyeiXav aiirois tu ITavAto Kal t<3 Bapv&pq Kai tmtiv aAAotf 
avajSaiveiv npbs tovs a7ro<XT6A.ous, /c.t.A., O7rco5 KpiQuHTiv ew' aurois irepl tov Cy\Tfip.a.TOS tovtov. 

4 See the previous extract from D. 

5 I have here assumed without hesitation that the visit to Jerusalem of Gal. ii. 1 — 10, 
though there mentioned as though it were a second visit, was identical with that of Acts 
xv., and therefore was in reality his third visit. There are in the Acts of the Apostles 
five visits of St. Paul to Jerusalem — viz., (1) after his conversion (ix. 26) ; (2) with the 
Antiochene contribution (xi. 30) ; (3) to consult the Apostles about the necessity of 
circumcision for the Gentiles (xv. 2) ; (4) after his second missionary journey (xviii. 22) ; 
(5) before his imprisonment at Csesarea (xxi.). Now this visit of Gal. ii. could not 
possibly have been the first ; nor, as is proved by Gal. ii. 7, as well as by the whole 
chronology of his life, could it have been the second ; nor, as we see from the presence 
of Barnabas (comp. Gal. ii. 1 with Acts xv. 39), could it have been the fourth ; for no 
one can assume that it was without accusing St. Paul of disingenuous suppression when 
he spoke to the Galatians of this sole intercourse which he had had with the Apostles ; 
and that it was not the fifth is quite decisively proved by Gal. ii. 11. By the exhaustive 
method, therefore, we see that the visit dwelt on in Gal. ii. must have be*vn the third. 
It would, indeed, be conceivable that it was some visit not recorded by the author of th« 



THB CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 229 

he learnt that his own insight and authority were fully equal to those of the 
Apostles who were in Christ before him ; that they had nothing to tell him and 
nothing to add to him ; that, on the contrary, there were spheres of work which 
belonged rather to him than to them, and in which they stood to him in the 
position of learners; 1 that Jesus had fulfilled His own promise that it was 
better for His children that He should go away, because His communion with 
them by the gift of His Holy Spirit was closer and more absolute than by His 
actual presence. But even now Paul must have chafed to submit the decision 
of truths which he felt to be true to any human authority. But for one cir- 
cumstance he must have felt like an able Roman Catholic bishop — a Stross- 
meyer or a Dupanloup — who has to await a decision respecting tenets which he 
deems irrefragable, from a Pope in all respects his inferior in ability and in 
enlightenment. That circumstance was the inward voice, the spiritual intima- 
tion which revealed to him that this course was wise and necessary. St. Luke, 
of course, tells the external side of the event, which was that Paul went by 
desire of the Church of Antioch ; but St. Paul himself, omitting this as 
irrelevant to his purpose, or regarding it as an expression of the will of 
Heaven, tells his converts that he went up " by revelation." From Paul also 
we learn the interesting circumstance that among those who accompanied him- 
self and Barnabas was Titus, perhaps a Cretan Gentile whom he had converted 
at Cyprus during his first journey. 2 Paul took him as a Gentile representative 
of his own converts, a living pledge and witness that uncircumcised Greeks? 
seeing that they were equal partakers of the gift of the Holy Ghost, were not 
to be treated as dogs and outcasts. The declared approval of God was not to 
be set aside for the fantastic demands of man, and the supercilious tolerance 
or undisguised contempt of Jews for proselytes was at once a crime and an 
ignorance when displayed towards a brother in the faith. 

Acts if there were any reason whatever for such a supposition ; but when we consider 
how impossible it was that such a visit should have occurred without the knowledge of 
St. Luke, and how eminently the facts of it accorded with the views which he wished to 
further, and how difficult it is to find any other occasion on which such a visit would 
have been natural, we have no valid reason for adopting such an hypothesis. Nor, 
indeed, can anything be much clearer than the identity of circumstances in the visits 
thus described. In the two narratives the same people go up at the same time, from 
the same place, for the same object, in consequence of the same interference by the same 
agitators, and with the same results. Against the absolute certainty of the conclusion 
that the visits described were one and the same there is nothing whatever to set but 
trivial differences of detail, every one of which is accounted for in the text. As for 
St. Paul's non-allusion to the so-called "decree," it is sufficiently explained by its local, 
partial, temporary — and, so far as principles were concerned, indecisive — character ; by 
the fact that the Galatians were not asking for concessions, but seeking bondage ; and by 
the Apostle's determination not to settle such questions by subordinating his Apostolic 
independence to any authority which could be described as either " of man or by man," 
by anything, in short, except the principles revealed by the Spirit of God Himself. 
Prof. Jowett (Gal. i. 253) speaks of the unbroken image of harmony presented by the 
narrative of the Acts contrasted with the tone of Gal. ii. 2-— 6 ; but " an unbroken image 
of harmony " is not very accordant with the noXAr) o-vc^ttjo-i? of Acts xr. 7, which is an 
obvious continuuuion of the orao-is koX ^jttjo-is ovk bkiyq of ver. 2. The extent to which the 
Acts "casts the veil of time over the differes es of the Apostles " seems to me to b« 
often exaggerated. 

i GaL ii. 7-9, s ESwald, GescL vi 456, 



230 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Alike the commencement and the course of their overland journey were 
cheered by open sympathy with their views. From Antioch they were 
honourably escorted on their way; and as they passed through Berytus, 
Tyre, Sidon, and Samaria, narrating to the Churches the conversion of the 
Gentiles, they — like Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms — were en- 
couraged by unanimous expressions of approval and joy. On arriving at 
Jerusalem they were received by the Apostles and elders, and narrated to 
them the story of their preaching and its results, together with the inevit- 
able question to which it had given rise. It was on this occasion appa- 
rently that some of the Christian Pharisees at once got up, and broadly 
insisted on the moral necessity of Mosaism and circumcision, implying, 
therefore, a direct censure of the principles on which Paul and Barnabas 
had conducted their mission. 1 The question thus stated by the opposing 
parties was far too grave to be decided by any immediate vote ; the deli- 
berate judgment of the Church on so momentous a problem could only be 
pronounced at a subsequent meeting. Paul used the interval with his 
usual sagacity and power. Knowing how liable to a thousand varying 
accidents are the decisions arrived at by promiscuous assemblies — fearing 
lest the voice of a mixed gathering might only express the collective in- 
capacity or the collective prejudice — he endeavoured to win over the leaders 
of the Church by a private statement of the Gospel which he preached. 
Those leaders were, he tells us, at this time, James, 2 who is mentioned 
first because of his position as head of the Church at Jerusalem, and 
Peter and John. These he so entirely succeeded in gaining over to his 
cause — he showed to them with such unanswerable force that they could 
not insist on making Gentile Christians into orthodox Jews without in- 
curring the tremendous responsibility of damming up for ever the free 
river of the grace of God — that they resigned to his judgment the mission 
to the Gentiles. Eminent as they were in their own spheres, great as 
was their force of character, marked as was their individuality, they could 
not resist the personal ascendency of Paul. 3 In the presence of one whose 
whole nature evinced the intensity of his inspired conviction, they felt that 
they could not assume the position of superiors or guides. 4 Whatever may 
have been their original prejudices, these noble-hearted men allowed neither 
their private predilections nor any fibre of natural jealousy to deter their 
acknowledgment of their great felloAV-workers. They gave to Paul and 
Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, and acknowledged them as Apostles 
to the Gentiles. One touching request alone they made. The Church of 
Jerusalem had been plunged from the first in abject poverty. It had 
suffered perhaps from the temporary experiment of communism; it had 

1 The napeS^xe-qa-o-v vnb -rfc eKKk-qaia.*; of Acts xv. 4 implies a preliminary meeting 
distinct from the crvi/rjx^rjtrav re of ver. 6. 

2 Not here characterised as " the Lord's brother," because James, the son of Zebedee, 
was dead, and James, the son of Alphseus, was an Apostle of whom nothing is known. 

' bee John xvi. 7. 4 CtaL ii. 7, idowts ; 9, yv6vre%. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 231 

suffered certainly from the humble rank of its first converts, the persecu- 
tions which they had endured, and the chronic famine to which their city 
was liable. Paul and Barnabas were working in wealthy Antioch, and 
were likely to travel among Gentiles, who, if not rich, were amply supplied 
with the means of livelihood. "Would they forget Jerusalem ? Would they 
suffer those to starve who had walked with Jesus by the Lake of Galilee, and 
sat beside His feet when He preached the Sermon on the Mount ? Already 
once they had brought from Antioch the deeply acceptable Ghaluka, 1 which 
in the fiercest moment of famine and persecution had as much relieved the 
brethren as the royal bounties of Helena had sustained the Jews. Surely 
they would not let religious differences prevent them from aiding the hunger- 
bitten Church ? It might be that they had been treated by Jerusalem Chris- 
tians of the Pharisaic party with surreptitious opposition and undisguised 
dislike, but surely this would not weigh with them for a moment. The three 
heads of the afflicted Church begged the missionaries to the luxurious world 
" that they would remember the poor." It was a request in every respect 
agreeable to the tender and sympathetic heart of Paul. 2 Apart from all 
urging, he had already shown spontaneous earnestness 3 in his holy work of 
compassion, and now that it came to him as a sort of request, by way of 
acknowledging the full recognition which was being conceded to him, he was 
only too glad to have such means of showing that, while he would not 
yield an inch of essential truth, he would make any amount of sacrifice in the 
cause of charity. Thenceforth Paul threw himself into the plan of collecting 
alms for the poor saints at Jerusalem with characteristic eagerness. There 
was scarcely a Church or a nation that he visited which he did not press for 
contributions, and the Galatians themselves could recall the systematic plan 
of collection which he had urged upon their notice. 4 In the very hottest 
moment of displeasure against those who at any rate represented themselves 
as emissaries of James, he never once relaxed his kindly efforts to prove to 
the Church, which more than all others suspected and thwarted him, that even 
theological differences, with all their exasperating bitterness, had not dulled 
the generous sensibility of a heart which, by many a daily affliction, had learnt 
to throb with sympathy for the afflicted. 

One part, then, of his mission to Jerusalem was fulfilled when the Lord's 
brother, and he to whom He had assigned "the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven," and he who had leaned his head at the Last Supper upon His breast, 
had yielded to him their friendly acknowledgment. • It is on this that he 
chiefly dwells to the Galatians. In their Churches brawling Judaisers had 
dared to impugn his commission and disparage his teaching, on the asserted 

1 np^n 

2 Gal. ii. 10. 6 koI e<nrov8a<Ta avrb ttovto 7roiTj<rai ; lit., " which also I was eager to do at 
once that very thing." " Quod etiam sollicitus fui hoc ipsum facere." (Vulg.) 

s Acts xi. 29. 

4 1 Cor. xvi. 3; cf. 2 Cor. viii., ix. ; Kom. xv. 27. Even many years after we find 
St. Paul still most heartily fulfilling this part of the mutual compact (Acts xxiv, XI), 
Phrygia alone seems to have contributed nothing. 



232 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

authority of the mother Church and its bishop. It was Paul's object to prove 
to them that his sacred independence had been acknowledged by the very men 
who were now thrust into antagonism with his sentiments. There may be in 
his language a little sense of wrong ; but, on the other hand, no candid reader 
can fail to see that a fair summary of the antagonism to which he alludes is 
this — " Separation, not opposition; antagonism of the followers rather than of 
the leaders , personal antipathy of the Judaisers to St. Paul rather than 3f 
Si Paul to the Twelve." 1 

But St. Luke is dealing with another side of this visit. To him the 
authority of Paul was not a subject of doubt, nor was it seriously questioned 
by those for whom he wrote ; but with the teaching of Paul it was far 
different, and it was Luke's object to show that the main principles involved, 
so far from being dangerous, had received the formal sanction of the older 
Apostles. That there was a severe struggle he does not attempt to conceal, 
but he quotes an authentic document to prove that it ended triumphantly in 
favour of the Apostle of the Gentiles. 

A concrete form was given to this debate by the presence of Titus as one 
of Paul's companions. Around this young man arose, it is evident, a wild 
clamour of controversy. The Judaisers insisted that he should be circumcised. 
So long as he remained uncircumcised they refused to eat with him, or to 
regard him as in any true sense a brother. They may even have been indig- 
nant with Paul for his free companionship with this Gentile, as they had 
previously been with Peter for sharing the hospitality of Cornelius. The 
Agapse were disturbed with these contentions, and with them the celebration 
of the Holy Communion. Alike Titus and Paul must have had a troubled 
time amid this storm of conflicting opinions, urged with the rancorous intensity 
which Jews always display when their religious fanaticism is aroused. Even 
after the lapse of five or six years 2 St. Paul cannot speak of this episode in 
his life without an agitation which affects his language to so extraordinary a 
degree as to render uncertain to us the result, of which doubtless the Galatians 
were aware, but about which we should be glad to have more complete 
certainty. The question is, did Paul, in this particular instance, yield or not ? 
In other words, was Titus circumcised ? In the case of Timothy, Paul 
avowedly took into account his Jewish parentage on the mother's side, and 
therefore circumcised him as a Jew, and not as a Gentile, because otherwise it 
would have been impossible to secure his admission among Jews. Even this 
might be enough to give rise to the charges of inconsistency with which we 
know him to have been assailed. But if he had indeed bowed to the storm in 
the case of Titus — if he, the firmest champion of Christian uncircumcision, the 
foremost preacher of the truth that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision was 
anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love, had still allowed 

1 Jowett, Romans, &c, i. 326. In this essay, and that of Dr. Lightfoot on " St. Paul 
and the Three " (Gal. 276 346), the reader will find the facts fairly appreciated and 
carefully stated. 

2 Th^ date of the "Council" at Jerusalem is about A.D. 51; that of the Epistle to 
Uit Galatians about A.D. 58. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 233 

an adult Gentile convert to submit to a Jewish rite which had no meaning 
except as an acknowledgment that he was bound to keep the Mosaic Law — 
then, indeed, he might be charged with having sacrificed the very point at 
issue. He might of course urge that he had only done it for the moment by way 
of peace, because otherwise the very life of Titus would have been endangered, 
or because his presence in the Holy City might otherwise have caused false 
rumours and terrible riots, 1 as the presence of Trophimus did in later years. 
He might say, " I circumcised Titus only because there was no other chanco of 
getting the question reasonably discussed ;" but if he yielded at all, however 
noble and charitable may have been his motives, he gave to his opponents a 
handle against him which assuredly they did not fail to use. 

Now that he was most vehemently urged to take this step is clear, and 
perhaps the extraordinary convulsiveness of his expressions is only due to the 
memory of all that he must have undergone in that bitter struggle. 2 In hold- 
ing out to the last he had, doubtless, been forced to encounter the pressure of 
uearly the whole body of the Church at Jerusalem, including almost certainly 
all who were living of the twelve Apostles, and their three leaders. Perhaps 
even Barnabas himself might, as afterwards, have lost all firm grasp of truths 
which seemed sufficiently clear when he was working with Paul alone on the 
wild uplands of Lycaonia. Certainly St. Paul's moral courage triumphed over 
the severest test, if he had the firmness and fortitude to hold out against this 
mass of influence. It would have been far bolder than Whitefield standing 
before a conclave of Bishops, or Luther pleading his cause at Rome. As far 
as courage was concerned, it is certain that no fear would ever have induced 
him to give way ; but might he not have yielded ad interim, and as a charitable 
concession, in order to secure a permanent result ? 

Let us consider, in all its roughness, his own language. " Then," he says, 
" fourteen years after, 1 I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking 

1 This element of the decision has been universally overlooked. Gentiles of course 
there were in Jerusalem, but for a Jew deliberately to introduce an uncircumcised 
Gentile as a full partaker of all religious rites in a J udceo- Christian community was a 
terribly dangerous experiment. If all the power and influence of Josephus could hardly 
save from massacre two illustrious and highly -connected Gentiles who had fled to him for 
refuge — although there was no pretence of extending to them any religious privileges — 
because the multitude said that " they ought not to be suffered to live if they would not 
change their religion to the religion of those to whom they fled for safety " (Vit. 31), how 
could Paul answer for the life of Titus ? 

2 This is the view of Dr. Lightfoot (Gal. p. 102), who says, "The counsels of the 
Apostles of the circumcision are the hidden rock on which the grammar of the sentence 
is wrecked ; " and " the sensible undercurrent of feeling, the broken grammar of the sen- 
tence, the obvious tenour of particular phrases, all convey the impression that, though the 
final victory was complete, it was not attained without a struggle, in which St. Paul 
maintained, a', one time almost single-handed, the cause of Gentile freedom." I give my 
reason afterwards for adopting a different conclusion. The sense of a complete victory 
contemplated years afterwards would hardly produce all this agitation. It would have 
been alluded to with the calm modesty of conscious strength. Not so an error of judg- 
ment involving serious consequences though actuated by the best motives. // Titus was 
not circumcised, why does not Paul plainly say so 1 

3 GaL ii. 1— 6. Fourteen years after his first visit. The " about" of the E.V. should 
be omitted. 



234 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

witli me also Titus. 1 Now, I went up in accordance with a revelation, and 1 
referred to them 2 the Gospel which I am preaching' among the Gentiles — 
privately, however, to those of repute, lest perchance I am now running, 3 or 
even had run, to no purpose. 4 But not even Titus, who was whh me, Greek 
though he was, was obliged to be circumcised; but [he was only circumcised?] 
because of the stealthily-introduced false brethren —people who came secretly 
in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order that they 
shall 6 utterly enslave us, [(to whom) not even] 6 for an hour did we yield by 
way of submission — in order that the truth of the Gospel may remain entirely 
with you; 7 from those, however, who are reputed 8 to be something — whatever 
they were 9 makes no matter to me — God accepts no man's face — well, to me 

1 And some others, whom, however, he could hardly be said to " take with him " 
(Acts xv. 2). 

2 di/e0e>rji/ avrois, " communicated " or "referred to them" — not "placed in their 
hands" (cf. Acts xxv. 14). Tertullian says " ad patrocinium Petri, &c." which is too 
strong. 

3 I take rpe X (o as an indie, but it may be the subjunctive, as in 1 Thess. iii. 5, and for 
the metaphor Phil. ii. 16. 

4 Dr. Lightfoot takes this to mean "that my past and present labours might not be 
thwarted by opposition or misunderstanding." So Theophylact, ad loc, Iva. /ouj cn-ao-is 
yeVrjTai *cai 'iva apOrj to (TKavSaKov. The context seems to me to show that it implies a desire 
on St. Paul's part to know whether ant/thing valid could be urged against his own personal 
conviction. And so Tert. adv. Marc. i. 20 ; v. 3 ; iv. 2. The admission of the possibility 
of a misgiving as to the practical issue only adds strength to the subsequent confirma- 
tion. To St. Paul's uncertainty or momentary hesitation I would compare that of St. 
John the Baptist-. (Matt. xi. 3). 

5 Ko/raSouAwo-ouo-i («, A, B, C, D, E). I have literally translated the bold solecism, 
which was not unknown to Hellenistic Greek, and by which it gains in vividness (cf . iv. 17, 

'iva. frkovTe). 

6 In the insertion, omission, or variation of these two words oh ovSe the MSS. and 
quotations become as agitated and uncertain as the style of the writer. If we could 
believe that the word ovSe — "not even" — was spurious it would then, I think, be obvious 
that St. Paul meant to say, "Owing to these false brethren I did, it is true, make a 
temporary concession {nobs iopav), but only witli a view of ultimately securing for you 
a permanent liberty'''' (SiajueiVr) nobs Va?) ; "ostendens," as Tertullian says, propter quid 
fecerit quod nee fecisset nee ostendisset, si illud propter quod fecit non accidisset " (adv. 
Marc. v. 3). But admittedly th- evidence of the manuscripts is in favour of retaining 
the negative, though it is omitted in Irenseus, is absent from many Latin copies, ia 
declared on the doubtful authority of Victorinus to have been absent from the majority 
of Latin and Greek manuscripts, and is asserted by Tertullum to have been fraudulently 
introduced by the heretic Marcion. Surely the uncertainty which attaches to it, joined 
to the fact that even its retention by no means excludes the supposition that Paul, to his 
own great subsequent regret, had given way under protest while the debate was pending, 
are arguments in favour of this having been the cas". If this view be right it would give a 
far deeper significance to such passages as Gal. i. 10 ; iv. 11. In that case his vacillation 
was an error of policy, which we have no more reason to believe was impossible in his 
case than a moral error was in that of St. Peter at Antioch ; but it would have been an 
error of practical judgment, not of unsettled principle ; an error of noble self-abnegation, 
not of timid complaisance. And surely St. Paul would have been the very last of men 
to claim immunity from the possibility of error. "The fulness of divine gifts," says Dr. 
Newman, "did not tend to destroy what is human in him, but to spiritualise and 
perfect it. " 

7 Sia/j-ciVrj. s Sokovvtss, "seem," not "seemed," as in E.V. 

9 Renan and others see in this a covert allusion to the former disbelief of James ; 
this is utterly unlikely, seeing that the reference is also to Peter and John. It means, 
rather, "however great th-ir former privilege, in marness to the living Christ" (cf, 
2 (Jor. vL Hi), indeed, it ia belter to join the wort to the on-oiot, " qualescuiique." 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 235 

those in repute added nothing." Such is a literal translation of his actual 
wordy in this extraordinary sentence ; and he then proceeds to narrate the 
acknowledgment of the Three, that his authority was in no sense disparate 
with theirs ; nay, that in dealing with the Gentiles he was to be regarded as 
specially endowed with Divine guidance. 

But does he mean that, " I never for a moment yielded and circumcised 
Titus, in spite of the enormous pressure which was put upon me " ? or does he 
mean, " I admit — grieved as I am to admit it — that in the case of Titus I did 
yield- Titus was circumcised, but not under compulsion. I yielded, but not 
out of submission. The concession which I made — vast as it was, mistaken as 
it may have been — was not an abandonment of principle, but a stretch of 
charity " ? 

It must be remembered that Paul " cared for ideas, not for forms ;" the 
fact that circumcision was a matter in itself indifferent — the admitted truth 
that men could be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by that 
alone — may have induced him, under strong pressure, 1 to concede that the rite 
should be performed — with the same kind of half -contemptuous indifference to 
the exaggeration of trifles which makes him say to the Galatians in a burst of 
bitter irony, " I wish that, while they are about it, these Judaisers, who make 
so much of circumcision, would go a little farther still and make themselves 
altogether like your priests of Agdistis." 2 When Paul took on him the 
Nazarite vow, when he circumcised Timothy, 3 he did it out of a generous desirb 
to remove all needless causes of offence, and not to let his work be hindered 
by a stiff refusal to give way in things unimportant. "We know that it was his 
avowed principle to become all things to all men, if so be he might win some. 
His soul was too large to stickle about matters of no moment. Can we not 
imagine that in the wild strife of tongues which made Jerusalem hateful so 
long as the uncircumcised Titus was moving among the members of the 
Church, Paul might have got up and said, " I have come here to secure a 
decision about a matter of vast moment. If the presence of Titus looks to 
you like an offensive assertion of foregone conclusions — well, it is only an 
individual instance — and while the question is still undecided, I will have him 
circumcised, and we shall then be able to proceed more calmly to the considera- 
tion of the general question " ? Might he not have regarded this as a case in 
which it was advisable " reculer pour mieux sauter " ? and to his own friends 
who shared his sentiments might he not have said, " "What does it matter in 
this particular instance ? It can mean nothing. Titus himself is generous 
enough to wish it for the sake of peace ; he fully understands that he is merely 
yielding to a violent prejudice. It may be most useful to him in securing 
future admission to Jewish assemblies. To him, to us, it will be regarded as 
' concision,' not ' circumcision ;' an outward observance submitted to from 
voluntary good nature ; not by any means a solemn precedent, or a significant 
rite " ? And would not Titus have also urged the Apostle not to be deterred 

» Acta xv. 10. * GaL v. 12 (in the Greek), 3 Acts xvl 8 



236 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTIi. 

by any consideration for himP Might he not naturally have said, "1 am 
grieved that there should be all this uproar and heart-burning on my account, 
and I am quite willing to allay it by becoming a proselyte of righteousness " ? 
If Titus took this generous line, Paul's reluctance to take advantage of his 
generosity might have been increased, and yet an additional argument would 
have been supplied to his opponents. " Moses," they would have said, 
" commanded circumcision ; we cannot let this Gentile sit at our Agapae without 
it ; he is himself, much to his credit, quite ready to consent to it ; why do you 
persist in troubling our Israel by your refusal to consent ? " 

For whatever may be urged against this view, I cannot imagine why, if 
Paul did not yield, he should use language so ambiguous, so involved, that 
whether we retain the negative or not his language has still led many — as it 
did in the earliest ages of the Church — to believe that he did the very thing 
which he is generally supposed to be denying. Nothing could have been 
easier or pleasanter than to say, " I did not circumcise Titus, though every 
possible effort was made to force me to do so. My not doing so — even at 
Jerusalem, even at the beginning of the whole controversy, even at the head- 
quarters of the Judseo- Christian tyranny, even in the face of the evident wish 
of the Apostles — proves, once for all, both my independence and my con- 
sistency." But it was immensely more difficult to explain why he really had 
given way in that important instance. It may be that Titus was by his side 
while he penned this very paragraph, and, if so, it would be to Paul a yet 
more bitter reminder of a concession which, more than aught else, had been 
quoted to prove his subjection and his insincerity. He is therefore so anxious 
to show why he did it, and what were not his motives, that ultimately he uncon- 
sciously omits to say it in so many words at all. 1 And if, after the decision 
of the meeting, and the battle which he had fought, Paul still thought it 
advisable to circumcise Timothy merely to avoid offending the Jews whom he 
was about to visit, would not the same motives work with him at this earlier 
period when he saw how the presence of Titus threw the whole Church into 
confusion? If the false inferences which might be deduced from the con- 
cession were greater in the case of a pure-blooded Gentile, on the other hand 
the necessity for diminishing offence was also more pressing, and the obliga- 
toriness of circumcision had at that time been less seriously impugned. And 
it is even doubtful whether such a course was not overruled for good. But 
for this step would it, for instance, have been possible for Titus to be overseer 
of the Church of Crete ? Would any circumcised Jew have tolerated at this 
epoch the " episcopate " of an un circumcised Gentile ? I have dwelt long 

1 "Cette transaction couta beaucoup a Paul, et la plirase dans laquelle il en parle est 
une des plus originates qu'il ait ecrites. Le mot qui lui coute semble ne pouvoir couler 
de sa plume. La phrase au premier coup d'ceil parait dire que Titus ne fut pas circoncis, 
tandis qu'elle implique qu'il le fut " (Eenan, St. Paul, p. 92). It need hardly be said that 
there is no question of supjyrcssion here, because I assume that the fact was perfectly well 
known. We iind a similar characteristic of style and character in Rom. ix. Baur, on the 
other bund (but on very insufficient grounds), thinks that "nothing can be more absurd.'' 
Yet it was the view of Tertullian (c. Marc. v. 3), and Baur equally disbelieves the ex- 
greatly assorted uircumciuion of Timothy. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 237 

upon this incident because, if I am right, there are few events in the biography 
of St. Paul more illustrative alike of his own character and of the circum- 
stances of his day. He would rather have died, would rather have suffered a 
schism between the Church of Jerusalem and the Churches of her Gentile 
converts, than admit that there could be no salvation out of the pale of 
Mosaisin. In this or that instance he was ready enough — perhaps, in the 
largeness of his heart, too ready for his own peace — to go almost any length 
rather than bring himself and, what was infinitely more dear to him, the 
Gospel with which he had been entrusted, into collision with the adamantine 
walls of Pharisaic bigotry. But he always let it be understood that his 
principle remained intact — that Christ had in every sense abolished the curse 
of the Law — that, except in its universal moral precepts, it was no longer 
binding on the Gentiles — that the " traditions of the fathers " had for them 
no further significance. He intended at all costs, by almost unlimited con- 
cession in the case of individuals, by unflinching resistance when principles 
were endangered, to establish, as far at any rate as the Gentiles were con- 
cerned, the truth that Christ had obliterated the handwriting in force against 
us. and taken it out of the way, nailing the torn fragments of its decrees to 
His cross. 1 

And so the great debate came on. The Apostles — at any rate, their 
leaders — had to a great extent been won over in private conferences ; the 
opponents had been partially silenced by a personal concession. Paul must 
have looked forward with breathless interest to the result of the meeting 
which should decide whether Jerusalem was still to be the metropolis of the 
Faith, or whether she was to be abandoned to the isolation of unprogressive 
literalism, while the Gospel of Christ started on a new career from Antioch 
and from the West. One thing only must not be. She must not swathe the 
daily-strengthening youth of Christianity in the dusty cerements : an 
abolished system ; she must not make Christianity a religion of washings and 
cleansings, of times and seasons, of meats and drinks, but a religion of holi- 
ness and of the heart — a religion in which men might eat or not as they 
pleased, and might regard every day as alike sacred, so that they strove with 
all their power to reveal in their lives a love to man springing out of the root 
of love to God. 

We are not surprised to hear that there was much eager and passionate 
debate. 2 Doubtless, as in all similar gatherings of the Church to settle dis- 
puted questions, there were mutual recriminations and misunderstandings, 
instances of untenable argument, of inaccurate language, of confused concep- 
tions. The Holy Spirit, indeed, was among them then, as now, in all gatherings 
of faithful Christian men : He was with them to guide and to inspire. But 
neither then nor now — as we see by the clearest evidence of the Xew Testa- 
ment then, and as we see by daily experience now — did His influence work 
to the miraculous extinction of human differences, or obliteration of human 

1 OoL ii. 14. 8 See on this dissension Hooker, Eccl. PoL ir., ri, 



£38 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

imperfections. Those who supported the cause of Paul rendered themselves 
liable to those charges., so terrible to a Jew, of laxness, of irreligion, of apostasy, 
of unpatriotism, of not being believers in revealed truth. "Was not Moses 
inspired ? Was the Sacred Pentateuch to be reduced to a dead letter ? 
Were all the curses of Ebal to be braved ? Were the Thorah-rolls to be flung 
contemptuously into the Dead Sea ? On the other hand, those who main- 
tained the necessity of circumcision and of obedience to the Law, laid them- 
selves open to the fatal question, " If the Law is essential to salvation, what, 
then, has been the work of Christ ? " 

But when the subject had been amply discussed, Peter arose. 1 Which 
side he would take could be hardly doubtful. He had, in fact, already braved 
and overborne the brunt of a similar opposition. But an exceptional instance 
was felt to be a very different thing from a universal rule. It was true that 
Peter did not now stand alone, but found the moral support, which was so 
necessary to him, in the calm dignity of Barnabas and the fervid genius of 
Paul. But in all other respects his task was even more difficult than it had 
been before, and, rising to the occasion, he spoke with corresponding boldness 
and force. 2 His speech was in accordance with the practical, forthright, non- 
argumentative turn of his mind. Filled with energetic conviction by the 
logic of facts, he reminded them how, long ago, 3 the question had been prac- 
tically settled. God had selected him to win over the first little body of 
converts from the Gentile world ; and the gift of the Spirit to them had 
showed that they were cleansed by faith. To lay on them the burden of the 
Law — a burden to the daily life which it surrounded with unpractical and 
often all but impracticable observances — a burden to the conscience because 
it created a sense of obligation of which it could neither inspire the 
fulfilment nor remedy the shortcoming — a burden which had therefore been 
found intolerable both by their fathers and themselves 4 — was simply to 
tempt God by hindering His manifest purposes, and resisting His manifest 
will. In one doctrine all present were agreed ; 5 it was that alike the Jews 
and the Gentile converts should be saved only by the grace of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The inference then was obvious, that they were not and could 
not be saved by the works of the Law. In the observance of those works the 
Jews, on whom they were originally enjoined, might naturally persevere till 
fresh light came ; but these hereditary customs had never been addressed to 
the Gentiles, and, since they were unnecessary to salvation, they must 

1 On the views of St. John, see Excursus XVII., " St. John and St. Paul." 

2 Acts xv. 7 — 11. Again we have to notice the interesting circumstance that in this 
brief speech the language is distinctly Petrine. Such minute marks of authenticity are 
wholly beyond the reach of a forger. 

3 The expression a<\> yjixepdv ipxcuW would naturally refer to the ipxy of the Gospel (cf. 
xi. 15 ; xxi. 16 ; Phil. iv. 15). But if the conversion of Cornelius took place during the 
" rest " procured for the Church by the absorption of the Jews in their attempt to rebut 
the mad impiety of Gaius, A.D. 40, that was not twelve years before this time. 

4 Gal. v. 3. The Law was a gvyw Sovktias, the Gospel a £vyb<; xp*?f to?, a <f>opriov e\a<f>pfo 
(Matt. xi. 29, 30). 

5 Cf. Acts xi. 17. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JEETJSALEM. 239 

obviously be to the Gentiles not burdensome only, but a positive stumbling- 
block. 

The weight of Peter's dignity had produced silence in the assembly. The 
excitement was now so far calmed that Paul and Barnabas were at least 
listened to without interruptions. Barnabas — who. in the Jewish Church, 
still retained his precedence, and who was as acceptable to the audience from 
his past liberality as Paul was unacceptable from his former persecutions — 
spoke first; but both he and Paul seem to have abstained from arguing the 
question. All the arguments had been urged at private conferences when 
words could be deliberately considered. They were not there to impress 
their own views, but to hear those of the Apostles and of the Church they 
governed. Barnabas never seems to have been prominent in debate, and Paul 
was too wise to discuss theological differences before a promiscuous audience. 
They confined themselves, therefore, to a simple history of their mission, 
dwelling especially on those " signs and wonders " wrought by their hands 
among the Gentiles, which were a convincing proof that, though they might 
not win the approval of man, they had all along enjoyed the blessing of 
God. 

Then rose James. Every one present must have felt that the practical 
decision of the Church — Paul must have felt that, humanly speaking, the 
future of Christianity — depended on his words. A sense of awe clung about 
him and all he said and did. Clothed with a mysterious and indefinable 
dignity as u the brother of the Lord," that dignity and mystery were enhanced 
by his bearing, dress, manner of life, and entire appearance. Tradition, as 
embodied in an Ebionite romance, and derived from thence by Hegesippus, 1 
represents him as wearing no wool, but clothed in fine white linen from head to 
foot, and — either from some priestly element in his genealogy, or to symbolise 
his £i episcopate " at Jerusalem — as wearing on his forehead the petalon, or 
golden plate of High-priesthood. 2 It is said that he was so holy, and so highly 
esteemed by the whole Jewish people, that he alone was allowed, like the 
High Priest, to enter the Holy Place ; that he lived a celibate 3 and ascetic 
life ; that he spent long hours alone in the Temple praying for the people, 
till his knees became hard and callous as those of the camel ; that he had the 
power of working miracles ; that the rain fell in accordance with his prayers ; 
that it was owing to his merits that God's impending wrath was averted from 
the Jewish nation; that he received the title of "the Just" and Ohliam, or 
" Rampart of the People ; and that he was shadowed forth in the images of 

1 "The Ascent of James." The narrative of Hegesippus is quoted at length by 
Eusebius, H. E. ii. 23. Other passages which relate to him are Epiphan. Haer. 
lxxviii. 7, 13, 14 ; Jer. He Vir. Illustr. 2 ; Comm. in Gal. i. 19. 

2 Epiphan. Haer. xxix. 4. The same story is told of St. John, on the authority of 
Poly crates, Bishop of Ephesus (Euseb. H. E. hi. 31 ; v. 24). Either Poly crates has 
taken literally some ruetaphorical allusion, or John really did sometimes adopt a symbol 
of Christian High-priesthood. The former seems the more probable supposition. 

3 This is rendered doubtful by 1 Cor. ix. 5, unless he was an exception to the other 
Desposjm. 



240 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL.. 

the prophets. 1 Some of these details must be purely imaginative ; but legends, 
as has well been said, are like the clouds that gather upon the mountain sum- 
mits, and show the height and take the shapes of the peaks about which they 
cling. We may readily believe that he was a Nazarite, perhaps even an 
ascetic — one who, by the past affinities of his character, was bound rather to 
Banus, and John Baptist, and the strict communities of the Essenes, than to 
the disciples of One who came eating and drinking, pouring on social life the 
brightness of His holy joy, attending the banquet of the Pharisee at Caper- 
naum, and the feast of the bridegroom at Cana, not shrinking from the tears 
with which Mary of Magdala or the perfumes with which Mary of Bethany 
embathed his feet. 

Such was the man who now rose to speak, with the long locks of the 
Nazarite streaming over his white robe, and with all the sternness of aspect 
which can hardly have failed to characterise one who was so rigid in his 
convictions, so uncompromising in his judgments, so incisive in his speech. 
The importance of his opinion lay in the certainty that it could hardly fail to 
be, at least nominally, adopted by the multitude, among whom he exercised an 
authority, purely local indeed and limited, but within those limits superior 
even to that of Peter. The most fanatical of bigots could hardly refuse to be 
bound by the judgment of one who was to the very depth of his being a loyal 
Jew ; to whom even unconverted Jews looked up with reverence ; to whom 
the " Law," which neither St. Peter nor St. John so much as mention in their 
Epistles, was so entirely the most prominent conception that he does not 
once mention the Gospel, and only alludes to it under the aspect of a law, 
though as " the perfect law of liberty." 2 

His speech — which, as in so many other instances, bears internal marks of 
authenticity 3 — was thoroughly Judaic in tone, and yet showed that the private 
arguments of the Apostles of the Gentiles had not been thrown away on a 
mind which, if in comparison with the mind of a Paul, and even of a Peter, it 
was somewhat stern and narrow, was yet the mind of a remarkable and holy 
man who would not struggle against the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. 
Peter, in one of those impetuous outbursts of generous conviction which 
carried him beyond his ordinary self, had dauntlessly laid down broad 
principles which are, perhaps, the echo of thoughts which Paul had impressed 
upon his mind. If- would have been too much to expect that James would 
speak with equal breadth and boldness. Had he done so, we should have felt 
at once that he was using language unlike himself, unlike all that we know of 

1 Dan. i. 8, 12 ; Tob. i. 11, 12. <o? <n irpofyrjTai StjAoOo-i Trepl ovtov (Heges. ubi supr.). 
This, perhaps, refers to Isa. iii. 10. If he be the Jacob of Kephar Sechaniah he is 
indeed regarded as a Min, yet he is represented as having various dealings with orthodox 
Rabbis (Griitz, Gnostic, u. Judaism, p. 25). The name Oblias, rrbiTin, is explained by 
Hausiath to mean "Jehovah my chain," with allusion to the Nazarite vow. Hitzig. 
(Kl. Prophcten) thinks the name may refer to the staff, D^in, in Zech. xi. 7. Is it 
possible the name may be some confusion of Abh learn, "father of the people"? 

2 Jamosi. 25; ii. 12. 

8 E.g., "on whom my name has been called ; " cf. James ii. 7. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 241 

him, unlike the language of his own Epistle. But though his speech is as 
different from St. Peter's as possible — though it proposed restrictions where 
he had indicated liberty — it yet went farther than could have been hoped,- 
farther than bigots either liked or cordially accepted; and, above all, it 
conceded the main point at issue in implying that circumcision and the 
ceremonial law were, as a whole, non-essential for the Gentiles. 

Requesting their attention, he reminded them that Symeon 1 — as, using the 
Hebrew form of the name, he characteristically calls his brother Apostle— had 
narrated to them the Divine intimations which led to the call of the Gentiles, 
and this he shows was in accordance with ancient prophecy, and, therefore } 
with Divine fore-ordination. 2 But obviously — this was patent to all Jews 
alike — the Gentiles would never accept the whole Mosaic Law. His au- 
thoritative decision, 3 therefore, took the form of " a concession and a reserve." 
He proposed to release the converted Gentiles from all but four restrictions — 
which belonged to what was called the Noachian dispensation 4 — abstinence, 
namely, from things polluted by being offered to idols, 5 and from fornication, 
and from anything strangled, and from blood. 6 " For," he adds, in words 
which are pregnant with more than one significance, " Moses from of old hath 
preachers in the synagogues in every city, being read every Sabbath day." 
By this addition he probably meant to imply that since Moses was universally 
read in synagogues attended both by Jews and by Gentile converts, we will 
tell the Gentiles that this Law which they hear read is not universally 
binding on them, but only so far as charity to the Jew requires ; and we will 
tell the Jews that we have no desire to abrogate for them that Law to whose 
ordinances they bear a weekly witness. 

One of the most remarkable points in this speech is the argument deduced 
from the prophecy of Amos, which was primarily meant as a prophecy of the 
restoration of Israel from captivity, but which St. James, with a large 
insight into the ever- widening horizons of prophecy, applies to the ideal 
restoration, the reception of Jehovah as their common Father by the great 
family of man. In the rebuilding of the ruined tabernacle of David he sees 
the upraising of the Church of Christ as an ideal temple to which the Gentiles 
also shall be joined. Nor is it a little striking that in adducing this prophecy 
he quotes, not the Hebrew, but mainly the Septuagint. 7 The Greek differs 

1 As in 2 Peter i. 1. This is the last mention of Peter in the Acts. 

* Amos ix. 11, 12. The true reading here, among numberless divergences, seems to 
Ye yvwo-Ta an atwvos (k, B, C), "it has been known of old." James affirms what Amos 
prophesied, but his speech is not free from difficulties. (See Baur, Paul. i. 124.) 

3 eyw KpCvw, but he was only primus inter pares. (See Acts xv. 6; xxi. 25.) 

4 See Gen. ix. 4. 

5 Acts XV. 20, aktoyriiJ.aTa tuv eiSwAcov = eiSwAoflvra (ver. 29 ; xxi. 25) 'AAiffyew = g&al, "to 

redeem with blood " (Dan. i. 8 ; Mai. i. 7). We are told that the Jews in the days of 
Antiochus were ready to die rather than elSukoevruiv anoyeveo-eai. 

6 These two restrictions are practically identical, the wvikto. being only forbidden 
because they necessarily involved the eating of the blood. AVa cannot mean "the shedding 
of blood" — homicide, as some of the Fathers supposed. On "things strangled" and 
"blood" see Tert. Apol. ix. ; Schottgen, Eor. Hebr. in hoc. ; Kalisch on Gen. ix. 4. 

7 jrapevoxAetv (ver. 19) occurs only in the LXX. 



242 THE LIFE ANT> WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

essentially from the Hebrew, and differs from it in the essence of the 
interpretation, which lies not only in the ideal transference from the Temple 
to the Church, but in direct reference to the Gentiles — viz. : 

" That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles 
upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord." 

But the Hebrew says, much less appositely to the purpose of the speaker, 

" That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen 
upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord." 

The difference is due to one of those numberless and often extraordinary 
variations of the original text of which the Septuagint is so decisive a proof, 
and which makes that version so interesting a study. 1 This application of 
James may be regarded as implicitly involved even in the Hebrew, and is yet 
more directly supported by other passages ; 2 but the fact that here and else- 
where the New Testament writers quote and argue from the undeniably 
variant renderings of the Septuagint, quoting them from memory, and often 
differing in actual words both from these and from the Hebrew, shows how 
utterly removed was their deep reverence for Scripture from any superstition 
about the literal dictation of mere words or letters. 

The debate was now at an end, for all the leaders had spoken. The 
objections had been silenced; the voice of the chief elder had pronounced the 
authoritative conclusion. It only remained to make that conclusion known to 
those who were immediately concerned. The Apostles and Elders and the 
whole Church therefore ratified the decision, and selected two of their own 
body, men of high repute — Judas Barsabbas and Silas 3 — to accompany the 
emissaries from the Church of Antioch on their return, and to be pledges 
for the genuineness of their written communication. The letter which they 
sent embodied their resolutions, and ran as follows : — " The Apostles and 
Elders 4 and brethren to the brethren from the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria 



1 The LXX. seems clearly to have read Di« [addm), "man, "for Dii« (edom). Dr. 
Davidson, Sacr. Hermen. p. 462, goes so far as to suppose that the Jews have here 
altered the Hebrew text. 

2 E.g., Ps. lxxxvi. 9; xxii. 31; cii. 18; Isa. xliii. 7. 

3 The Silas of Acts is, of course, the Silvanus — the name being Romanised for con- 
venience — of the Epistles (1 Thess. i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 1), and perhaps of 1 Pet. v. 12. He 
is not mentioned in the Acts after the first visit of St. Paul to Corinth, and in undesigned 
coincidence with this his name disappears in the superscription of the Epistles after that 
time. (See "Wordsworth, Phil. i. 1.) 

4 Although Kai ot is omitted (a, A, B, C, the Vulgate and Armenian versions, 
Irenseus, and Origen, and the K al by D), I still believe them to be genuine. The diplo- 
matic evidence seems indeed to be against them, the weight of the above Uncials, &c, 
being superior to that of E, G, H, the majority of Cursives, and the Syriac, Coptic, and 
^thiopic versions. But objection to the apparent parity assigned to the brethren 
might have led, even in early days, to their omission, while if not genuine it is not easy 
to see why they should have been inserted. They also agree better with ver. 22, " with 
the whole Church," and ver. 24, "going out from among us." The importance of the 
reading i.-) shown by its bearing on such debates as the admission of laymen into er clesi- 
asticnl conferences, &c. Wordsworth quotes from Beveridge, Codex Camonum Vindi- 
catuH, p. 20, the rule "Laid ad judicium de docbrma aut disciplina Ucclesiasticaferendum 
nunquam adnmai sunt." 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 243 

and Cilicia. greeting. 1 Since we heard that some who went out from among as 
troubled yon with statements., subverting 3 your souls, who received no 
injunction from ns. s we met together, and decided to select men and send them 
to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul. 4 persons 5 who have given up 
their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.- We have therefore 
commissioned Judas and Silas to make in person the same announcement to yon 
by word of mouth — namely, that it is our decision, under the guidance of the 
Holy Ghost." to lay no further burden 5 upon you beyond these necessary 
things : to abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from 
strangled, and from fornication, in keeping yourselves from which it shall be 
well with you. Farewell."'' 9 

It will be observed that throughout this account I hare avoided the terms 
" Council" and '• decree." It is only by an unwarrantable extension of terms 
that the meeting of the Church at Jerusalem can be called a "' Council.'" and 
the word connotes a totally different order of conceptions to those that were 
prevalent at that early time. The so-called Council of Jerusalem in no way 
led the General Councils of the Church, either in its history, its 
constitution, or its object. It was not a convention of ordained delegates, but 
a meeting of the entire Church of Jerusalem to receive a deputation from 
the Church of Antioch. Even Paul and Barnabas seem to have had no vote 
in the decision, though the votes of a promiscuous body could certainly 
not be more enlightened than theirs, nor was their allegiance due in any way 
to James. The Church of Jerusalem might out of respect be consulted, but 
it had no claim to superiority, no abstract prerogative to bind its decisions on 
the free Church of God. i: The "decree" of the '•'Council" was little more 
than the wise recommendation of a single synod, addressed to a particular dis- 



1 \auxiv, lit. "rejoice." It is a curious circumstance that the Greek salutation — for 
Qi£ Hebrew salutation would be z ; "r. " Peace * ; — is only found in the letter of a Gentile, 
Claudius Lyai . _ . and in the letter of him who must hare taken a main part in 

drawing up this let! L 1 . 

r" .:: res, Kfc, " figging up from the foundations ; ' (Thnc. iv. 116). 

3 This disavowal is complete, and yet whole romances about counter-missions in direct 
opposition to St. Paul and organised by James, arc • lit on the expression in 
GaL ii. 12, th Sao, though it is very little sbi rager than the nres K*-ek96vres iam 
■nq? 'I:. ;. ~A "~~. 1, and not so strong as the -.-. a e| -.re? here. 

4 In n 1 ■_. of Bourse, that da | wsible suspicion might attach to the letter as an 
expression of their real aentamentB. 

5 I have expressed the difference of avSpus and av0/*S-ovs, but the only difference 
intended is that the latter expression is more generic. 

6 They were martyrs at least in will (Alf.). 

: C£ TSx. xiv. 81: 1 Sam. xii. IS. Hence the "Sancto Spiritu suggerente," com- 
monly prefixed fct 1 screes of C juncfls 

s This word ::'. ver. 10 seems k snow the hand of Peter (e£ Per. ii. 24). 

! D, followed by some versions, and many OorsLves, has the curious addition, 
" and ti;.:; ; ever ye do not wish to be done to yourselves, do not to another. Farewell, 
walking in the Holy Spirit." VTith these minimum requirements, intended to put 
Gr~:le; on -.-"- footing of Proselytes of the Gate, compare Lev. xvii. 8 — 16: xviii. 26. 

i; ^ee Article xxi. Pope Benedict XIV. savs. "Specie i qnandam e: ima 

in praedicta congregatione em in ere '' [De Synod. L 1 — 5 ; ap Denton, Act* 
it 82). 

4 2 



244 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

trict, and possessing only a temporary validity. 1 It was, in fact, a local 
concordat. Little or no attention has been paid by the imi\ ersal Church to 
two of its restrictions ; a third, not many years after, was twice discussed and 
settled by Paul, on the same general principles, but with a by no means 
identical conclusion. 2 The concession which it made to the Gentiles, in not 
insisting on the necessity of circumcision, was equally treated as a dead letter 
by the Judaising party, and cost Paul the severest battle of his lifetime to 
maintain. If this circular letter is to be regarded as a binding and final 
decree, and if the meeting of a single Church, not by delegates but in the 
person of all its members, is to be regarded as a Council, never was the 
decision of a Council less appealed to, and never was a decree regarded as so 
entirely inoperative alike by those who repudiated the validity of its conces- 
sions, 3 and by those who discussed, as though they were still an open question, 
no less than three of its four restrictions. 4 

The letter came to the Churches like a message of peace. Its very limita- 
tion was, at the time, the best proof of its inspired wisdom. Considering the 
then state of the Church, no decision could have more clearly evinced the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. 5 It was all the more valuable because 
there were so many questions which it left unsolved. The heads of the 
Church admitted — and that was something — that circumcision was non- 
essential to Gentiles, and they may seem to have indulged in an extreme 
liberality in not pressing the distinction between clean and unclean meats, 
and, above all, in not insisting on the abstinence from the flesh of swine. By 
these concessions they undoubtedly removed great difficulties from the path of 
Gentile concerts. But, after all, a multitude of most pressing questions 
remained, and left an opening for each party to hold almost exactly the same 
opinions as before. A Gentile was not to be compelled to circumcision and 
Mosaism. Good ; but might it not be infinitely better for him to accept them ? 
Might there not have been in the minds of Jewish Christians, as in those of 
later Rabbis, a belief that " even if Gentiles observe the seven Noachian pre- 
cepts, they do not receive the same reward as Israelites ? " 6 It is, at any rate, 
clear that neither now nor afterwards did the Judaisers admit Paul's dogmatic 
principles, as subsequently stated to the Galatians and Romans. Probably 

1 Hooker, Eccl. Pol. IV. xi. 5. 2 Eom. xiv. ; 1 Cor. viii. 

3 Gal. iii. 1 ; v. 2, and passim. It is astonishing to find that even Justin declares the 
■eating of elhoiKodvra to be as bad as idolatry, and will hold no intercourse with those who 
<\o it {Dial. c. Tryjph. 35) ; but the reason was that by that time (as in the days of the 
Maccabees) it had been adopted by the heathen as a test of apostasy. And compare 
1 Cor. x. 20, 21. (Ritschl, Alt. Eath. Kirch, 310, 2nd ed.) 

4 St. Paul discusses the question of meats offered to idols without the remotest 
reference to this decree, and the Western Church have never held themselves bound to 
abstain "from tilings strangled," and from blood (Aug. c. Faust, xxxii. 13). St. Paul's 
silence about the decree when he writes to the Pomans perhaps rises from its pro- 
visional and partial character. It was only addressed to the Gentile converts of 
" Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia." 

5 "lis virent que le seul moyen d'e'chapper aux grands questions est do ne pas lei 
re*8oudre . . . de laisser les problemes s'user et mourir faute de raison d'etre " (Penan, 
St. P. 03). 

6 Abltoda Zara, f. 3, X. 



THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 245 

they regarded him, at the best, as the Ananias for future Eleazers. 1 Above 
all, the burning question of social relations remained untouched. Titus had 
been circumcised as the only condition on which the members of the Church 
at Jerusalem would let him move on an equal footing among themselves. It 
was all very well for them to decide with more or less indifference about 
" choots learets" " the outer world," "people elsewhere," "those afar," 2 as 
though they could much more easily contemplate the toleration of uncircum- 
ci3ed Christians, prodded that they were out of sight and out of mind in 
distant cities ; but a Jew was a Jew, even if he lived in the wilds of Isauria 
or the burnt plains of Phrygia ; and how did this decision at Jerusalem help 
him to face the practical question, " Am I, or am I not, to share a common 
table with, to submit to the daily contact of people that eat freely of that 
which no true Jew can think of without a thrill of horror — the unclean 
beast ?" 

These were the questions which, after all, could only be left to the solution 
of time. The prejudices of fifteen centuries could not be removed in a day. 
Alike the more enlightened and the more bigoted of Jews and Gentiles con- 
tinued to think very much as they had thought before, until the darkness of 
prejudice was scattered by the broadening light of history and of reason. 

The genuineness of this cyclical letter is evinced by its extreme naturalness. 
A religious romancist could not possibly have invented anything which left so 
much unsolved. And this genuineness also accounts for the startling appear- 
ance of a grave moral crime among things so purely ceremonial as particular 
kinds of food. There is probably no other period in the history of the world 
at which the Apostles would have found it needful to tell their Gentile con- 
verts to abstain from fornication, as well as from things offered to idols, things 
strangled, and blood. The first of these four prohibitions was perfectly intel- 
ligible, because it must have been often necessary for a Gentile Christian to 
prove to his Jewish brethren that he had no hankering after the " abominable 
idolatries " which he had so recently abandoned. The two next prohibitions 
were desirable as a concession to the indefinable horror with which the Jews 
and many other Eastern races regarded the eating of the blood, which they 
considered to be " the very life." 3 But only at such a period as this could a 
moral pollution have been placed on even apparently the same footing as 
matters of purely national prejudice. That the reading is correct, 4 and that 

1 See Pfleiderer, ii. 13. 2 Acts ii. 39, oi els ixa^pdv ; Col. iv. 5, oi efw. 

8 Gen. ix. 4 ; Lev. xvii. 14. So too Koran, Sur. v. 4. See Bahr, Symbolik, ii. 207. 
>n the other hand, "the blood" was a special delicacy to the heathen (Horn. Od. iii. 
470; xviii. 44; Ov. Met. xii. 154); and hence "things strangled" were with them a 
common article of food. Eutilius calls the Jew, "Humanis animal dissociale cibis" (It. i. 
384). Even this restriction involved a most inconvenient necessity for never eating any meat 
but kosher, i.e., meat prepared by Jewish butchers in special accordance with the laws of 
slaughtering (rraTra). It would more or less necessitate what would be, to a Gentile at 
any rate, most repellent — the " cophinus foenumque supellex" (Juv. Sat. iii. 14), which 
were, for these reasons, the peculiarity of the Jew (Sidon. Up. vii. 6). 

4 There is not the faintest atom of probability in Bentley's conjecture of Trop/ceio. At 
the sametime, it must be noted as an extraordinary stretch of liberality on the part of 
the Judaisers not to require the abstention from swine's flesh by their Gentile brethren 



246 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

the thing forbidden is the sin of fornication, 1 not idolatry, or mixed marriageSj 
or marriages between blood relations (1 Cor. v. 1), or second marriages 
(1 Tim. iii. 2), or any of the other explanations in which an astonished exegesis 
has taken refuge, must be regarded as certain. How, theu, can the fact be 
accounted for ? Only by the boundless profligacy of heathendom ; only by 
the stern purity of Christian morals. The Jews, as a nation, were probably 
the purest among all the races of mankind ; yet even they did not regard this 
sin as being the moral crime which Christianity teaches us to consider it; 2 
and they lived in the midst of a world which regarded it as so completely a 
matter of indifference that Socrates has no censure for it, 3 and Cicero declares 
that no Pagan moralist had ever dreamt of meeting it with an absolute pro- 
hibition. 4 What is it that has made the difference in the aspect which sensu- 
ality wears to the ancient and to the modern conscience ? I have no hesitation 
in answering that the reason is to be found in the purity which every page of 
the New Testament breathes and inspires, and specially in the words of our 
Blessed Lord, and in the arguments of St. Paul. If the blush of modesty on 
youthful cheeks is a holy thing, if it be fatal alike to individuals and to nations 
" to burn away in mad waste " the most precious gifts of life, if debauchery 
be a curse and stain which more than any other has eaten into the heart of 
human happiness, then the saintly benefactor to whose spirituality we owe the 
inestimable boon of having impressed these truths upon the youth of every 
Christian land is he who— taught by the Spirit of the Lord — showed more 
clearly, more calmly, more convincingly than any human being has ever 
shown, the true heinousness, the debasing tendency, the infusive virulence of 
sins which, through the body, strike their venom and infix their cancer into 

flovScuos Qo-ttov av anoedvot tj x oi -P^ ov 4>ayot, Sext. Emp. Tac. H. V. 4 ; Sen. Ep. 108, 22 ; 
Macrob. Sat. ii. 4). This abstinence was common in the East (Dio. Cass, lxxix. 11). 

1 The notion that nopveCa can mean things sold {iripv^ixi) in the market after idol feasts 
is also utterly untenable. See the question examined by Baur, Paul. i. 146, seq. 
Besides, the four prohibitions correspond to those attributed to Peter in Ps. Clem. Horn. 

vil. 4, "where fir; a/ca#apTa>s fitovv = impveCa. 

2 In point of fact the Jews probably regarded the other three things with infinitely 
greater horror than this. The practice even of their own Rabbis, though veiled under 
certain decent forms, was far looser than it should have been, as is proved by passages 
in the Talmud {Gittln, f. 90; Joma, f. 18, 2 ; Selden, Ux. Hebr. iii. 17). 

3 Xen. Mem. iii. 13. 

4 This passage is remarkable as coming from one of the purest of all ancient writers 
(Cic. pro Gael. xx. ; cf. Ter. Adelph. i. 2, 21). The elder Cato was regarded as a model 
of stern Roman virtue, yet what would be thought in Christian days of a man who spoke 
and acted as he did? (Hor. Sat. i. 2, 31.) If Cato could so regard the sin, what must 
have been the vulgar estimate of it? Nor must it be forgotten that the letter was 
addressed to Jews and Gentiles alike familiar with an epoch in which, as indeed for 
many previous centuries, this crime, and crimes yet more heinous, formed a recognised 
part of the religious worship of certain divinities (cf. Baruch vi. 43 ; Strabo, viii. 6) ; 
and in which the pages of writers who reek with stains like these formed a part of the 
current literature. Few circumstances can show more clearly the change which Christi- 
anity has wrought. But to every reader of the letter the immediate link of connexion 
between ciSoAdflura and tvopvdo. would be but too obvious. Further, it should be steadily 
observed that the allusions —stern yet tender, uncompromising yet merciful — of St. 
Paul's own Epistles to the prevalence of this sin, show most decidedly that if conversion 
at once revealed to Christians its true heinousness, it often failed to shield them against 
temptation to its commission. 



ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 247 

the soul ; of sins which have this peculiar sinfulness — that they not only 
destroy the peace and endanger the salvation of the soul which is responsible 
for itself, but also the souls of others, which, in consequence of the sinner's 
guilty influence, may remain impenitent, yet for the sake of which, no less thau 
for his own, Christ died. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 

"Separati epulis, discreti cubilibus." — Tac. H. v. 5. 

" At ais Ecclesia est sancta, Patres sunt sancti Bene ; sed Ecclesia quamlibet 
sancta tamen cogitur dicere Eemitte nobis peccata nostra. Sic Patres quamlibet 
sancti per remissionem peccatorum salvati sunt.'' — Luther, Comm. on Galat. i. 

Such, then, was the result of the appeal upon which the Judaisers had 
insisted ; and so far as the main issue was concerned the Judaisers had been 
defeated. The Apostles, in almost indignantly repudiating the claim of these 
men to express their opinions, had given them a rebuff. They had intimated 
their dislike that the peace of Churches should be thus agitated, and had 
declared that circumcision was not to be demanded from the Gentiles. It 
needed but a small power of logic to see that, Christianity being what it was, 
the decision at least implied that converts, whether Jews or Gentiles, were to 
bear and forbear, and to meet together as equals in all religious and social 
gatherings. The return of the delegates was therefore hailed with joy in 
Antioch, and the presence of able and enlightened teachers like Judas and 
Silas, who really were what the Pharisaic party had falsely claimed to be — 
the direct exponents of the views of the Apostles — diffused a general sense of 
unity and confidence. After a brief stay, these two emissaries returned to 
Jerusalem. 1 On Silas, however, the spell of Paul's greatness had been so 
powerfully exercised that he came back to Antioch, and threw in his lot for 
some time with the great Apostle of the Gentiles 2 . 

Paul, in fact, by the intensity of his convictions, the enlightenment of his 
uuder standing, the singleness of his purpose, had made himself completely 
master of the situation. He had come to the very forefront in the guidance 
of the Church. The future of Christianity rested with the Gentiles, and to 
the Gentiles the acts and writings of Paul were to be of greater importance 
than those of all the other Apostles. His Apostolate had been decisively 
recognised. He had met Peter and John, and even the awe-inspiring brother 

1 The true reading is not ;rpbs tovs 'Att-oo-toXovs, as in our version, but * *■<> those who 

gent them " (n-pos tovs a770CTTetA.ai/Tas avTovs — N, A, B, C, D). 

2 The reading of our version, ver. 34, "Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide 
there still, "is the pragmatic gloss of a few MSS., to which D adds jaovo? Se 'iovSas e7rop v0tj. 
It is not found in n, A, B, G, E, H. Of course, either this fact or the return of 
Silas is implied by ver. 40, but the separate insertion of it is exactly one of thos« 
trivialities which ancient writers are far less apt than moderns to record 



2-48 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

of the Lord, in conference, and found himself so completely their equal in the 
gifts of the Holy Ghost, that it was impossible for them to resist his 
credentials. He had greatly enlarged their horizon, and they had added 
nothing to him. He had returned from Jerusalem more than ever conscious 
of himself, conscious of his own power, clear in his future purposes. He 
inspired into the Church of Antioch his own convictions with a force which 
no one could resist. 

But since the letter from Jerusalem suggested so many inquiries, and laid 
down no universal principle, it was inevitable that serious complications 
should subsequently arise. A scene shortly occurred which tested to the 
extremest degree the intellectual firmness and moral courage of St. Paul. St. 
Peter seems about this time to have begun that course of wider journeys 
which, little as we know of them, carried him in some way or other to hia 
final martyrdom at Rome. We do not again hear of his presence at Jerusalem. 
John continued there in all probability for many years, and Peter may have 
felt his presence needless ; nor is it unlikely that, as Peter dwelt on the wider 
views which he had learnt from intercourse with his brother Apostle, he may 
have found himself less able to sympathise with the more Judaic Christianity 
of James. At any rate, we find him not long after this period at Antioch, and 
there so frankly adopting the views of St. Paul, that he not only extended to 
all Gentiles the free intercourse which he had long ago interchanged with 
Cornelius, but seems in other and more marked ways to have laid aside the 
burden of Judaism. 1 Paul could not but have rejoiced at this public proof 
that the views of the Apostle of the circumcision were, on this momentous 
subject, identical with his own. But this happiness was destined to be 
seriously disturbed. As the peace of the Church of Antioch had been pre- 
viously troubled by " certain which came down from Jerusalem," so it was 
now broken by the arrival of " certain from James." Up to this time, in the 
Agapse of Antioch, the distinction of Jew and Gentile had been merged in a 
common Christianity, and this equal brotherhood had been countenanced by 
the presence of the Apostle who had lived from earliest discipleship in the 
closest intercourse with Christ. But now a cloud suddenly came over this 
frank intercourse. 2 Under the influence of timidity, the plastic nature of 
Peter, susceptible as it always was to the impress of the moment, began to 
assume a new aspect. His attitude to the Gentile converts was altered. " He 
began to draw away and separate himself," in order not to offend the rigid 
adherents of the Lord's brother. 3 It is not said that they claimed any direct 
authority, or were armed with any express commission ; but they were strict 
Jews, who, however much they might tolerate the non-observance of the Law 
by Gentiles, looked with suspicion — perhaps almost with horror — on any Jew 

1 Gal. ii. 14, eOvLidas koX ov\ 'lovSaiVcws ffls. Nothing definite can be made of the 
tradition that St. Peter was first Bishop of Antioch. 

2 If the reading 1j\6ei> in Gal. ii. 12 were right it could only point to James himself ; 
but this would have been a fact which tradition could not have forgotten, and Jamei 
•eems never to have left Jerusalem. 

3 Gal. ii. 12, vTri<rr%W<v «cai dtpwpi^ci' eavT<$», 



ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 249 

who repudiated obligations which, for him at any rate, they regarded as 
stringent and sacred. 1 A false shame, a fear of what these men might 
say, dislike to face a censure which would acquire force from those 
accumulated years of habit which the vision of Joppa had modified, but not 
neutralised — perhaps too a bitter recollection of all he had gone through on a 
former occasion when he " had gone in unto men uncircumcised and eaten 
with them" — led Peter into downright hypocrisy. 2 Without any acknowledged 
change of view, without a word of public explanation, he suddenly changed his 
course of life, and it was almost inevitable that the other Jewish Christians 
should follow this weak and vacillating example. The Apostle who " seemed 
to be a pillar " proved to be a " reed shaken with the wind." 3 To the grief 
and shame of Paul, even Barnabas — Barnabas, his fellow-worker in the 
Churches of the Gentiles — even Barnabas, who had stood side by side with him 
to plead for the liberty of the Gentiles at Jerusalem, was swept away by the 
flood of inconsistency, and in remembering that he was a Levite forgot that he 
was a Christian. In fact, a strong Jewish reaction set in. There was no 
question of charity here, but a question of principle. To eat with the Gentiles, 
to live as do the Gentiles, was for a Jew either right or wrong. Interpreted in 
the light of those truths which lay at the very bases of the Gospel, it was 
right ; and if the Church was to be one and indivisible, the agreement that the 
Gentiles were not to put on the yoke of Mosaism seemed to imply that they 
were not to lose status by declining to do so. But to shilly-shally on the 
matter, to act in one way to-day and in a different way to-morrow, to let the 
question of friendly intercourse depend on the presence or absence of people 
who were supposed to represent the stern personality of James, could not under 
any circumstances be right. It was monstrous that the uncircumcised Gentile 
convert was at one time to be treated as a brother, and at another to be shunned 
as though he were a Pariah. This was an uncertain, underhand sort of pro- 
cedure, which St. Paul could not for a moment sanction. He could not stand 
by to see the triumph of the Pharisaic party over the indecision of men like 
Peter and Barnabas. For the moral weakness which succumbs to impulse he 
had the deepest tenderness, but he never permitted himself to maintain a truce 
with the interested selfishness which, at a moment's notice, would sacrifice a 
dutj to avoid an inconvenience. Paul saw at a glance that Kephas 4 (and the 
Hebrew name seemed best to suit the Hebraic defection) was wrong — wrong 

1 How anxious James was to conciliate the inflammable multitude who were "zealous 
for the Law" is apparent from Acts xxi. 24. 

2 The forger of the letter of Peter to James, printed at the head of the Clementine 
Homilies, deeply resents the expression, § 2. But St. Peter's "hypocrisy " consisted in 
"having implied an objection which he did not really feel, or which his previous custom 
did not justify " (Jowett, Gal. i. 245). It is idle to say that this shows the non-existence 
of the "decree;" that, as I have shown, left the question of intercourse with the 
Gentiles entirely undefined. 

3 See Hausrath, p. 252. " Boldness and timidity — first boldness, then timidity — were 
the characteristics of his nature" (Jowett, i. 243). See also Excursus XVII. , " St. Joha 
and St. PauL" 

4 Gal. ii. 11, Kfaas (n, A, B, 0). 



250 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUIi. 

intellectually, if not morally — and that he was mainly responsible for the wrong 
into which the others had been betrayed by his example. He did not, there- 
fore, hesitate to withstand him to the face. It was no occasion for private 
remonstrance ; the reproof must be as public as the wrong, or the whole cause 
might be permanently imperilled. Perhaps few things demand a firmer reso- 
lution than the open blame of those who in age and position are superior to 
ourselves. For one who had been a fierce persecutor of Christians to rebuke 
one who had lived in daily intercourse with Christ was a very hard task. It 
was still more painful to involve Barnabas and other friends in the same cen- 
sure ; but that was what duty demanded, and duty was a thing from which 
Paul never shrank. 

Rising at some public gathering of the Church, at which both Jews and 
Gentiles were present, he pointedly addressed Peter in language well calculated 
to show him that he stood condemned. 1 " If thou," he said before them all, 
" being a born Jew, art living Gentile fashion and not Jew fashion, how 2 canst 
thou try 3 to compel the Gentiles to Judaise ? " 4 So far his language complained 
of his brother Apostle's inconsistency rather than of his present conduct. It 
was intended to reveal the inconsistency which Peter had wished to hide. It 
directly charged him with having done the very thing which his present with- 
drawal from Gentile communion was meant to veil. " You have been living as 
a Gentile Christian in the midst of Gentile Christians ; you may alter your 
line at this moment, but such has been your deliberate conduct. Now, if it is 
unnecessary for you, a born Jew, to keep the Law, how can it be necessary, 
even as a counsel of perfection, that the Gentiles should do so ? Yet it must 
be necessary, or at least desirable, if, short of this, you do not even consider 
the Gentiles worthy of your daily intercourse. If your present separation 
means that you consider it to be a contamination to eat with them, you are 
practically forcing them to be like you in all respects. Be it so, if such is your 
view ; but let that view be clearly understood. The Church must not be de- 
ceived as to what your example has been. If indeed that conduct was wrong, 
then say so, and let us know your reasons ; but if that conduct was not wrong, 
then it concedes the entire equality and liberty which in the name of Christ we 
claim for our Gentile brethren, and you have left yourself no further right to 
cast a doubt on this by your present behaviour." It has been the opinion of 
some that St. Paul's actual speech to Peter ended with this question, and that 
the rest of the chapter is an argument addressed to the Galatians. But 
though, in his eager writing, St. Paul may unconsciously pass from what he 

1 Gal. ii. 11, Kare-yi/cooTxeVos fy. This is the word which gives such bitter offence to the 
forger of the Clementine Homilies, xvii. 18, 19. " Thou didst withstand me as an oppo- 
nent (ei/avrios av6e<nr)K<i.<; /xot) . . . If thou callest me condemned (/caTeyra><x/ueVos) thou accusest 
God who revealed Christ to me," &c, and much more to the same effect. 

^ 7TCJS. 

3 Gal. ii. 14. The wrong aspirate in ovx Iov5<ukws may be a Cilicism. But surely the 
editors should give us iovSa<'/cws. The e<// eKiriSi of the best MSS. in 1 Cor. ix. 10 is supported 
by the occurrence of t\nl<; in inscriptions. 

4 &i/ay/ca£ei5, "are by your present conduct practically obliging." "He was half a 
Gentile, and wanted to make the Gentiles altogether Jews " (Jowett, Oalat. i. 244). 



ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 251 

said in the assembly at Antioeh to the argument which he addressed to apos- 
tatising converts in Galatia, yet he can hardly have thrown away the opportunity 
of impressing his clear convictions on this subject upon Peter and the Church 
of Antioch. He wished to drive home the sole legitimate and logical conse- 
quence of the points already established ; and we can scarcely doubt that he 
used on this occasion some of those striking arguments which we shall 
subsequently examine in the Epistle to the Galatians. 1 

They all turn on the great truth over which the Holy Spirit had now given 
him so firm a grasp — the truth of Justification by Faith alone. If no man 
could see salvation save by means of faith, and on account of Christ's mercy, 
then even for the Jew the Law was superfluous. The Jew, however, might, 
on grounds of national patriotism, blamelessly continue the observances which 
were ancient and venerable, 2 provided that he did not trust in them. But the 
Gentile was in no way bound by them, and to treat him as an inferior because 
of this immunity was to act in contradiction to the fii-st principles of Christian 
faith. The contrasted views of St. Paul and of the Judaists were here 
brought into distinct collision, and thereby into the full light on which 
depended their solution. Faith without the Law, said the Judaists, means a 
state of Gentile " sinfulness." Faith with the Law, replied St. Paul, means 
that Christ has died in vain. 3 Among good and holy men love would still be 
the girdle of perf ectness ; but when the controversy waxed fierce between 

1 See on Gal. ii. 15 — 21, infra., p. 435. 

2 See some admirable remarks on the subject in Augustine, Ep. lxxxii. He argues 
that, after the revelation of faith in Christ, the ordinances of the Law had lost their 
life : but that just as the bodies of the dead ought to be honourably conducted, with no 
feigned honour, but with real solemnity to the tomb, and not to be at once deserted to 
the abuse of enemies or the attacks of dogs — so there was need that the respect for the 
Mosaic Law should not be instantly or rudely flung aside. But, he says, that even for a 
Jewish Christian to observe what could still be observed of the Law after it had been 
abrogated by God's own purpose in the destruction of Jerusalem, would be to act the 
part, not of one who honours the dead, but of one who tears out of their resting- 
places the buried ashes of the slain. 

3 Holstein, Protestantenbibel, 729. This dissension — if dissension it could be called — 
between the two great Apostles will shock those only who, in defiance of all Scripture, 
persist in regarding the Apostles as specimens of supernatural perfection. Of course, the 
errors of good men, even if they be mere errors of timidity on one side and vehemence on 
the other, will always expose them to the taunts of infidels. But when Celsus talks of 
the Apostles "inveighing against each other so shamefully in their quarrels," he is 
guilty — so far as the New Testament account of the Apostles is concerned — of grossi 
calumny [ap. Orig. c. Cels. v. 64). The "blot of error," of which Porphyry accused St. 
Peter, shows only that he was human, and neither Gospels nor Epistles attempt to 
conceal his weaknesses. The "petulance of language " with which he charges St. Paul 
finds no justification in the stern and solemn tone of this rebuke; and to deduce from 
this dispute " the lie of a pretended decree " is a mere abuse of argument. We may set 
aside at once, not without a feeling of shame and sorrow, the suggestion (Clem. Alex. ap. 
Euseb. H. E. i. 12) that this Kephas was not St. Peter, but one of the Seventy ; and the 
monstrous fancy — monstrous, though stated by no less a man than Origen [ap. Jer. Ep. 
cxii.), and adopted by no less a man than Chrysostom {ad loc), and for a time by 
Jerome — that the whole was a scene acted between the two Apostles for a doctrinal pur- 
pose ! As if such dissimulation would not have been infinitely more discreditable to 
them than a temporary disagreement in conduct ! The way in which St. Peter bore the 
rebuke, and forgave and loved him who administered it, is ten-thousandfold more to hif 
honour than the momentary inconsistency is to his disgrace. 



262 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

inspired conviction on the one side, and designing particularism on the c ther, 
hard terms were used. " Tour principle is a nullification of Moses, of inspira- 
tion, of religion itself," said the Judaists ; " it is downright rationalism ; it is 
rank apostasy." " Tour Gospel," replied the Apostle, " is no Gospel at all ; 
it is the abnegation of the Gospel ; it is a bondage to carnal rudiments ; it is a 
denial of Christ." 

A reproof is intolerable when it is administered out of pride or hatred, but 
the wounds of a friend are better at all times than the precious balms of an 
enemy that break the head. We are not told the immediate effect of Paul's 
words upon Peter and Barnabas, and in the case of the latter we may fear 
that, even if unconsciously, they may have tended, since human nature is very 
frail and weak, to exasperate the subsequent quarrel by a sense of previous 
difference. But if Peter's weakness was in exact accordance with all we know 
of his character, so too would be the rebound of a noble nature which restored 
him at once to strength. The needle of the compass may tremble and be 
deflected, but yet it is its nature to point true to the north ; and if Peter was 
sometimes swept aside from perfectness by gusts of impulse and temptation ; 
if after being the first to confess Christ's divinity he is the first to treat Him 
with presumption ; if at one moment he becomes His disciple, and at another 
bids Him depart because he is himself a sinful man ; if now he plunges into 
the sea all faith, and now sinks into the waves all fear ; if now single-handed 
he draws the sword for His Master against a multitude, and now denies Him 
with curses at the question of a servant-maid — we are not surprised to find 
that one who on occasion could be the boldest champion of Gentile equality 
was suddenly tempted by fear of man to betray the cause which he had helped 
to win. 1 But the best proof that he regretted his weakness, and was too 
noble-hearted to bear any grudge, is seen in the terms of honour and affection 
in which he speaks of Paul and his Epistles. 2 It is still more clearly shown 
by his adopting the very thoughts and arguments of Paul, and in his reference, 
while writing among others to the Galatians, to the very words of the Epistle 
in which his own conduct stood so strongly condemned. 3 The legend which 
is commemorated in the little Church of " Domine quo vadis " near Rome, is 
another interesting proof either that this tendency to vacillation in Peter's 
actions was well understood in Christian antiquity, or that he continued to the 
last to be the same Peter — " consistently inconsistent," as he has most happily 
been called — liable to weakness and error, but ever ready to confess himself in 
the wrong, and to repent, and to amend : — 

" And as the water-lily starts and slides 
Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 
Though anchored to the bottom— such was he." 

1 At Buch an epoch of transition it was inevitable that charges of inconsistency 
should be freely bandied about on both sides, and with a certain amount of plausibility. 
Cf. Gal. vi. 13. 

a 2 Pet. iii. 15. 

3 Comp. 1 Pet. ii. 16, 17 with Gal. v. 1, 13, 14, and 1 Pet. ii. 24 with a passage of tl ii 
very remonstrance (Gal. ii. 20). 



ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 253 

But while to a simple and lofty soul like that of Peter there might almost 
be something of joy in the frank acknowledgment of error and the crushing 
down of all anger against the younger, and, at that period, far less celebrated 
man who had publicly denounced him, such was by no means the case with the 
many adherents who chose to elevate him into the head of a faction. 1 What 
may have been the particular tenets of the Kephas -party at Corinth, we have 
no means for deciding, and the only thing which we can imagine likely was 
that their views were identical with those of the least heretical Ebionites, who 
held the Mosaic Law to be binding in its entirety on all Jews. Whatever may 
have been the action of James, or of those who assumed his authority, 2 neither 
in the New Testament, nor in the earliest Christian writings, is there any trace 
of enmity between Paul and Peter, or of radical opposition between their 
views. 3 The notion that there was, has simply grown up from the pernicious 
habit of an over-ingenious criticism which " neglects plain facts and dwells 
on doubtful allusions." Critics of this school have eagerly seized upon the 
Clementines — a malignant and cowardly Ebionite forgery of uncertain date — 
as furnishing the real clue to the New Testament history, while they deliber- 
ately ignore and set aside authority incomparably more weighty. Thus the 
silence 4 of Justin Martyr about the name and writings of St. Paul is 
interpreted into direct hostility, while the allusions of the genuine Clement, 
which indicate the unanimity between the Apostles, are sacrificed to the covert 
attacks of the forger who assumes his name. But St. Paul's whole argument 
turns, not on the supposition that he is setting up a counter-gospel to the 
other Apostles, but on Peter's temporary treason to his own faith, 
his own convictions, his own habitual professions; 6 and all subsequent 
facts prove that the two Apostles held each other in the highest mutual 

1 " And I of Kephas ;" but when Paul again refers to the parties, with the delicate 
consideration of true nobleness, he omits the name of Kephas. 

- The minute accounts of a counter mission inaugurated by James are nothing more 
or less than an immense romance built on a single slight expression (rtvas anb la/cw/Sov), 
applicable only with any certainty to the one occasion to which it is referred. In Gal. ii. 
12 ; iv. 16 ; 1 Cor. i. 12 ; ix. 1, 3, 7 ; 2 Cor. hi. 1 ; x. 7 ; Phil. i. 15, 17, we see the traces 
of a continuous opposition to St. Paul by a party which, in the nature of things, must 
have had its head-quarters in Jerusalem ; and of course the leaders at Jerusalem could 
not remain wholly uninfluenced by the tone of thought around them, and the views 
which were in the very atmosphere which they daily breathed. Yet they publicly 
disavowed the obtrusive members of their community (Acts xv. 24), and towards St. 
Paul personally they always, as far as we know, showed the most perfect courtesy and 
kindness, and to them personally he never utters one single disrespectful or unfraternal 
word. There is not a trace of that stern or bitter tone of controversy between them and 
him which we find interchanged by Bernard and Abelard, Luther and Erasmus, Fenelon 
and Bossi >ot, Wesley and WMtefield. He always speaks of them with gentleness and 
respect (1 Cor. ix. 5; Eph. hi. 5, &c). 

3 Even the Praedicatio Pauli (preserved in Cyprian, De Bebaptismate) implies that 
they were reconciled at Kome before their martyrdom, " postremo in urbe, quasi tunc 
primuni, mvicem sibi esse cognitos." 

4 On the explanation of this silence, which does not, however, exclude apparent 
allusions, see Westcott, Canon., p. 135 ; Lightfoot, Gal., p. 310. Who can suppose that 
Justin's ytvea-Oe ws if (a otl Kayui rifi-qv a>s uftets {Cohort, ad Graec, p. 40) bears only an acci- 
dental resemblance to Gal. iv. 12 ? 

5 Maurice, Unity, 497. 



J 



254 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

esteem ; they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were 
not divided. 1 

Tims, then, thanks to St. Paul, the battle was again won, and the Judaisens, 
who were so anxious to steer the little ship of the Church to certain wreck and 
ruin on the rocks of national bigotry, could no longer claim the sanction of the 
relapsing Peter. But no sooner was all smooth in the Church of Antioch than 
the old mission-hunger seized the heart of Paul, and urged him with noble 
restlessness from the semblance of inactivity. Going to his former comrade 
Barnabas, he said, " Come, let us re-traverse our old ground, and see for our- 
selves how our brethren are in every city in which we preached the word of the 
Lord." Barnabas readily acceded to the proposal, but suggested that they 
should take with them his cousin Mark. 2 But to this Paul at once objected. 
The young man who had suddenly gone away home from Pamphylia, and left 
them, when it was too late to get any other companion, to face the difficulties 
and dangers of the journey alone, Paul did not think it right to take with 
them. Neither would give way; neither put in practice the exquisite and 
humble Christian lesson of putting up with less than his due. A quarrel rose 
between these two faithful servants of God as bitter as it was deplorable, 3 and 
the only hope of peace under such circumstances lay in mutual separation. 
They parted, and they suffered for their common fault. They parted to forgive 
each other indeed, and to love and honour each other, and speak of each other 
hereafter with affection and respect, but never to work together again ; never 
to help each other and the cause of God by the union of their several gifts ; 
never to share with one another in the glory of Churches won to Christ from 
the heathen; and in all probability to rue, in the regret of lifelong memories, 
the self-will, the want of mutual concession, the unspoken soft answer which 
turneth away wrath, which, in a few bitter moments, too late repented of, 
robbed them both of the inestimable solace of a friend. 

Which was right? which was wrong? "We are not careful to apportion 
between them the sad measure of blame, 4 or to dwell on the weaknesses 
which marred the perfection of men who have left the legacy of bright 
examples to all the world. In the mere matter of judgment each was partly 
right, each partly wrong ; 6 their error lay in the persistency which did not 

1 See Excursus XVIII., " The Attacks on St. Paul in the Clementines." In the Eomish 
Church the commemoration of St. Panl is never separated from that of St. Peter. On the 
feast-days set apart to each saint, the other is invariably honoured in the most prominent 
way. 

2 The true reading of Acts xv. 37 is t -/3ouAeTo, «, A, B, C, E, Syr., Copt., Mth.., &c. 
(Vulg. Volebat). The word is characteristically mild compared with the equally 
characteristic vehemence of the ^iov . . . ^ of St. Paul. 

3 Notice the emphatic tone of the original in Acts xv. 39. The word 7rapo|va>i.bs 
(= " e xaccrbatio " "provocation") implies the interchange of sharp language; but it 
also impTTes"~atemporary ebullition, not a permanent quarrel. Elsewhere it only 
occurs in Heb. x. 24; Deut. xxix. 28 (LXX.). 

4 " Viderint ii qui de Apostolis judicant ; mild non tarn bene est, immo non tam 
maid est, ut Apostolos committam " (Tert. De Praescr. 24). 

5 Paulus severior, Barnabas clementior ; uterque in suo sensu abundat ; et tarien 
diasensio habet aliquid humanae f ragilitatis " (Jer. Adv. Pdag. ii. 522). 



ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. ■ 255 

admit of mutual accommodation. Each was like himself. St. Barnabas may 
have suffered himself too strongly to be influenced by partiality for a relative; 
St. Paul by the memory of personal indignation. Barnabas may have erred 
on the side of leniency ; Paul on the side of sternness. St. Paul's was so far I 
the worst fault, yet the very fault may have risen from his loftier ideal. 1 i 
There was a " severe earnestness " about him, a sort of intense whole-hearted- — — ■♦ 
ness, which could make no allowance whatever for one who, at the very point , 
a* which dangers began to thicken, deserted a great and sacred work. Mark 
had put his hand to the plough, and had looked back ; and, conscious of the 
serious hindrance which would arise from a second defection, conscious of the 
lofty qualities which were essential to any one who was honoured with such 
Divine responsibilities, St. Paul might fairly have argued that a cause must 
not be risked out of tenderness for a person. 2 Barnabas, on the other hand, 
might have urged that it was most unlikely that one who was now willing to 
face the work again should again voluntarily abandon it, and he might fairly I 
have asked whether one failure was to stamp a lifetime. Both persisted, and 1 
both suffered. Paul went his way, and many a time, in the stormy and v 
agitated days which followed, must he have sorely missed, amid the provoking 
of all men and the strife of tongues, the repose and generosity which breathed 
through the life and character of the Son of Exhortation. Barnabas went his ^ 
way, and, dissevered from the grandeur and vehemence of Paul, passed into 
comparative obscurity, in which, so far from sharing the immortal gratitudes, 
which embalms the memoiy of his colleague, his name is never heard again, \ 
except in the isolated allusions of the letters of his friend. 

For their friendship was not broken. Barnabas did not become a Judaiser, 
or in any way discountenance the work of Paul. The Epistle which passed 
by his name is spurious, 3 but its tendency is anti-Judaic, which would not 
have been the case if, after the dispute at Antioch, he had permanently sided 
with the anti-Pauline faction. In the Acts of the Apostles he is not again 
mentioned. Whether he confined his mission-work to his native island, 
whither he almost immediately sailed with Mark, or whether, as seems to be 
implied by the allusion in the Epistle to the Corinthians, he extended it more 
widely, he certainly continued to work on the same principles as before, taking 
with him no female companion, and accepting nothing from the Churches to 
which he preached. 4 

And though, so far as they erred, the Apostles suffered for their error, 

1 'O ITavAos e^ret to Sinaiov, 6 Bapvd|Sa? to <$>i.\av0p<tiTrov (Chrys.). 2 Prov. XXV. 19. 

3 It is examined and rejected, among others, by Hefele, Das Sendschr. d. Ap. 
Barnabas (Tiibingen, 1840). 

4 1 Cor. ix. 6 ; Gal. ii. 9. It bas been inferred from the mention of Mark as known 
to the Churches of Bitbynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Galatia (1 Pet. i. 1 ; v. 13), and 
Colossae (Col. iv. 10), and bis presence long afterwards in Asia Minor (2 Tim. iv. 11), , 
that, if be continued to accompany bis _cousin Barnabas. Asia Minor, and especially its *)v 
eastern parts, may have been tbe scene of Iheir labours (Lewin, i. 165). The allusion 

in Col. iv. 10 bas been taken to imply tbat by tbat time (A.D. 63) Barnabas was no longer 
living. Nothing certain is known about the place, manner, or time of bis deatb. The — ■ 
Acta et Passio Barndbae in Cypro is apocryphal. St. Mark is said to have been martyred 
at Alexandria. 



256 • THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

God overt aled evil for good. Henceforth they were engaged in two spheres 
of mission action instead of one, and henceforth also the bearing and the views 
of Paul were more free and vigorous, less shackled by associations, less liable 
to reaction. Hitherto his position in the Church of Jerusalem had depended 
much upon the countenance of Barnabas. Henceforth he had to stand alone, 
to depend solely on himself and his own Apostolic dignity, and to rely on no 
favourable reception for his views, except such as he won by the force of right 
and reason, and by the large benefits which accrued to the Church of Jerusalen: 
from the alms which he collected from Gentile Churches. 

And Mark also profited by the difference of which he was the unhappy 
cause. If the lenient partiality of one Apostle still kept open for him the 
missionary career, the stern judgment of the other must have helped to make 
him a more earnest man. All that we henceforth know of him shows alike 
his great gifts and his self-denying energy. In his Gospel he has reflected 
for us with admirable vividness the knowledge and experience of his friend 
and master St. Peter, to whom, in his later years, he stood in the same 
relation that Timothy occupied towards St. Paul. 1 But even St. Paul saw 
good cause not only to modify his unfavourable opinion, but to invite him 
again as a fellow-labourer. 2 He urges the Colossians to give him a kindly 
welcome, 3 and even writes to Timothy an express request that he would bring 
him to Rome to solace his last imprisonment, because he had found him — that 
which he had once failed to be — "profitable to him for ministry." 4 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY: PAUL 
IN GALATIA. 

" Come, let us get up early to the vineyards ; let us see if the vines nourish." — 
Cant. vii. 12. 

The significant silence as to any public sympathy for Barnabas and Mark, 
together with the prominent mention of it in the case of Paul, seems to show 
that the Church of Antioch in general considered that St. Paul was in the 
right. Another indication of the same fact is that Silas consented to become 
his companion. Hitherto Silas had been so closely identified with the Church 
of Jerusalem that he had been one of the emissaries chosen to confirm the 
genuineness of the circular letter, and in the last notice of him which occurs 
in Scripture we find him still in the company of St. Peter, who sends him 
from Babylon with a letter to some of the very Churches which he had visited 
with St. Paul. 5 His adhesion to the principles of St. Paul, in spite of the 

> 1 Pet. v. 13. 2 Philem. 24. 

* Col. iv. 10. 4 2 Tim. iv. 11, eis SuaKoviav. 

6 1 1'et. v. 12. The identity cannot, however, be regarded as certain. 



J JH 




BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 257 

elose bonds which united hirn with the Jewish Christians, is a sufficient proof 
that he was a man of large nature ; and as a recognised prophet of Jerusalem 
and Antioch, his companionship went far to fill up the void left in the mission 
by the departure of Barnabas. His name Silvanus, 1 and the fact that he, 
too, seems to have been a Roman citizen, 2 may perhaps show that he had some 
connexion with the Gentile world, to which, therefore, he would be a more 
acceptable Evangelist. In every respect it was a happy Providence which 
provided St. Paul with so valuable a companion. And as they started on a 
second great journey, carrying with them the hopes and fortunes of Chris- 
tianity, they were specially commended by the brethren to the grace of God. 

St. Paul's first object was to confirm the Churches which he had already 
founded. Such a confirmation of proselytes was an ordinary Jewish con- 
ception, 3 and after the vacillations of opinion which had occurred even at 
Antioch, Paul would be naturally anxious to know whether the infant com- 
munities continued to prosper, though they were harassed by persecutions 
from without, and liable to perversion from within. Accordingly he began 
his mission by visiting the Churches of Syria and Cilicia. It is probable that 
he passed along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Issus, and through the 
Syrian and Araanid Gates to the towns of Alexandria and Issus. 4 There the 
road turned westward, and led through Mopsuestia and Adana to Tarsus. 
From Tarsus three routes were open to him — one running along the shore of 
the Mediterranean to the Cilician Seleucia, and then turning inland through 
the Lycaonian Laranda to Derbe ; the other a narrow and unfrequented path 
through the mountains of Isauria ; the third, which in all probability he chose 
as the safest, the most frequented and the most expeditious, through the 
famous Cilician Gates, 6 which led direct to Tyana, and then turning south- 
westward ran to Cybistra, and so to Derbe, along the southern shore of Lake 
Ak Ghieul. 6 And if, indeed, Paul and Silas took this route and passed 
through the narrow gorge under its frowning cliffs of limestone, clothed here 
and there with pine and cedar, which to the Crusaders presented an appear- 
ance so terrible that they christened it the Gates of Judas, how far must they 
have been from imagining, in their wildest dreams, that their footsteps — the 
footsteps of two obscure and persecuted Jews — would lead to the traversing 
of that pass centuries afterwards by kings and their armies. How little did they 
dream that those warriors, representing the haughtiest chivalry of Europe, would 
hold the name of Jews in utter execration, but would be sworn to rescue the 
traditional tomb of that Christ whom they acknowledged as their Saviour, 

1 feilas may be of Semitic origin. Josephus mentions four Orientals of the name 
(Krenkel, p. 78). 

2 Acts xvi. 20, 37. 3 See Schleusner, s.v. cmjp^w. 

4 The Syrian gates are now called the Pass of Beylan ; the Amanid Gates are the 
K.ara-Kapu. 

5 Now the Kulek-Boghaz. 

6 For further geographical details, see Con. and Howson, ch. viii., and Lewin, ch. x. 
It is humiliating to think that the roads in St. Paul's day were incomparably better, and 
better kept, than they are at this moment, when the mere debris of them suffice for 
peoples languishing under the withering atrophy of Turkish rule. 

B 



258 



THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 



from the hands of a mighty people who also recognised Him as a Prophet 
though they did not believe Him to be Divine ! 

Whatever road was taken by Paul and Silas, they must have been their 
own messengers, and announced their own arrival. And we can well imagine 
the surprise, the emotion, the delight of the Christians in the little Isauric 
town, when they suddenly recognised the well-known figure of the missionary, 
who, arriving in the opposite direction, with the wounds of the cruel stoninga 
fresh upon him, had first taught them the faith of Christ. Can we not also 
imagine the uneasiness which, during this visitation of the Churches which he 
loved so well, must often have invaded the heart of Paul, when almost the 
first question with which he must have been greeted on all sides would be, 
" And where is Barnabas ? " For Barnabas was a man born to be respected 




COUNTRY BOUND TARSUS. 



and loved; and since Silas — great as may have been his gifts of utterance, 
and high as were his credentials 1 — would come among them as a perfect 
stranger, whom they could not welcome with equal heartiness, we may be sure 
that if Paul erred in that sad dissension, he must have been reminded of it, 
and have had cause to regret it at every turn. 

From Derbe once more they passed to Lystra. Only one incident of their 
visit is told us, but it happily affected all the future of the great Apostle. In 
his former visit he had converted the young Timotheus, and it was in the 
house of the boy's mother Eunice, 2 and his grandmother Lois, that he and 
Silas were probaby received. These two pious women were Jewesses who 
had now accepted the Christian faith. The marriage of Eunice with a Greek, 3 

1 7rp<x/>7?T»}s (Acts XV. 32). 

2 The name Eunice being purely Greek might seem to indicate previous association 
with Gentiles. 

* At the same time, mixed marriages were far less strictly forbidden to women than 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 259 

and the non- circumcision of her son, indicate an absence of strict Judaism 
vrhich, since it was not inconsistent with " unfeigned faith," must have made 
them more ready to receive the Gospel ; and Paul himself bears witness to 
their earnest sincerity, and to the careful training in the Scriptures which 
they had given to their child. 

We are led to suppose that Eunice was a widow, and if so she showed a 
beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice in parting with her only son. The youthful 
Timothy is one of the best known and most lovable of that little circle of 
companions and followers — chiefly Gentile converts — who are henceforth 
associated with the wanderings of St. Paul. Of the many whom Paul loved, 
none were dearer to him than the young disciple of Lystra. Himself without 
wife or child, he adopted Timothy, and regarded him as a son in all affec- 
tionate nearness. " To Timothy, my son ; " " my true son in the faith "— sucn 
are the terms in which he addresses him ; 1 and he reminds the Philippians 
how well they knew " that, as a son with a father, he had slaved with him for 
the Gospel." 2 And slight as are the touches which enable us to realise the 
character of the young Lystrenian, they are all wonderfully graphic and con- 
sistent. He was so blameless in character that both in his native Lystra and 
in Iconium the brethren bore warm and willing testimony to his worth. 3 In 
spite of a shyness and timidity which were increased by his youthfulness, 4 he 
was so entirely united in heart and soul with the Apostle that among his 
numerous friends and companions he found no one so genuine, so entirely un- 
selfish, so sincerely devoted to the furtherance of the cause of Christ. 5 He 
was, in fact, more than any other the alter ego of the Apostle. Their know- 
ledge of each other was mutual ; 6 and one whose yearning and often lacerated 
heart had such deep need of a kindred spirit on which to lean for sympathy, 
and whose distressing infirmities rendered necessary to him the personal 
services of some affectionate companion, must have regarded the devoted 
tenderness of Timothy as a special gift of God to save him from being 
crushed by overmuch sorrow. And yet, much as Paul loved him, he loved his 
Churches more ; and if any Church needs warning or guidance, or Paul him- 
self desires to know how it prospers, Timothy is required to overcome his 

to men. Dru>illa and Berenice married Gentile princes, but compelled them first to 
accept circumcision. The omission of the covenant rite in the case of Timothy may have 
been owing to the veto of the child's Greek father. 

1 1 Tim. i. 2, 18 ; 2 Tim. h. 2. 2 PhiL ii. 22, eSovKevasv eis to evayyekiov. 

3 Whether Timothy belonged to Lystra or to Derbe is a matter of small importance, 
but that in point of fact he did belong to Lystra seems so clear from a comparison of Acts 
xvi. 1, 2 ; sx. 4 ; and 2 Tim. hi. 11, that it is strange there should have been so much 
useless controversy on the subject. The notion that " Gaius " in Acts xx. 4 could not be 
" of Derbe," because there is a Gaius of Macedonia in xix. 29 (who may or may not be 
the Gaius of Rom. xvi. 23 ; 1 Cor. i. 14), is like arguing that there could not be a Mr. 
Smith of Monmouth and another Mr. Smith of Yorkshire ; and the transference on this 
ground of the epithet Aep|3atos to TijuoGeos in the absence of all evidence of MSS. is mere 
frivolity. 

4 Acts xvi. 2. 

5 Phil. h. 20, ovSeva yap «?xw lo-oi/fvxov, Sorts yj^er/ws to. nepl ifiiSv ftept/Avqcrci' ot mxvres yap ri 
iwriav ^rfrovatv, ov ra 1tjo*ov Xpiaroi). 

6 2 Tim. iii. 10, 2i> fi« irapi}icoAov0ii»cas (WW if StiatricaXtq Tj} aytryjj, k.tJL 

s 2 



260 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

slirinking modesty, 1 to console the persecuted Churches of Macedonia, 2 or 
face the conceited turbulence of Corinth, 3 or to be the overseer of the Church 
of Ephesus, 4 with its many troubles from without and from within. In fact, 
no name is so closely associated with St. Paul's as that of Timothy. Not 
only were two Epistles addressed to him, but he is associated with St. Paul in 
the superscription of five ; 5 he was with the Apostle during great part of his 
second missionary journey; 6 he was with him at Ephesus; 7 he accompanied 
him in his last voyage to Jerusalem ; 8 he helped to comfort his first imprison- 
ment at Rome ; 9 he is urged, in the Second Epistle addressed to him, to hasten 
from Ephesus, to bring with him the cloak, books, and parchments which St. 
Paul had left with Carpus at Troas, and to join him in his second imprison- 
ment before it is too late to see him alive. 10 Some sixteen years had elapsed 
between the days when Paul took Timothy as his companion at Lystra, 11 and 
the days when, in the weary desolation of his imprisoned age, he writes once 
more to this beloved disciple. 12 Yet even at this latter date St. Paul addresses 
him as though he were the same youth who had first accompanied him to the 
hallowed work. " To him," says Hausrath, " as to the Christian Achilles, the 
Timotheus-legend attributes eternal youth ; " this being, according to the 
writer, one of the signs that the two pastoral Epistles addressed to Timothy 
were the work of a writer in the second century. 13 But surely it is obvious 
that if Timothy, when St. Paul first won him over to the faith of Christ, was 
not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, he would be still far short of the 
prime of life when the Second Epistle was addressed to him ; and that, even 
if he were older, there is no more familiar experience than an old man's 
momentary f orgetfulness that those whom he has known as boys have grown 
up to full manhood. 14 

This was the youth whose companionship Paul now secured. Young as 
he was, the quick eye of Paul saw in him the spirit of loving and fearful 
duty — read the indications of one of those simple, faithful natures which 
combine the glow of courage with the bloom of modesty. When Jesus had 
sent forth His disciples He had sent them forth two and two ; but this was 
only in their native land. It was a very different thing to travel in all 
weathers, through the blinding dust and burning heat of the plains of 
Lycaonia, and over the black volcanic crags and shelterless mountain ranges 
of Asia. He had suffered from the departure of Mark in Pisidia, and hence- 

1 1 Cor. iv. 17 ; xvi. 10, i^o/Sws. 

2 Acts xix. 22 ; 1 Thess. iii. 2 ; Phil. ii. 18—20. 3 i C or. xvi 10. 
« 1 Tim. i. 3. 5 1, 2 Thess., 2 Cor., Phil., Col. 

6 Acts xvi. 3 ; xvii. 14 ; xviii. 5. 7 1 Cor. iv. 17 ; xvi. 10. 

8 Acts xx. 4. 9 Phil. ii. 18—20. i° 2 Tim. iv. 9, 13. 

11 Circ. A.D. 51. 12 Circ. A.D. G6. 

13 Hausrath, p. 259. He admits that they "contain important historic indications." 

11 J t has always been recognised as a most natural touch in Tennyson's poem, "The 
Grandmother,'' that she speaKs of her old sons as though they were still lads. But even 
if Timotheus had reached the age of forty by the time he was appointed "Bishop" of 
Ephesus, there would be nothing incongruous in saying to him, MrjSeis <rov ttjs i/pottjtos 
KMax\>p<}vtiTo> (1 Tim. iv. 12), or to* Se ycioTtpiKa? e7n0u/xi'as <j>evye (2 Tim. ii. 22), especially as 
these were written not many years after the ixrj rtf oftv avrhv e£ov6evrj<rn of 1 Cor. xvi. Ill 



BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOUKNET. 261 

forth we never find Mm without at least two associates — at this time 
Silas and Timothy ; afterwards Titus and Timothy in Macedonia and Achaia, 
and Luke and Aristarchus in his journey to Rome. 

It may surprise us that the first step he took was to circumcise Timothy ; 
and that since the rite might be performed by any Israelite, he did it with his 
own hands. 1 "We have, indeed, seen that he was in all probability driven to 
circumcise the Gentile Titus ; but we are not told of any pressure put upon 
him to perforin the same rite for Timothy, who, though the son of a Jewess, 
had grown up without it. Nothing is more certain than that, in St. Paul's 
opinion, circumcision was valueless. His conduct, therefore, can only be re- 
garded as a second concession to, or rather a prevention and anticipation of, 
prejudices so strong that they might otherwise have rendered his work im- 
possible. St. Luke says that it was done " on account of the Jews in those 
regions; for they all knew that his father was a Greek." Now, if this was 
generally known, whereas it was not so widely known that his mother was a 
Jewess, St. Paul felt that Timothy would everywhere be looked upon as an 
uncircumcised Gentile, and as such no Jew would eat with him, and it would 
be hopeless to attempt to employ him as a preacher of the Messiah in the 
synagogues, which they always visited as the beginning of their labours. If, 
on the other hand, it were known that he was by birth a Jewish boy — since 
the rule was that nationality went by the mother's side 2 — an uncir- 
cumcised Jew would be in every Ghetto an object of execration. If, 
then, Timothy was to be ordained to the work of the ministry, his circum- 
cision was indispensable to his usefulness, and his Jewish parentage was suffi- 
cient to deprive the act of the dangerous significance which might much more 
easily be attached to it in the case of Titus. Obviously, too, it was better 
that Paul should do it spontaneously than that it should receive a factitious 
importance by being once more extorted from him in spite of protest. He 
did it, not in order to please himself, but that he might condescend to the 
infirmities of the weak. 3 

The circumcision was followed by a formal ordination. The whole Church 
was assembled ; the youth made the public profession of his faith ; 4 the elders 
and Paul him elf solemnly laid their hands upon his head; 5 the prophetic 
voices which had marked him out for a great work were confirmed by 
those who now charged him with the high duties which lay before him, 
and at the same time warned him of the dangers which those duties 

1 By none, however, except an Israelite {Abhdda Zara, f. 27, 1). 

2 " Partus sequitur ventrem " is the rule of the Talmud {Bechoroth, 1, 4, &c. ; 
"Wetst. ad. loc). If the Jews knew that his mother was a Jewess, and yet that he had 
not received the "seal of the covenant," they would have treated him as a mamser. 
\See Ewald, Alterth. 257.) 

3 Eom. xv. 1 ; 1 Cor. ix. 20. 

* 1 T im , vi. 12, u)jUoA.6yT]cras tt\v ko.A.t]v 6|uoA.oyiav evwiriov ttoAAwv ixaprupoiv. 

* 1 Tim. iv. 14, to x<*pio-|aa ° e860T) crot Sia 7rpo(p7]Teias fiera en-itfe'crews riv x 6L P^ }V T °v irpecBv* 
repi'ov ; 2 Tim. i. 6, Sia ttjs eTri0eo"ea>S to>v x et P<*>v (iov. 

6 1 Tim. i. 18, Ka-ra Tas 7rpoavouo-as em. crk irpoifrriTeiuf Compare the happy prognostics^ 
tions of Staupitz about the work of Luther. 



262 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

involved ; * the grace of the Holy Spirit descended like a flame into his heart, 1 
and the gentle boy of Lystra was henceforth the consecrated companion of 
toils and wanderings, of which the issue was the destined conversion of the 
world. 

The mission opened with every circumstance of encouragement. The 
threefold cord of this ministry was not quickly broken. At each city which 
they visited they announced the decisions arrived at by the Apostles anr? 
elders at Jerusalem, 3 and the Churches were strengthened in the faith, and 
grew in number daily. 

In this way they traversed "the Phrygian and G-alatian district." 4 There 
has been much speculation as to the towns of Phrygia at which they rested, 
but in the absolute silence of St. Luke, and in the extreme looseness of the 
term " Phrygian," we cannot be sure that St. Paul preached in a single town 
of the region which is usually included under that term. That he did not 
found any church seems clear from the absence of allusion to any Phrygian 
community in the New Testament, The conjecture that he travelled on this 
occasion to the far distant Colossse is most improbable, even if it be not ex- 
cluded by the obvious inference from his own language. 5 All that we can 
reasonably suppose is that after leaving Iconium he proceeded to Antioch in 
Pisidia— since there could be no reason why he should neglect to confirm the 
Church which he had founded there — and then crossed the ridge of the 
Paroreia to Philomelium, from which it would have been possible for him 
either to take the main road to the great Phrygian town of Synnada, and 
then turn north-eastwards to Pessinus, or else to enter Galatia by a shorter 
and less frequented route which did not run through any Phrygian town of 
the slightest importance. It does not seem to have been any part of St. Paul's 
plan to evangelise Phrygia. Perhaps he may have originally intended to make 
his way by the road through Apamea, to Oolossse and Laodicea, and to go 
down the valley of the Mseander to Ephesus. But if so, this intention was 
hindered by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 6 Such providential hindrances 
to a course which seemed so obvious may well have been mysterious to St. 
Paul ; but they appear less so to us when, viewing them in the light of history, 

1 1 Tim. i. 18, iVct (XTparevr] ev aureus ttjv /caXrjv OTpareiav ', CI. IV. 14 ; VI. 12. 

2 2 Tim. i. 6, ava^oyirvpetv (= "to fan into fresh, flame," /cvptws roix; avdpaiaxs (pwavy Suid. ; 

o-QoSpoTepov rb-rrvp epyd^eaOai, Theopliyl.) to xapicr|aa rov ®eov, o kcrnv kv <roi, /or A. 

3 In a loose way even Antioch and Iconium might be regarded as Churches of Cilicia, 
Tarsus (as appears from coins, Lewin, i. 171) being regarded as a capital of Lycaonia, 
Isauria, and even of Caria. Further, the circular letter had been drawn up with more oi 
less express reference to what had taken place in these Churches (Acts xv. 12). 

4 The true reading is ttji/ $>pvyia.v koI rakTucTji/ x^P av (**> A, B, C, D). 

5 Col. i. 4, 6, 7 ; ii. 1. 

6 It will be seen that I take the clause KwAueeVres, k.t.K. (Acts xvi. 6) retrospectively— 
i.e., as the reason assigned for their divergence into the Phrygian and Galatian district. 
If they entertained the design of preaching in Asia— i.e., in Lydia— the natural road to 
it would have been from Antioch of Pisidia, and it is hardly likely that they would have 
intentionally turned aside to the semi barbarous regions of Phrygia and Galatia first ; 
indeed, we have St. Paul's own express admission (Gal. iv. 13) that his evangelisation of 
Galatia was the result of an accidental sickness. The permission to preach in Asia was 
only delayed (Acts xix. 10). 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 263 

we see that otherwise the Epistle to the Galatians might never have been 
written, and that thus the whole course of Christian theology might have been 
entirely changed. 

Of any work in Phrygia, therefore, there was nothing to narrate ; x but we 
may rell deplore St. Luke's non-acquaintance with the details of that visit to 
Galatia, which were deeply interesting and important, and of which we are 
noTf left to discover the incidents by piecing the fragmentary notices and allu- 
sions of the Epistle. 

We may suppose that on finding it impossible to preach at this time in the 
great cities of Lydian Asia, 2 St. Paul and his companions next determined to 
make their way to the numerous Jewish communities on the shores of the 
Euxine. They seem to have had no intention to preach among a people so 
new to them, and apparently so little promising, as the Galatians. But God 
had other designs for them ; they were detained in Galatia, and their stay was 
attended with very memorable results. 

St. Luke, who uses the ordinary geographical term, must undoubtedly 
have meant by the term Galatia that central district of the Asian peninsula 3 
which was inhabited by a people known to the ancient world under the names 
of Celts, Galatians, Gauls, and (more recently) Gallo- Greeks. Their history 
was briefly this. When the vast tide of Aryan migration began to set to the 
westward from the valleys of the Oxus and the plains of Turkestan, the Celtic 
family was among the earliest that streamed away from their native seats. 4 
They gradually occupied a great part of the centre and west of Europe, and 
various tribes of the family were swept hither and thither by different 
currents, as they met with special obstacles to their unimpeded progress. One 
of their Brennuses, 5 four centuries before the Christian era, inflicted on Rome 
its deepest humiliation. Another, one hundred and eleven years later, 6 filled 
Northern Greece with terror and rapine, and when his hordes were driven 
back by the storms and portents which seconded the determined stand of the 
Greeks at Delphi, they joined another body under Leonnorius and Lutarius,? 

1 That some converts were made is implied by Acts xviii. 23. The absence of a 
definite Phrygian Church is seen in the silence about any collection there. 

2 "Asia" in the Acts (cf. Catull. xlvi. 5) seems always to mean the region round the 
old "Asian meadow" of Homer (II. ii. 461) — i.e., the entire valley and plain of the 
Cayster — i.e., Lydia. Every one of " the seven churches which are in Asia " (Rev. i. — iii.) 
is Lydian. 

3 The term Asia Minor is first used by Orosius in the fourth century (Oros. i. 2). 

4 On the Celtic migrations, see the author's Families of Speech, 2nd ed. (reprinted in 
Language and Languages), p. 329. 

5 B.C. 390. The word Brennus is a Latinised form of the title which is preserved in 
the "Welsh orenin, " king." 

6 B.C. 279. 

7 Liv. xxxviii. 16. These names — Celtic words of obscure origin with Latin termina- 
tions — are eagerly seized on by German travellers and commentators, and identified with 
Leonard and Lothair (Luther), in order to prove that the people of Galatia were not Celts, 
but Teutons. Why both French and Geriuans should be so eager to claim affinities with 
these not very creditable Galatians I cannot say ; but meanwhile it must be regarded as 
certain that the Galatse were Celts, and not only Celts, but Cymric Celts. The only 
other arguments, besides these two names, adduced by Wieseler and other German 
writers are — (1) The name Germanopolis — a late and hideous hybrid which, at the best, 



264 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

straggled across the Hellespont in the best way they could, and triumphantly 
established themselves in the western regions of Asia Minor. But their exactions 
soon roused an opposition which led to an effectual curbing of their power, and 
they were gradually confined in the central region which is partly traversed by 
the valleys of the Sangarius and the Halys. Here we find them in three tribes, 
each of which had its own capital. Bordering on Phrygia were the Tolisto- 
bogii, with their capital Pessinus ; in the centre the Tectosages, with their 
capital Ancyra ; and to the eastward, bordering on Pontus, were the Trocmi, 
with their capital Tavium. 1 Originally the three tribes were each divided 
into four tetrarchies, but at length they were united (B.C. 65) under Deiotarus, 
tetrarch of the Tolistobogii, the Egbert of Galatian history. 2 The Romans 
under Cn. Manlius Yulso had conquered them in B.C. 189, 3 but had left them 
nominally independent ; and in B.C. 36 Mark Antony made Amyntas king. 
On his death, in B.C. 25, Galatia was joined to Lycaonia and part of Pisidia, 
and made a Roman province ; and since it was one of the Imperial provinces, 
it was governed by a Propraetor. This was its political condition when Paul 
entered Pessinus, which, though one of the capitals, lies on the extreme 
frontier, and at that time called itself Sebaste of the Tolistobogii. 4 

The providential cause which led to St. Paul's stay in the country was, as 
he himself tells us, a severe attack of illness : and the manner in which he 
alludes to it gives us reason to infer that it was a fresh access of agony from 
that "stake in the flesh" which I believe to have been acute ophthalmia, 
accompanied, as it often is, by violent cerebral disturbance. 5 In his letter to 
his Galatian converts he makes a touching appeal, which in modern phraseology 
might run as follows : 6 — " Become as I am, brethren, I beseech you" (i.e., free 



only points to the settlement of some Teutonic community among the Gauls ; (2) the 
tribe of Teutobodiaci, about whom we know too little to say what the name means ; and 
(3) the assertion of St. Jerome that the Galatians (whom he had personally visited) 
spoke a language like the people of Treves (Jer. in Ep. Gal. ii. praef.). This argument, 
however, tells precisely in the opposite direction, since the expressions of Caesar and 
Tacitus decisively prove that the Treveri were Gauls (Tac. Ann. i. 43, H. iv. 71 ; Cass. 
B. G. ii. 4, &c), though they aped Teutonic peculiarities (Caes. B. G. viii. 25; Tac. 
Germ. 28). Every trait of their character, every certain phenomenon of their language, 
every proved fact of their history, shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Galatae, 
or Gauls, were not Slavs, nor Teutons, but Celts ; and it is most probable that the names 
Galatae and Celtae are etymologically identical. The ingenuity which elaborately sets 
itself to overthrow accepted and demonstrated conclusions leads to endless waste of time 
and space. Any who are curious to see more on the subject will find it in the Excursus 
of Dr. Light foot's Galatians, pp. 229—240. 

1 Tolistobogii, or Tolosatobogii, seems to combine the elements of Tolosa (Toulouse) 
and Boii. The etymologies of Tectosages (who also occur in Aquitaine, Caes. B. G. vi. 24 ; 
Strabo, p. 187) and Trocmi are uncertain. Other towns of the Galatae were Abrostola, 
Amorium, Tolosochorion, towns of the Tolistobogii ; Corbeus and Aspona, of the Tecto- 
sages ; Mithradatium and Danala, of the Trocmi. 

2 Strabo, p. 567. 

3 Liv. xxxviii. 12. " Hi jam degeneres sunt ; mixti et Gallograeci vere, quod appel- 
lantur." 

4 It is now a mere heap of ruins. 

* On this subject see infra, Excursus X., "The Stake in the Flesh." 
6 Gal. iv. 12 — 14. This passage may serve to illustrate the necessity of a new English 
version founded on bo *;ter readings. Thus in verse 12, the " Oe " of our version should b* 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 265 

from the yoke of external and useless ordinances), " for I, too, made myself as 
yon are. 1 Jew that I was, I placed myself on the level of you Gentiles, and 
now I want you to stand with me on that same level, instead of trying to 
make yourselves Jews. I do not wish to speak by way of complaint about 
you. Tou never did me any personal wrong. 2 Nay, you know that when I 
preached the Gospel among you, on my first visit, it was in consequence of an 
attack of sickness, which detained me in the midst of a journey ; you could 
not, therefore, feel any gratitude to me as though I had come with the express 
purpose of preaching to you ; and besides, at that time weak, agonised with 
pain, liable to fits of delirium, with my eyes red and ulcerated by that disease 
by which it pleases God to let Satan buffet me, you might well have been 
tempted to regard me as a deplorable object. My whole appearance must 
have been a trial to you — a temptation to you to reject me. But you did 
not; you were very kind to me. Tou might have treated me with con- 
temptuous indifference ; 3 you might have regarded me with positive loathing ; 4 
but instead of this you honoured, you loved me, you received me as though 
I was an angel — nay, even as though I were the Lord of angels, as though I 
were even He whom I preached unto you. How glad you were to see me ! 
How eagerly you congratulated yourselves and me on the blessed accident — 
nay, rather, on the blessed providence of God, which had detained me amongst 
you! 5 So generous, so affectionate were you towards me, that I bear 
you witness that to aid me as I sat in misery in the darkened rooms, 
unable to bear even a ray of light without excruciating pain, you would, 



rendered "become ;" and the " I am as you are " should be " I became ;" the " have not 
injured " should be "did not injure," since tbe tense is an aorist, not a perfect, and the 
allusion is to some fact which we do not know. In verse 13 the Se ought not to be left 
unnoticed ; " through infirmity of the flesh " is a positive mistake (since this would 
require St' ao-0eveias, per) for "on account of an attack of illness," as in Thuc. vi. 102; 
to nporepov probably means "the former time," not "at the first." In verse 14 the best 
reading is not rbv ireipacr^v ixov, but tov n. vjj.Hii' (a, A, B, C, D, F, G, &c, and " faciliori 
lectioni praestat ardua") ; and e^e-n-rua-are is stronger than "rejected." In verse 15, nov, 
not tc's, is probably the right reading, and ^ should certainly be omitted — and the mean- 
ing is not "where is the blessedness ye spake of" but "your self -congratulation on my arrival 
among you ; " the av should certainly be omitted with e^ojov^are, as it makes the Greek 
idiom far more vivid, although inadmissible in English (cf. John xv. 22 ; xix. 11). In 
verse 16 the wcrre draws a conclusion, "so that," which is suddenly and delicately changed 
into a question, " have I ?" instead of "I have." It is only by studying the intensely 
characteristic Greek of St. Paul that we are able, as it were, to lay our hands on his 
breast and feel every beat of his heart, 
i Gahii. 17; 1 Cor..ix. 21. 

2 Cf . 2 Cor. ii. 5, ov* e p. e kekv-rrr\Kev. 

3 Cf . 2 Cor. x. 10. His bodily presence is ao-Gevrjs, and his speech e|ovSevrj|u.eVo?. 

4 Lit., " Ye did not despise nor loathe your temptation in my flesh ; " one of the 
nobly careless expressions of a writer who is swayed by emotion, not by grammar. It 
means "You did not loathe," &c, "me, though my bodily aspect was a temptation to 
you." " Grandis tentatio discipulis, si magister infirmetur " (Primas.). On the possible 
connexion of e^en-Tyo-are with epilepsy see infra, p. ). It would be most accurately ex- 
plained by ophthalmia. 

5 The sufferings of St. Paul from travels when in a prostrate condition of body have 
been aptly compared by Dean Howson to those of St. Chrysostom and Henry Martyn in 
Pontun. They both lie buried at Tocat (Comana). (C. and H. i. 295. ) 



266 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

if that could have helped me, have plucked out your eyes and given them 

tome." 1 

"Nothing is more natural than that the traversing of vast distances over the 
burning plains and freezing mountain passes of Asia Minor — the constant 
changes of climate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and blinding 
dust, the bites and stings of insects, the coarseness and scantness of daily 
fare — should have brought on a return of his malady to one whose health was 
so shattered as that of Paul. And doubtless it was the anguish and despair 
arising from the contemplation of his own heartrending condition, which 
added to his teaching that intensity, that victorious earnestness, which made 
it so all-prevailing with the warm-hearted Gauls. 2 If they were ready to 
receive him as Christ Jesus, it was because Christ Jesus was the Alpha and 
the Omega, the beginning and the end of all his teaching to them. And 
hence, in his appeal to their sense of shame, he uses one of his own inimitably 
picturesque words to say, " Senseless Galatians, what evil eye bewitched 
you? 3 before whose eyes, to avert them from such evil glances, I painted as it 
were visibly and large the picture of Jesus Christ crucified." 4 

But the zealous readiness of the Galatians, their impulsive affection, the 
demonstrative delight with which they accepted the new teaching, was not 
solely due to the pity which mingled with the admiration inspired by the new 
teacher. It may have been due, in some small measure, to the affinities 
presented by the new religion to the loftiest and noblest parts of their old 
beliefs ; and at any rate, being naturally of a religious turn of mind, 6 they may 
have been in the first instance attracted by the hearing of a doctrine which 
promised atonement in consequence of a shedding of blood. But far more 
than this, the quick conversion of the Galatians was due to the mighty out- 

1 No one disputes that this in itself may be a metaphorical expression for any severe 
sacrifice, as in Cat. lxxxii. : — 

" Quinti si tibi vis oculos debere Catullum, 
Aut aliud si quid carius est oculis." 

But how incomparably more vivid and striking, and how much more germane to the 
occasion, does the expression become if it was an attack of ophthalmia from which Paul 
was suffering ! 

2 No doubt the Galatians with whom he had to deal were not the Gallic peasants who 
were despised and ignorant ("paene servorum loco habentur," Cses. B. G. vi. 13) ; but 
the Gallo-graeci, the more cultivated and Hellenised Galli of the towns. (Long in Diet. 
Oeogr. s.v.) 

3 Gal. iii. 1. Omit rj} d\T}0eia fxrj 7rei'0ecr0ai with N, A, B, D, E, F, G, &C, and ev vit.lv 

with «, A, B, C. 

4 Gal. iii. 1, ols /car' b(j)6a\fiovg 'Irjcrous Xpiarbs irpoeypd<j)ri ecrravpeajotevos. It is true that 

irpoypafciv is elsewhere always used in the sense of " to write before " (Rom. xv. 5 ; 
Eph. iii. 3), and not "to post" or "placard" (Ar. Av. 450), even in Hellenistic and late 
Greek (1 Mace. x. 3G ; Jude 4 ; Justin, Apol. ii. 52, B) ; but the sense and the context 
here seem to show that St. Paul used it — as we often find modern compounds used —in 
a different sense {irpne^ypa.<\,Y l erj). The large picture of Jesus Christ crucified was set up 
before the mental vision of these spiritual children of Galatia (" Dicitur fascinus proprie 
infantibus nocere" — Primas.) to avert their wandering glances from the dangerous 
witchery (t£s vp.S.<; epdo-Kavev) of the evil eye (y$ 3Ti, Prov. xxiii. 6 ; Ecclus. xiv. 6, &c. ; 
pdo-Kavoi, ./Elian. H. A. i. 53). We may be reminded of the huge emblazoned banner 
with which Augustine and his monks caught the eye of Ethelbert at Canterbury. 
• "Natio est omnis Gallorum admodum dedita religionibus " (Caes. B. O. vi. 16). 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 267 

pouring of the Spirit which followed Paul's preaching, and to the new powers * 
which were wrought in his converts by their admission into the Church. But 
while these were the results among the truer converts, there must have also 
been many whose ready adhesion was due to that quick restlessness, that 
eager longing for change, which characterised them, 2 as it characterised the 
kindred family of Greeks with which they were at this time largely mingled. 
It was the too quick springing of the good seed on poor and shallow soil ; it 
was the sudden flaming of fire among natures as light, as brittle, as inflammable 
as straw. The modification of an old religion, the hearty adoption of a new 
one, the combination of an antique worship with one which was absolutely 
recent, and as unlike it as is possible to conceive, had already been illustrated 
in Galatian history. As Celts they had brought with them into Asia their 
old Druidism, with its haughty priestcraft, and cruel expiations. 3 Tet they 
had a]ready incorporated with this the wild nature-worship of Agdistis or 
Cybele, the mother of the gods. They believed that the black stone which 
had fallen from heaven was her image, and for centuries after it had been 
carried off to Rome 4 they continued to revere her venerable temple, to give 
alms to her raving eunuchs, to tell of the vengeance which she had inflicted 
on the hapless Atys, and to regard the pine groves of Dindymus with 
awe. 6 But yet, while this Phrygian cult was flourishing at Pessinus, and 
commanding the services of its hosts of mutilated priests, and while at 
Tavium the main object of worship was a colossal bronze Zeus of the ordinary 
Greek type, 6 at Ancyra, on the other hand, was established the Roman 
deification of the Emperor Augustus, to whom a temple of white marble, 
still existing in ruins, had been built by the common contributions of 
Asia. 7 Paul must have seen, still fresh and unbroken, the celebrated 
Monumentum Ancyranum, the will of Augustus engraved on the marble of 

1 Gal. iii. 5, 6 imxopriyiov {= abundantly supplying ; cf . Phil. i. 19 ; 2 Pet. i. 5) 
vfjuv to TTvevna. koX evep-yw Swa/xeis ev vjouv. The latter clause may undoubtedly mean 
"working miracles among you ; " but the parallels of 1 Cor. xii. 10; Matt. xiv. 2, seem 
to show that it means "working powers in you." See, too, Isa. xxvi. 12 ; Heb. xiii. 21. 
evipyrnxa means, as Bishop Andrewes says, " a work in wrought in us." In 1 Cor. xii. 10 
the operations of powers" are distinguished from the " gifts of healings." 

2 CsBsar complains of their "mobihtas," "levitas," and "infirmitas animi,"and says, 
" in consiliis capiendis mobiles et novis plerumque rebus studentes " {£. O. ii. 1 ; iv. 5 ; 
iii. 10 ; and Liv. x. 28). 

3 Strabo, xii. 5, p. 567, who tells us that they met in council at Drynemetum, or 
M Oak-shrine" (drw cf. 6pi)s, and nemed, "temple"), as Yernemetum = "Great-shrine" 
(Venant. Fortun. i. 9), and Augustonemetum = "Augustus-shrine." 

4 B.C. 204. See Liv. xxix. 10, 11. The name of the town was dubiously connected 
with neo-elv. (Herodian. i. 11.) 

5 Liv. xxxviii. 18 : Strabo, p. 489 ; Diod. Sic. iii. 58. Julian found the worship of 
Cybele still languishing on at Pessinus in A.D. 363, and made a futile attempt to 
galvanise it into life (Amm. Marc. xxii. 9). The lucrative features in the worship of 
Cybele — the sale of oracles and collection of alms — may have had their attraction for the 
avaricious Gauls. 

6 Strabo, xii. 5. The very site of Tavium is unknown. 

7 Ancyra — then called Sebaste Tectosagum, in honour of Augustus — is now the 
flourishing commercial town of Angora. The Baulos-Dagh — Paul-Mountain — near Angora 
still reminds the traveller of St. Paul's visit to these cities, which is also rendered more 
probable by their having been early episcopal sees. 



268 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

the temple, and copied from the inscription set up by his own command upon 
bronze tablets in front of his mausoleum ; but while he may have glanced at it 
with interest, and read with still deeper pleasure on one of the pillars the 
decree in which the Emperor had rewarded the friendliness of the Jews by a 
grant of religious immunity, 1 he must have thought with some pity and indig- 
nation of the frivolity of spirit which could thus readily combine the oldest 
and the newest of idolatrous aberrations — the sincere and savage orgies of 
Dindymene with the debasing flattery of an astute intriguer — the passionate 
abaudonment to maddening religious impulse, and the calculating adoration 
of political success. In point of fact, the three capitals of the three tribes 
furnished data for an epitome of their history, and of their character. In 
passing from Pessinus to Ancyra and Tavium the Apostle saw specimens of 
cults curiously obsolete side by side with others which were ridiculously new. 
He passed from Phrygian nature-worship through Greek mythology to 
Roman conventionalism. He could not but have regarded this as a bad sign, 
and he would have seen a sad illustration of the poorer qualities which led to 
his own enthusiastic reception, if he could have read the description in a Greek 
rhetorician long afterwards of the Galatians being so eager to seize upon what 
was new, that if they did but get a glimpse of the cloak of a philosopher, 
they caught hold of and clung to it at once, as steel filings do to a magnet. 2 
In fact, as he had bitter cause to learn afterwards, the religious views of the 
Gauls were more or less a reflex of the impressions of the moment, and their 
favourite sentiments the echo of the language used by the last comer. But 
on his first visit their faults all seemed to be in the background. Their ten- 
dencies to revelries and rivalries, to drunkenness and avarice, to vanity and 
boasting, to cabals and fits of rage, were in abeyance, 3 — checked if not mastered 
by the powerful influence of their new faith, and in some instances, we may 
hope, cured altogether by the grace of the Holy Spirit of God. All that he 
saw w T as their eagerness and affection, their absence of prejudice, and willing- 
ness to learn — all that vivacity and warmheartedness which were redeeming 
points in their Celtic character. 4 

How long he was detained among them by his illness we are not told, but 
it was long enough to found several churches, one perhaps in each of the three 
capitals, and it may be in some of the minor towns. His success was clearly 

1 Jos. Antt. xvi. 6, § 2. On Caesar-worship see Tac. Ann. iv. 55, 56. 

2 Theraistius, Or. xxiii., p. 299; ap. "Wetstein in Gal. i. 6. koX Tpi/Wiou napa^avevToi 

iKKpefMavTai €v0ii<; ioarrep ttjs \i9ov ra aiSiipia. 

3 Gal. v. 7, 15, 21, 26. Diodorus Siculus says that they were so excessively drunken 
(Kd-roii/ot Kaff vnepPoX-qv) that they drenched themselves with the raw wine imported by 
merchants, and drank with such violent eagerness as either to stupefy themselves to 
sleep or enrage themselves to madness (v. 26 ; cf. Ammian. Marc. xv. 12). He also calls 
them "extravagantly avaricious" (v. 27; Liv. xxxviii. 27) and testifies to their disorderly 
and gesticulative fits of rage (v. 31 ; Ammian. Marc. I.e.). 

4 The vitality of traits of character in many races is extraordinary, and every one 
will recognise some of these Celtic peculiarities in the Welsh, and others in the Irish. 
Ancient testimonies to their weaknesses and vices have often been collected, but the 
brighter featurea which existed then, as they do still, are chiefly witnessed to by tit 
Paul. 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 269 

among the Gauls; and in the absence of all personal salutations in his Epistle, 
we cannot tell whether any of the aboriginal Phrygians or Greek settlers, 
or of the Roman governing class, embraced the faith. But though he is 
avowedly writing to those who had been Gentiles and idolators, 1 there must 
have been a considerable number of converts from the large Jewish popu- 
lation 2 which had been attracted to Galatia by its fertility, its thriving com- 
merce, and the privileges which secured them the free exercise of their 
religion. These Jews, and their visitors from Jerusalem, as we shall see here- 
after, proved to be a dangerous element in the infant Church. 

The success of this unintended mission may have detained St. Paul for a 
little time even after his convalescence ; and as he retraced his journey from 
Tavium to Pessinus he would have had the opportunity which he always 
desired of confirming his recent converts in the faith. From Pessinus the 
missionaries went towards Mysia, and laid their plans to pass on to the 
numerous and wealthy cities of western Bithynia, at that time a senatorial 
province. But once more their plans, in some way unknown to us, were 
divinely overruled. The "Spirit of Jesus" 3 did not suffer them to enter a 
country which was destined indeed to be early converted, but not by them, 
and which plays a prominent part in the history of early Christianity. 4 Once 
more divinely thwarted in the fulfilment of their designs, they made no 
attempt to preach in Mysia, 5 which in its bleak and thinly populated uplands 
offered but few opportunities for evangelisation, but pressed on directly to 
Troas, where an event awaited them of immense importance, which was 
sufficient to explain the purpose of Him who had shaped the ends which they 
themselves had so differently rough-hewn. 

From the slopes of Ida, 6 Paul and Silvanus with their young attendant 

1 Gal. iv. 8 ; v. 2 ; vi. 12, &c. On the other hand, iv. 9 has been quoted ( Jowett, 
i. 187) as "an almost explicit statement that they were Jews;" this is not, however, 
necessarily the case. Doubtless, writing to a church in which there were both Jews and 
Gentiles, St. Paul may use expressions which are sometimes more appropriate to one 
class, sometimes to the other, but "the weak and beggarly elements" to which the 
converts are returning may include Gentile as well as Jewish ritualisms ; and some of 
them may have passed through both phases. 

2 St. Peter in addressing the Diaspora of Galatia and other dl=>' nets (1 Pet. i. l)must 
have had Jews as well as Gentiles in view. The frequency of Old Testament quotations 
and illustrations in the Epistle to the Galatians is perhaps a proof that not a few of the 
converts had been originally proselytes. Otherwise it would be impossible to account 
for the fact that "in none of St. Paul's Epistles has the cast of the reasoning a more 
Jewish character " (Jowett, i. 186). Gal. iii. 27, 28 may allude to the existence of con- 
verts from both classes. 

3 Acts xvi. 7. This awat; Xeyoixevor, which is the undoubtedly correct reading ( «, A, B, 
C 2 , D, E, and many versions and Fathers), perhaps indicates that St. Luke is here using 
some document which furnished him with brief notes of this part of Paul's journeys. 
The remarkable fact that in the Filiogue controversy neither side appealed to this expres- 
sion shows how early the text had been altered by the copyists. 

4 See Pliny's letter to Trajan (x. 97), when he was Proconsul of Bithynia, asking 
advice how to deal with the Christians. 

6 This must be the meaning of TrapeXOovres (=d<£eVres, "neglecting"). It cannot be 
translated "passing through," which would be Sie\96vreg, though a glance at the map will 
show that they must have passed through Mysia without stopping. The absence of 
Byaagogues and the remote, unknown character of the region account for this. 

G Acts XVi. 8, KaTe'^jjcrav. 



270 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJX. 

descended the ravine which separated the mountain from the port and colony. 
They were on classic ground. Every step they took revealed scenes to which 
the best and brightest poetry of Greece had given an immortal interest. As 
they emerged from the pine groves of the many-fountained hill, with its 
exquisite legend of CEnone and her love, they saw beneath them the 

" Ringing plains of windy Troy,'* 

where the great heroes of early legend had so often 

" Drunk delight of battle with their peers." 

But if they had ever heard of 

" The face that launched a thousand ships, 
Or sacked the topmost towers of Ilion," 

or looked with any interest on the Simois and the Scamander, and the huge 
barrows of Ajax and Achilles, they do not allude to them. Their ir inds were 
full of other thoughts. 

The town at which they now arrived had been founded by the successors of 
Alexander, and had been elevated into a colony with the Jus Italicum. This 
privilege had been granted to the inhabitants solely because of the romantic 
interest which the Romans took in the legendary cradle of their greatness, an 
interest which almost induced Constantine to fix there, instead of at Byzantium, 
the capital of the Eastern Empire. Of any preaching in Alexandria Troas 
nothing is told us. On three separate occasions at least St. Paul visited it. 1 
It was there that Carpus lived, who was probably his host, and he found it a 
place peculiarly adapted for the favourable reception of the Gospel. 2 On this 
occasion, however, his stay was very short, 3 because he was divinely commanded 
to other work. 

St. Paul had now been labouring for many years among Syrians, Cilicians, 
and the mingled races of Asia Minor ; but during that missionary activity he 
had been at Roman colonies like Antioch in Pisidia, and must have been 
thrown very frequently into the society of Greeks and Latins. He was himself 
a Roman ci'izen, and the constant allusions of his Epistles show that he, like 
St. Luke, must have been struck with admiration for the order, the discipline, 
the dignity, the reverence for law which characterised the Romans, and 
especially for the bravery, the determination, the hardy spirit of self-denial 
which actuated the Roman soldier. 4 He tells us, later in his life, how 
frequently his thoughts had turned towards Rome itself, 5 and as he brooded 

1 Acts xx. 1, 2, compared with 2 Cor. ii. 12 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 5 — 9 ; and Acts xx. 6 ; and 
2 Tim. iv. 13. 

2 2 Cor. ii. 12. 

• : Acts xvi. 10, ei/0e'uj5 e^i)nj<ra/i.ei/ implies that they took the first ship which they could 
find for a voyage to Macedonia. 

4 This is shown by the many military and agonistic metaphors in his Epistles. 

5 Acts xix. 21; cf. Rom. i. 13 — "Oftentimes I purposed to come to you ;" xv. 23 — 
" I have had a great desire these many years to come to you." These passages were 
written from Achai a -probably from Corinth— six or seven years after this date. 



BEGINNING OP THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 27l 

on the divinely indicated future of Christianity, we cannot doubt that while 
wandering round the then busy but now land-locked and desolate harbour of 
Troas, he had thrown many a wistful glance towards the hills of Imbros and 
Samothrace; and perhaps when on some clear evening the colossal peak of Athos 
was visible, it seemed like some vast angel who beckoned him to carry the 
good tidings to the west. The Spirit of Jesus had guided him hitherto in his 
journey, had prevented him from preaching in the old and famous cities of 
Asia, had forbidden him to enter Bithynia, had driven the stake deeper into 
his flesh, that he migLb preach the word among the Gauls. Anxiously must 
he have awaited further guidance ; — and it came. In the night a Macedonian 
soldier 1 stood before him, exhorting him with these words, " Cross over into 
Macedonia and help us." When morning dawned, Paul narrated the vision to 
his companions, 2 " and immediately we sought," says the narrator, who here, 
for the first time, appears as the companion of the Apostle, " to go forth into 
Macedonia, inferring that the Lord has called us to preach the Gospel to 
them." With such brevity and simplicity is the incident related which of all 
others was the most important in introducing the Gospel of Christ to the most 
advanced and active races of the world, and among them to those races in 
whose hands its future destinies must inevitably rest. 

The other incident of this visit to the Troas is the meeting of Paul with 
Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel. This 
meeting is indicated with profound modesty by the sudden use of the 
pronoun " we ; " but even without this the vivid accuracy of detail in the 
narrative which immediately ensues, is in such striking contrast with the 
meagreness of much that has gone before, that we should have been driven to 
conjecture the presence of the writer on board the little vessel that now 
slipped its hawsers from one of the granite columns which we still see lying 
prostrate on the lonely shores of the harbour of Troas. 

And this meeting was a happy one for Paul ; for, of all the fellow- workers 
with whom he was thrown, Timotheus alone was dearer to him than Luke. 
Prom the appearance and disappearance of the first personal pronoun in the 
subsequent chapters of the Acts, 3 we see that he accompanied St. Paul to 
Philippi, and rejoined him there some seven years afterwards, never again to 
part with him so long as we are able to pursue his history. How deeply St. 
Paul was attached to him appears in the title " the beloved physician ; " how 
entire was his fidelity is seen in the touching notice, " Only Luke is with me." 

1 The dvr)p and the !o-rw?, fl^d the instant recognition that it was a Macedonian, 
I'erhaps imply this. It is calk an opa^a, which is used of impressions more distinct 
than those of dreams. Acts x. 3, iv opajua-rt <£avepws. Ma Lb. xvii. 9 (the Transfigura- 
tion). 

2 D, 8ieyep0ei? oZv Si-q-fqcraTo to opafxa tjjluv (Acts xvi. 10). 

3 The we " begins in Acts xvi. 10 ; it ends when Paul leaves Philippi, xvii. 1. It is 
resumed at Philippi at the close of the third missionary journey, xx. 5, and continues till 
the arrival at Jerusalem, xxi. 18. It again appears in xxvii. 1, and continues throughout 
the journey to Eome. Luke was also with the Apostle during his first (Col. iv. 14 ; 
Philem. 24) and second imprisonments (2 Tim. iv. 11). It is far from certain that 
2 Cor. viii. 18 refers to him. 



272 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

He shared his journeys, his dangers, his shipwreck ; he shared and cheered 
his long imprisonments, first at Caesarea, then at Rome. More than all, he 
became the biographer of the Great Apostle, and to his allegiance, to his 
ability, to his accurate preservation of facts, is due nearly all that we know of 
one who laboured more abundantly than all the Apostles, and to whom, more 
than to any of them, the cause of Christ is indebted for its stability and its 
dissemination. 

Of Luke himself, beyond what we learn of his movements and of his cha- 
racter from his own writings, we know but little. There is no reason to reject 
the unanimous tradition that he was by birth an Antiochene, 1 and it is clear 
from St. Paul's allusions that he was a Gentile convert, and that he had not 
been circumcised. 2 That he was a close observer, a careful narrator, a man of 
cultivated intellect, and possessed of a good Greek style, 3 we see from his two 
books ; and they also reveal to us a character gentle and manly, sympathetic 
and self-denying. The incidental allusion of St. Paul shows us that he was a 
physician, and this allusion is singularly confirmed by his own turns of phrase. 4 
The rank of a physician in those days was not in any respect so high as now 
it is, and does not at all exclude the possibility that St. Luke may have been a 
freedman ; but on this and all else which concerns him Scripture and tradition 
leave us entirely uninformed. That he was familiar with naval matters is 
strikingly shown in his account of the shipwreck, and it has even been con- 
jectured that he exercised his art in the huge and crowded merchant vessels 
which were incessantly coasting from point to point of the Mediterranean. 5 
Two inferences, at any rate, arise from the way in which his name is intro- 
duced : one that he had already made the acquaintance of St. Paul, perhaps 
at Antioch; the other that, though he had some special connexion with 
Philippi and Troas, his subsequent close attachment to the Apostle in his 

1 Euseb. H. E. iii. 4; Jer. De Virr. Illustr. Such allusions as "Nicolas, a proselyte 
of Antioch, " and the mention of Christians important there, but otherwise unknown, 
lend probability to this tradition (cf. xi. 20 ; xiii. 1, &c). If we could attach any im- 
portance to the reading of D in Acts xi. 28 (crvvea-Tpa^vuiv 8e ^w), it would show that 
Luke had been at Antioch during the year when Paul and Barnabas were working there 
before the famine. The name Lucas is an abbreviation of Lucanus, as Silas of Silvanus ; 
but the notion that they were the same person is preposterous. 

2 Col. iv. 10, 11, 14. 

3 As an incidental confirmation that he was a Gentile, Bishop "Wordsworth (on 
1 Thess. ii. 9) notices that he says "day and night" (Acts ix. 24), whereas when he is 
reporting the speeches of St. Paul (Acts xx. 31 ; xxvi. 7, in the Greek) he, like St. Paul 
himself (1 Thess. iii. 10 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8 ; 1 Tim. v. 5, &c), always says "night and day," 
in accordance with the Jewish notion that the night preceded the day. A more decisive 
indication that Luke was a Gentile is Acts i. 19, rfj ISU SiakeKrw aviw, slipped into St. 
Peter's speech. "Lucas, medicus Antiochensis, ut scripta ejus indicant " (Jer.). 

4 See a highly ingenious paper by Dr. Plumptre on St. Luke and St. Paul (The 
Expositor, No. xx., Aug., 1876). He quotes the following indications of medical know- 
ledge : — The combination of feverish attacks with dysentery (Acts xxviii. 8), and the 
use of ti/xtj in the sense (?) of honorarium ; /3a<rei9 and a-<j>vpa in Acts iii. 7 (cf. Hippocrates, 
p. 637) ; the incrustation caused by ophthalmia (Acts ix. 18) ; exo-rao-i? (Acts x. 9, 10) ; 
a-Ku>A.7}(cd/3pojT05 (Acts xii. 23); "Physician, heal thyself," only in Luke iv. 23; Opo^oi 
(Luke xxii. 44), &c. 

6 Smith, Voy. and Shipwreck, p. 15, who shows that St. Luke's nautical knowledge ! s 
at once accurate and unprofessional. 



philippi. 273 

journeys and imprisonments may have arisen from a desire to give him the 
benefit of medical skill and attention in his frequent attacks of sickness. 1 The 
lingering remains of that illness which prostrated St. Paul in Galatia may 
have furnished the first reason why it became necessary for Luke to accom- 
pany him, and so to begin the fraternal companionship which must have bee*, 
one of the richest blessings of a sorely troubled life. 



CHRISTIANITY IN MACEDONIA, 



CHAPTER XXY. 

PHILIPPI. 

" The day is snort ; the work abundant ; the labourers are remiss ; the reward is 
great ; the master presses." — Pibke Abh6th, ii. 

So with their hearts full of the high hopes inspired by the consciousness that they 
were being led by the Spirit of God, the two Apostles, with Luke and Timo- 
theus, set sail from the port of Troas. As the south wind sped them fast upon 
their destined course, they may have seen a fresh sign that He was with them 
who causes the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by His power brings in 
the south wind. 2 Owing to this favourable breeze, they traversed in two days 
the distance which occupied five days when they returned. 3 On the first day 
they ran past Tenedos and Imbros straight for Samothrace, and anchored for 
the night to leeward of it. Did Paul as he gazed by starlight, or at early 
dawn, on the towering peak which overshadows that ancient island, think at 
all of its immemorial mysteries, or talk to his companions about the Cabiri, or 
question any of the Greek or Roman sailors about the strange names of 
Axiocheros, Axiochersos, and Axiochersa ? We would gladly know, but we 
have no data to help us, and it is strongly probable that to all such secondary 
incidents he was habitually indifferent. 

1 Dr. Plumptre [ubi supra) tries to show that the intercourse of Luke, the Physician, 
left its traces on St. Paul's own language and tone of thought — e.g., the frequent use of 
vytaiVu (1 Tim. i. 10 ; vi. 3, &c, in eight places), which is found three times in St. Luke, 
and not in the other Gospels ; V oaS> (1 Tim. vi. 4) ; yiyypaiva (2 Tim. ii. 17) ; ™c/>6w (1 Tim. 
iii. 6 ; vi. 4, &c.) ; KeKaimjptcurjueW (1 Tim. iv. 2) ; Kvr)66ixevoi (2 Tim. iv. 3) ; Hippoci\, p. 
444 ; yvfivaa-Ca (1 Tim. iv. 8) ; cn-6/u.axos (1 Tim. v. 23) ; the anti-ascetic advice of Col. ii. 23 
(which means that "ascetic rules have no value in relation to bodily fulness " — i.e., are 
no remedy against its consequences in disordered passions) ; Karai-o^ (Phil. iii. 2) ; 
(TKvfiaXa. (Phil. iii. 8, &c). The facts are curious and noticeable, even if they will not 
fully bear out the inference. 

_ 2 See Con. and Hows. i. 305. The description of the voyage by St Luke, however 
brief, is, as usual, demonstrably accurate in the minutest particular* 

3 Acts xx. 6. 
8 



274 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

On the next day, still scudding before the wind, 1 they passed the mouth of 
the famous Strymon ; sailed northward of Thasos amid the scenes so full to us 
of the memory of Thueydides ; gazed for the first time on the " gold- veined 
crags " of Pangaeus ; saw a rocky promontory, and on it a busy seaport, over 
which towered the marble Maiden Chamber of Diana ; and so, anchoring in 
the roadstead, set foot — three of them for the first time— on European soil. 
The town was Neapolis, in Thrace — the modern Kavala — which served as the 
port of the Macedonian Philippi. Here St. Paul did not linger. As at 
Seleucia, and Attaleia, and Perga, and Peiraeus, and Cenchrese, he seemed to 
regard the port as being merely a starting-point for the inland town. 2 Accord- 
ingly, he at once left Neapolis by the western gate and took the Egnatian road, 
which, after skirting the shore for a short distance, turns northward over a 
narrow pass of Mount Pangaeus, and so winds down into a green delicious 
plain, — with a marsh on one side where herds of large-horned buffaloes wallowed 
among the reeds, and with meadows on the other side, which repaid the snows 
of Hsemus, gathered in the freshening waters of the Zygactes, with the bloom 
and odour of the hundred-petal rose. At a distance of about seven miles they 
would begin to pass through the tombs that bordered the roadsides in the 
neighbourhood of all ancient cities, and one mile further brought them to 
Philippi, whose Acropolis had long been visible on the summit of its pre- 
cipitous and towering hill. 3 

The city of Philippi was a monumental record of two vast empires. It had 
once been an obscure place, called Krenides from its streams and springs ; but 
Philip, the father of Alexander, had made it a frontier town, to protect Mace- 
donia from the Thracians, and had helped to establish his power by the 
extremely profitable working of its neighbouring gold mines. Augustus, proud 
of the victory over Brutus and Cassius, — won at the foot of the hill on which 
it stands, and on the summit of which Cassius had committed suicide, — elevated 
it to the rank of a colony, which made it, as St. Luke calls it, if not the first 
yet certainly " a first city of tiiat district of Macedonia." 4 And this, probably, 
was why St. Paul went directly to it. When Perseus, the last successor of 
Alexander, had been routed at Pydna (June 22, B.C. 168), Macedonia had 
been reduced to a Roman province in four divisions. These, in accordance 

1 St. Luke most accurately omits ev9v8pofj.rjtraiJ.ev of the second day's voyage ; a S.S.E. 
wind — and such are prevalent at times in this part of the ^Egean — would speed them 
direct to Samothrace, but not quite in so straight a course from Samothrace to Neapolis. 

2 V. supra, p. 219. 

3 Appian, iv. 105. On the site of it is a small Turkish village, called Filibedjik. 

4 The full title, "Colonia Augusta Julia Victrix Philippensium," is found on inscrip- 
tions {Miss. Archiol., p. 18). A great deal has been written about tJtis earl npurri Trjs 
/utepMos ttjs Ma/ce5on'as ttoAis koXuvCo.. A favourite explanation is that it means "the first 
city of Macedonia they came to," regarding Neapolis as being technically in Thrace. 
Both parts of the explanation are most improbable : if Trpoin) only meant " the first 
they came to," it would be a frivolous remark, and would require the article and the 
imperfect tense ; and Neapolis, as the port of Philippi, was certainly regarded as a 
Macedonian town. npwnj is justifiable politically — for Philippi, though not the capital of 
Macedonia Prima, was certainly more important than Amphipolis. Bp. Wordsworth 
make? it mean "the chief city of the frontier of Macedonia" (cf. Ezek. xlv. 7). 



philippi. 275 

with the astute and machiavellic policy of Rome, were kept distinct from each 
other by differences of privilege and isolation of interests which tended to 
foster mutual jealousies. Beginning eastwards at the river Nestus, Macedonia 
Prima reached to the Strymon ; Macedonia Secunda, to the Axius ; Macedonia 
Tertia, to the Peneus ; and Macedonia Quarta, to Ulyricum and Epirus. 1 The 
capitals of these divisions respectively were Amphipolis, Thessalonica,— at 
which the Proconsul of the entire province fixed his residence, — Pella, and 
Pelagonia. It is a very reasonable conjecture that Paul, in answer to the 
appeal of the Vision, had originally intended to visit — as, perhaps, he ultimately 
did visit — all four capitals. But Amphipolis, in spite of its historic celebrity 
had sunk into comparative insignificance, and the proud colonial privileges of 
Philippi made it in reality the more important town. 

On the insignia of Roman citizenship which here met his gaze on every 
side — the S.P.Q.R., the far-famed legionary eagles, the panoply of the Roman 
soldiers which he was hereafter so closely to describe, the two statues of 
Augustus, one in the paludament of an Imperator, one in the semi-nude 
cincture of a divinity — Paul could not have failed to gaze with curiosity ; and 
as they passed up the Egnatian road which divided the city, they must have 
looked at the figures of tutelary deities rudely scratched upon the rock, which 
showed that the old mythology was still nominally accepted. Can we supposo 
that they were elevated so far above the sense of humour as not to smile with 
their comrade Silvanus as they passed the temple dedicated to the rustic god 
whose name he bore, and saw the images of the old man, 

" So surfeit- swollen, so old, and so profane," 

whom the rural population of Italy, from whom these colonists had been drawn, 
worshipped with offerings of fruit and swine ? 

They had arrived in the middle of the week, and their first care, as usual, 
was to provide for their own lodging and independent maintenance, to which 
Luke would doubtless be able to contribute by the exercise of his art. They 
might have expected to find a Jewish community sheltering itself under the 
wings of the Roman eagle ; but if so they were disappointed. Philippi was a 
military and agricultural, not a commercial town, and the Jews were so few 
that they did not even possess a synagogue. If during those days they made 
any attempt to preach, it could only have been in the privacy of their rooms, 
for when the Sabbath came they were not even sure that the town could boast 
of a jproseucha, or prayer-house. 2 They knew enough, however, of the habits 
of the Jews to feel sure that if there were one, it would be on the river-bank, 
outside the city. So they made their way through the gate 3 along the ancient 
causeway which led directly to the Gangites, 4 and under the triumphal arch 

1 lav. xlv. 18 — 29. We cannot be sure that these divisions were still retained. 
Acts xvi. 13. This is the sense which I extract from the various readings of N, A, 
B (?), C, D, and from the versions. 

3 Acts xvi. 13, rrvxr,!, a, A, B, C, D, &c. 

4 Perhaps from the same root as Ganges (Eenan, p. 145). 

s 2 



27 b' THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

which commera orated the great victory of Philippi ninety-fom years before. 1 
That victory had finally decided the prevalence of the imperial system, which 
was fraught with such vast consequences for the world. In passing to the 
banks of the river the missionaries were on the very ground on which the 
battle had been fought, and near which the camps of Brutus and Cassius had 
stood, separated by the river from the army of Octavianus and Antony. 

But when they reached the poor open-air proseucha, 2 strange to say, they 
only found a few women assembled there. It was clearly no time for formal 
orations. They simply sat down, and entered into conversation with the little 
group. 3 Their words were blessed. Among the women sat a Lydian 
proselytess, a native of the city of Thyatira, who had there belonged to the 
guild of dyers. 4 The luxurious extravagance of the age created a large demand 
for purple in the market of Rome, and Lydia found room for her profitable 
trade among the citizens of Philippi. As she sat listening, the arrow of con- 
viction pierced her heart. She accepted the faith, and was baptised with her 
slaves and children. 5 One happy fruit her conversion at once bore, for she 
used hospitality without grudging. " If you have judged me," she said, " to 
be faithful to the Lord, come to my house, and stay there." To accede to the 
request, modestly as it was urged, was not in accordance with the principles 
which the great Apostle had laid down to guide his conduct. Fully acknow- 
ledging the right of every missionary of the faith to be maintained by those 
to whom he ministered, and even to travel about with a wife, or an attendant 
deaconess, he had yet not only foregone this right, but begged as a personal 
favour that it might not be pressed upon him, because he valued that proof of 
his sincerity which was furnished by the gratuitous character of his ministry. 
Lydia, however, would not be refused, and she was so evidently one of those 
generous natures who have learnt how far more blessed it is to give than to 
receive, that Paul did not feel it right to persist in his refusal. The trade of 
Lydia was a profitable one, and in her wealth, joined to the affection which he 
cherished for the Church of Philippi beyond all other Churches, we see the 
probable reason why he made other Churches jealous by accepting pecuniary 
aid from his Philippian converts, and from them alone. 6 

There is some evidence that, among the Macedonians, women occupied a 
more independent position, and were held in higher honour, than in other 

1 Called Kiemer {Miss. ArcMol., p. 118). 

2 Proseuchae were circular-shaped enclosures open to the air (Epiphan. Haer. lxxx. 1), 
often built on the sea-shore or by rivers (Phil, in Place. 14 ; Jos. Antt. xiv. 10, 23 ; Tert. 
ad Nat. i. 13 ; Juv. Sat. iii. 12), for the facility of the frequent ablutions which Jewish 
worship required. 

a Acts xvi. 13, e\a\ovfJ.ev ; 14, rot? AaAoVjueVois. 

4 The province of Lydia was famous for the art of dyeing in purple (Horn. 27. vi. 141 ; 
Claud. Rapt. Proserp. i. 270 ; Strabo, xiii. 4, 14). Sir G. Wheler found an inscription at 
Thyatira mentioning " the dyers" («t panels). 

5 Acts xvi. 14, rixovev . . . 8«jvoi£ej/. How unlike invention is the narrative that, sum- 
moned by a vision to Macedonia, his first and most important convert is a woman of the 
Asia in which the Spirit had forbidden him to preach ! 

6 1 Thess. ii. 5, 7, 9 ; twice in Thessalonica, Phil. iv. 16; once in Athens, 2 Cor. id. 9; 
once in Rome, Phil. iv. 10. 



philippi. 277 

parts of the world. 1 In his Epistle to the Philippians St. Paul makes promi- 
uent mention of two ladies, Euodia and Syntyche, who were well known in the 
Christian community, although unhappily they could not agree with each other. 2 
The part that women played in the dissemination of the G ospel can hardly be 
exaggerated, and unless it was a mere accident that only women were assembled 
in the proseucha on the first Sabbath at Philippi, we must suppose that not a 
few of the male converts mentioned shortly afterwards 3 were originally won 
over by their influence. The only converts who are mentioned by name are 
Epaphroditus, for whom both Paul and the Philippian Church seem to have 
felt a deep regard; Clemens, and Syzygus, or "yokefellow," 4 whom Paul 
addresses in a playful paronomasia, and entreats him to help the evangelising 
toils — the joint wrestlings for the Gospel — of Euodia and Syntyche. But 
besides these there were other unnamed fellow- workers to whom St. Paul 
bears the high testimony that " their names were in the book of life." 

Very encouraging and very happy must these weeks at Philippi have 
been, resulting, as they did, in the founding of a Church, to whose members 
he finds it needful to give but few warnings, and against whom he does 
not utter a word of blame. The almost total absence of Jews meant an 
almost total absence of persecution. The Philippians were heart-whole in 
their Christian faith. St. Paul's entire Epistle to them breathes of joy, 
affection, and gratitude. He seems to remember that he is writing to a 
colony, and a military colony — a colony of Roman " athletes." He reminds 
them of a citizenship loftier and more ennobling than that of Rome; 5 he calls 
Epaphroditus not only his fellow- worker, but also his fellow- soldier, one who 
had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the new Macedonian phalanx, 
which was to join as of old in an advance to the conquest of the world. He 
derives his metaphorical expressions from the wrestling-ground and the race. 6 
Alike St. Paul and St. Luke seem to rejoice in the strong, manly Roman 
nature of these converts, of whom many were slaves and freedmen, but 
of whom a large number had been soldiers, drawn from various parts of 
Italy in the civil wars — men of the hardy Marsian and Pelignian stock — 
trained in the stern, strong discipline of the Roman legions, and un- 
sophisticated by the debilitating Hellenism of a mongrel population. St. Paul 
loved them more and honoured them more than he did the dreamy, super- 
stitious Ephesians, the fickle, impulsive Gauls, or the conceited, factious 
Achaians. In writing to Thessalonica and Philippi he had to deal with men 
of a larger mould and manlier mind — more true and more tender than the men 

1 See Lightfoot, Philip., p. 55. 2 Phil. iv. 2. 3 Acts xvi. 40. 

4 It is true that the name does not occur elsewhere, but I cannot for a moment believe 
with Clemens Alex. (Strom, hi. 6, § 53) and Epiphanius {H. E. hi. 30) that the word 
2v£v>e means "wife." Lydia is not mentioned in the Epistle, unless the name of this 
Lydian lady was Euodia or Syntyche. She may have died, or have returned to her native 
city in the intervening years. She most assuredly would have been named if the Epistle 
had been a forgery. 

5 Phil. i. 27, 7ro\tT<rue<r0e ; ill. 20, iro\irev(t.a, 

6 Phil. i. 27, o-njKere; ill. 12, Siwkw • 14, evl to 0pa£eiov; IT. 3, <rvvriQ\r\<Ta.v ; i, 27, 
fwaflAovvres j iix. 16, t<{> avT<£ <rToi\<dv, 



278 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

of Corinth, with their boastful ignorance which took itself for knowledge, or 
the men of Asia, with their voluptuous mysticisms and ceremonial pettiress. 
He was now thrown for the first time among a race which has been called the 
soundest part of the ancient world, 1 a race which shone forth like torches in 
narrow and winding streets, like stars that beamed their light and life in the 
dark firmament — blameless children of God amid the dwarfed and tortuous 
meanness of a degenerate race. 2 

Their stay in this fruitful field of labour was cut short by an unforeseen 
circumstance, which thwarted the greed of a few interested persons, and 
enlisted against Paul and Silas the passions of the mob. For there is this 
characteristic difference between the persecutions of Jews and Gentiles — that 
the former were always stirred up by religious fanaticism, the latter by 
personal and political interests which were accidentally involved in religious 
questions. Hitherto the Apostles had laboured without interruption, chiefly 
because the Jews in the place, if there were any at all, were few and un- 
infmential ; but one day, as they were on their way to the proseucha, they 
were met by a slave-girl, who, having that excitable, perhaps epileptic diathesis 
which was the qualification of the Pythonesses of Delphi, was announced to 
be possessed by a Python spirit. 3 Nothing was less understood in antiquity 
than these obscure phases of mental excitation, and the strange flashes of 
sense, and even sometimes of genius, out of the gloom of a perturbed intellect, 
were regarded as inspired and prophetic utterances. As a fortune-teller and 
diviner, this poor girl was held in high esteem by the credulous vulgar of the 
town. 4 A slave could possess no property; except such peculium as his master 
allowed him, and the fee for consulting this unofficial Pythoness was a 
lucrative source of income to the people who owned her. To a poor afflicted 
girl like this, whose infirmities had encircled her with superstitious reverence, 
more freedom would be allowed than would have been granted, even in 
Philippi, to ordinary females in the little town ; and she would be likely — 
especially if she were of Jewish birth — to hear fragments of information about 

1 See the excellent remarks of Hausrath, p. 281, seqq. 2 Phil. ii. 15. 

3 Acts xvi. 16, irvevjxa. Yive<ova («, A, B, C, D, &c. ). The corresponding Old Testament 
expression is liN obh (Lev. xx. 6). It points to the use of ventriloquism, as I have 
shown, s.v. " Divination," in Smith, Bibl. Diet. At this period, and long before, people 
of this class — usually women — were regarded as prophetesses, inspired by the Pythian 
Apollo {irv9o\rinToi). Hence they were called Uv0S>ves, and Evpv/cAet?, from an ancient 
soothsayer named Eurycles and kyyo.o-TpLiJ.v6oi, from the convulsive heavings, and the 
speaking as out of the depths of the stomach, which accompanied their fits (Sophocles 
Fr., o-Tepi/ojuai/Ti?). See Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. 9; Galen, Gloss. Hippocr. {'Eyya.a-Tpifi.veoL' 

oi K€K\eio~n£vov tov o~t6/u.o.tos (jiOeyyoixevot 8id to Soxeiv e/c tt/? yacrTpb? (f>6tyyecr6ai. ) Hesych. S.V. 

Schol. ad Ar. Vcsp. 1019, and Tertullian, Apol. 23, who distinctly defines them as 
people "qui de Deo pati existimantur, qui cmhelando praefantur." Neander quotes 
from Ellis the interesting fact that the Priest of Obo, in the Society Isles, found himself 
unable to reproduce his former convulsive ecstasies of supposed inspiration, after his 
conversion to Christianity (Plantg., p. 170). 

4 We know that "an idol is nothing in the world," and theiefore the expression that 
this girl had "a spirit of Pytho" is only an adoption of the current Pagan phraseology 
about her. Hippocrates attributed epileptic diseases to possession by Apollo, Cybele, 
Poseidon, &c., DeMorbo Sacr. (C. and H. i. 321). 



philippi. 279 

Paul and his teaching. They impressed themselves on her imagination, and 
on meeting the men of whom she had heard snch solemn things, she turned 
round * and followed them towards the river, repeatedly calling out — perhaps 
in the very phrases which she had heard used of them — " These people are 
slaves of the Most High God, and they are announcing to us the way of 
salvation." 2 This might be tolerated once or twice, but at last it became too 
serious a hindrance of their sacred duties to be any longer endured in silence. 

In an outburst of pity and indignation 3 — pity for the sufferer, indignation 
at this daily annoyance — Paul suddenly turned round, and addressing the 
Pytho by whom the girl was believed to be possessed, said, " I enjoin thee, in 
the name of Jesus Christ, to go out of her." The effect was instantaneous. 
The calm authoritative exorcism restored the broken harmony of her being. 
No more paroxysms could be expected of her ; nor the wild unnatural scream- 
ing utterances, so shrill and unearthly that they might very naturally be taken 
for Sibylline frenzies. Her masters ceased to expect anything from her oracles. 
Their hope of further gain " went out " with the spirit. 4 A piece of property 
so rare that it could only be possessed by a sort of joint ownership was 
rendered entirely valueless. 

Thus the slave-masters were touched in their pockets, and it filled them 
with fury. They could hardly, indeed, go before the magistrates and tell 
them that Paul by a single word had exorcised a powerful demon ; but they 
were determined to have vengeance somehow or other, and, in a Roman 
colony composed originally of discharged Antonian soldiers, and now occupied 
partly by their descendants, partly by enfranchised freedmen from Italy, 5 
it was easy to raise a clamour against one or two isolated Jews. It 
was the more easy because the Philippians might have heard the news of 
disturbances and riots at Rome, which provoked the decree of Claudius 
banishing all Jews from the city. 6 They determined to seize this opportunity, 
and avail themselves of a similar plea. 7 They suddenly arrested Paul and 
Silas, and dragged them before the sitting magistrates. 8 These seem to have 
relegated the matter to the duumviri, 9 who were the chief authorities of the 

1 Acts xvi. 16, anavrrjo-ai ', 17, Ka.TaKo\ovQr\(Ta(Ta. 

2 Slaves ; cf. Acts iv. 29 ; Rom. i. 1 ; Tit. i. 1. 

3 Acts xvi. 18, 8Lanovr)9eU. The same word is used of the strong threats of the priests 
at the teaching of the Apostles in Jerusalem (Acts iv. 2). 

4 Acts xvi. 19, egfjkOev rj eXirl? tt;? epyacrjas avTav. The use of the same word after the 
lgf)\6ev (to irvev^a) avrfj rrj mpa is perhaps intentional. 

This is proved by the inscriptions found at Philippi, which record the donors to the 
Temple of Silvanus, nearly all of whom are slaves or freedmen {Miss. Archeol., p. 75). 

6 Acts xviii. 2 ; Suet. Claud. 25. See Ewald, vi. 488. 

7 Judaism was a religio licita, but anything like active proselytism was liable to stern 
suppression. See Paul. Sentent., 21 ; Serv. Yirg. ^En. viii. 187 : and the remarkable 
advice of Maecenas to Augustus to dislike and punish all religious innovators (tov? Se 

£evt£ovras Tt irepl avrb [to delov] /cat p.icrei koI KoXa^e. Dio. CaSS. vii. 36). "Quoties," says 

Livy, "hoc patrum avorumque aetate negotium est ut sacra externa fieri vetarent, sacri- 
ficulos vatesque foro, circo, urbe prohiberent " (Liv. xxxix. 16). 

8 Possibly the aediles (Miss. Archeol., p. 71). 

Acts XVI. 19. etX/cvcrav 7rpbs Tt]v ayopav en I rois apxovTo.<; : 20, /eat irpoo-ayayovTes auTovs 

tots crTpaTTjyots. The different verbs — of which the second is so much milder — and ihe 



rots crrpaTTj-yois. J-ne auierenx verDS — oi wnn 
different titles surely imply what is said in the 



text. 



280 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

colony, and who, aping the manners and the titles of Imperial Rome, had the 
impertinence to call themselves "Praetors." 1 Leading thtir prisoners into 
the presence of these " Praetors," they exclaimed, " These fellows are utterly 
troubling our city, being mere Jews ; and they are preaching customs which 
it is not lawful for us, who are Eomans, to accept or to practise." 2 The mob 
knew the real state of the case, and sympathised with the owners of the slave 
girl, feeling much as the Gadarenes felt towards One whose healing of a 
demoniac had interfered with their gains. In the minds of the Gruiks and 
Romans there was always, as we have seen, a latent spark of abhorrence 
against the Jews. These sweepings of the Agora vehemently sided with the 
accusers, and the provincial duumvirs, all the more dangerous from being 
pranked out in the usurped peacock-plumes of " praetorian " dignity, assumed 
that the mob must be right, or at any rate that people who were Jews must be 
so far wrong as to deserve whatever they might get. They were not sorry at 
so cheap a cost to gratify the Roman conceit of a city which could boast that 
its citizens belonged to the Yoltinian tribe. 3 It was another proof that — 

" Man, proud man, 
Dressed in a little brief authority, 
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 
As makes the angels weep, who, with our spleens, 
Would all themselves laugh mortal." 

Paul and Silas had not here to do with the haughty impartiality and super- 
cilious knowledge which guided the decisions of a Gallio, but with the 
" justice's justice " of the Vibiuses and Floruses who at this time fretted 
their little hour on the narrow stage of Philippi. Conscious of their Roman 
citizenship, they could not have expected so astounding a result of their act of 
mercy, as that their political franchise should be ignored, and they themselves, 
after condemnation without trial, ignominiously hurried off into the punish- 
ments reserved for the very meanest malefactors. 4 Such, however, was the 
issue of the hearing. Their Praetorships would imitate the divine Claudius, 
and wreak on these wandering Israelites a share of the punishment which the 

1 Acts xvi. 20. <rrpaTTjybs is the Greek version of the originally military title " Praetor ;" 
and it was also a Greek title in vogue for the chief magistrates in little cities (Ar. Polit. 
vii. 8). The fashion seems to have been set in Italy, where Cicero, a hundred years 
before this time, notices with amusement the " cupiditas " which had led the Capuan 
Duumviri to arrogate to themselves the title of "Praetors," and he supposes that they 
will soon have the impudence to call themselves " Consuls." He notices also that their 
"lictors" carried not mere staves {bacilli), but actual bundles of rods with axes inside 
them {fasces) as at Koine {De Leg. Agrar. 34). The name stradigo lingered on in some 
cities till modern days (Wetst. in loc). 

- Acts xvi. 20, 'iouSaiot vndpxovTes ; 21, p W| aaiois oflo-i. Since neither "exorcism" nor 
"Judaism " (though they regarded Judaea as a " suspiciosa et maledica civitas," Cic, pro 
Flacc. 28, and generally teterrima, Tac. H. v. 8) were cognisable offences, the slave-owners 
have to take refuge in an undefined charge of innovating proselytism. 

3 Miss. Archeol., p. 40. 

4 The Jews, who were so infamously treated by Flaccus, felt this, as Paul himself did 
(1 Thess. ii. 2, v/3pio-0fW;, w? oiSare, ev *iAiVttois), to be a severe aggravation of their 
Bufferings (Ph.ll>, in FlaCC, 10, ai*a<r0T]t'ai /nao-nfii/ afc e0os tovs KOKOvpytiv irovripmdTQvr 



PHILIPPt 281 

misdeeds of their countrymen had brought upon them at Rome. As the pro- 
ceedings were doubtless in Latin, with which Paul and Silas had little or 
no acquaintance, and in legal formulae and procedures of which they were 
ignorant, they either had no time to plead their citizenship until they were 
actually in the hands of the lictors, 1 or, if they had, their voices were drowned 
in the cries of the colonists. Before they could utter one word in their own 
defence, the sentence — " summovete, lictores, despoliate, verberabe" — was 
uttered; the Apostles were seized; their garments were rudely torn off their 
backs ; 2 they were hurried off and tied by their hands to the palus, or whip- 
ping-post in the forum ; and whether they vainly called out in Greek to their 
infuriated enemies, " We are Roman citizens," or, which is far more likely, 
bore their frightful punishment in that grand silence which, in moments of 
high spiritual rapture, makes pain itself seem painless 3 — in that forum of 
which ruins still remain, in the sight of the lowest dregs of a provincial out- 
post, and of their own pitying friends, they endured, at the hands of these 
low lictors, those outrages, blows, strokes, weals, the pangs and butchery, the 
extreme disgrace and infamy, the unjust infliction of which even a hard- 
headed and hard-hearted Gentile could not describe without something of 
pathos and indignation. 4 It was the first of three such scourgings with the 
rods of Roman lictors which Paul endured, and it is needless to dwell even 
for one moment on its dangerous and lacerating anguish. We, in these 
modern days, cannot read without a shudder even of the flogging of some 
brutal garotter, and our blood would run cold with unspeakable horror if one 
such incident, or anything which remotely resembled it, had occurred in the 
life of a Henry Martyn or a Coleridge Patteson. But such horrors occurred 
eight times at least in the story of one whose frame was more frail with years 
of suffering than that of our English missionaries, and in whose life these 
pangs were but such a drop in the ocean of his endurance, that, of the eight 
occasions on which he underwent these horrible scourgings, this alone has 
been deemed worthy of even passing commemoration. 5 

1 Perhaps Paul's language in verse 20 is generic. If so he would be most unlikely to 
plead a privilege which would protect himself alone. 

8 On this tearing off of the garments see Liv. viii. 32 ; Tac. H. iv. 27 ; Val. Max. ii. 
7, 8 ; Dion. Halic. ix. 39. The verbs used are scindere, spoliare, lacerate (also the 
technical word for the laceration of the back by the rods), neptKarapp^ai, showing that it 
was doi ,3 with violence and contumely. 

8 A much lower exaltation than that of the Apostle's would rob anguish of half its 
sting (cf. Cic. in Verr. ii. v. 62, " Hac se commemoratione civitatis omnia verbera depul- 
Kurum, cruciatumque a corpore dejecturum arbitrabatur "). 

4 Cato op. Aul. Gell. x. 3. 

5 The five Jewish scourgings were probably submitted to without any protest {v. supra, 
p. 24). From a fourth nearly consummated beating with thongs (?) he did protect him- 
self by his political privilege (Acts xxii. 25). Both that case and this show how easily, 
in the midst of a tumult, a Roman citizen might fail to make his claim heard or under- 
stood ; and the instance mentioned by Cicero, who tells how remorselessly Yerres scourged 
a citizen of Messana, though "inter dolorem crepitumque plagarum," he kept exclaiming 
" Civis Romanus sum," shows that in the provinces the insolence of power would some- 
times deride the claim of those who were little likely to find an opportunity of enforcing 
it (Cic. in Verr, L 47 ; v. 62, &e.). Moreover, the reverence for the privilege must have been 



282 THE LIFE AND WOTtK OF ST. PAUL. 

Nor was this all. After seeing that a scourging of extreme severity had 
been inflicted, the Duumvirs, with the same monstrous violation of all law, 
flung Paul and Silas into prison, and gave the jailer special orders to keep 
them safely. Impressed by this injunction with the belief that his prisoners 
must have been guilty of something very heinous, and determined to make 
assurance doubly sure, the jailer not only thrust them into the dank, dark, 
loathsome recesses of the inner prison, but also secured their feet into " the 
wood." " The wood " was an instrument of torture used in many countries, 
and resembling our " stocks," or rather the happily obsolete " pillory," in 
having five holes — four for the wrists and ankles, and one for the neck. 1 The 
jailer in this instance only secured their feet; but we cannot be surprised 
that the memory of this suffering lingered long years afterwards in ihe mind 
of St. Paul, when we try to imagine what a poor sufferer, with the rankling 
sense of gross injustice in his soul, would feel who — having but recently 
recovered from a trying sickness — after receiving a long and frightful flagel- 
lation as the sequel of a violent and agitated scene, was thrust away out of 
the jeers of the mob into a stifling and lightless prison, and sat there through 
the long hours of the night with his feet in such durance as to render it 
impossible except in some constrained position to find sleep on the foul bare 
floor. 2 

Tet over all this complication of miseries the souls of Paul and Silas rose 
in triumph. With heroic cheerfulness they solaced the long black hours of 
midnight with prayer and hymns. 3 To every Jew as to every Christian, the 
Psalms of David furnished an inexhaustible storehouse of sacred song. That 
night the prison was wakeful. It may be that, as is usually the case, there 
was some awful hush and heat in the air — a premonition of the coming catas- 
trophe ; but, be that as it may, the criminals of the Philippian prison were 
listening to the sacred songs of the two among them, who deserving nothing 
had suffered most. "The prison," it has been said, "became an Odeum ;" 

much, weakened by the shameless sale of it tofreedmen, &c, by Messalina (Dio. Cass. Lx., 
p. 676 ; cf . Tac. H. 12). Further than this, it would be quite easy to stretch the law so 
far as to make it appear that they had forfeited the privilege by crime. At any rate it 
is certain that under the Empire not citizens only, but even senators, were scourged, 
tortured, and put to death, without the slightest protection from the Porcian and 
Valerian laws (Tac. H. i. 6; ii. 10, &c). And although Paul willingly— nay, gladly — 
endured the inevitable trials which came before him in the performance of duty (2 Cor. 
xi t 23), I do not believe that he would have accepted anguish or injustice which he had a 
perfect right to escape. 

1 Acts xvi. 24, £6\ov or noSoKaK-q (cf. Job xiii. 27). In Latin nervus. It had five holes, 
and is hence called irei/reavpiyyov (Sehol. Ar. Eq. 1046; cf. Poll. viii. 72; Plaut. Capt. iii. 
79 ; Euseb. H. E. vi. 39 ; Job xiii. 27 ; xxxiii. 11 ; Jer. xxix. 26). 

2 If by the Tullianum. at Rome we may judge of other prisons — and it seems that the 
name was generic for the lowest or inmost prison, even of provincial towns (Appul. Met. 
ix. 183 ; C. and H. i. 326) — there is reason to fear that it must have been a very horrible 
place. And, indeed, what must ancient Pagan provincial prisons have been at the best, 
when we bear in mind what English and Christian and London prisons were not fifty 
years ago ? 

:i " The leg feels nothing in the stocks," says Tertullian, "when the soul is in heaven; 
though the body is held fast, to the spirit all is open." Christian endurance was sneered 
ht aa " sheer obstinacy." In a Pagan it would have been extolled as magnificent heroism. 



PHILIPPI. ZOd 

and the guilty listened with envy and admiration to the " songs in the night " 
with which God inspired the innocent. Never, probably, had such a scene 
occurred before in the world's history, and this perfect triumph of the spirit of 
peace and joy over shame and agony was an omen of what Christianity would 
afterwards effect. And while they sang, and while the prisoners listened, 
perhaps to verses which " out of the deeps " called on Jehovah, or " fled to Him 
before the morning watch," or sang — 

" The plowers plowed upon my back and made long furrows, 
But the righteous Lord hath hewn the snares of the ungodly in pieces " — 

or triumphantly told how God had " burst the gates of brass, and smitten 
the bars of iron in sunder" — suddenly there was felt a great shock of 
earthquake, which rocked the very foundations of the prison. The prison 
doors were burst open; the prisoners' chains were loosed from the staples 
in the wall. 1 Startled from sleep, and catching sight of the prison doors 
standing open, the jailer instantly drew his sword, and was on the point of 
killing himself, thinking that his prisoners had escaped, and knowing that 
he would have to answer for their production with his life. 2 Suicide was 
the common refuge of the day against disaster, and might have been re- 
garded at Philippi as an act not only natural but heroic. 3 Paul, however, 
observed his purpose, and, always perfectly self-possessed even in the midst 
of danger, called out to him in a loud voice, " Do thyself no harm, for we 
are all here." The entire combination of circumstances — the earthquake, 
the shock of sudden terror, the revulsion of joy which diverted his intention 
of suicide, the serene endurance and calm forgiveness of his prisoners — 
all melted the man's heart. Demanding lights, he sprang into the inner 
prison, and flung himself, in a tremor of agitation, at the feet of Paul and 
Silas. Then, releasing their feet from the stocks, and leading them out of 
their dark recess, he exclaimed, " Lords (Kvpioi), what must I do to be 
saved ? " His mode of address showed deep reverence. His question 
echoed the expression of the demoniac. 4 And the Apostles answered him 
partly in the terms which he had used. 'Believe," they said, " on the Lord 
(Kipiov) Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." Deeply im- 
pressed, the man at once assembled his household in a little congregation, 
and, worn and weary and suffering as they were, Paul and Silas spoke to them 
of Him by whom they were to find salvation. 5 Then the jailer, pitying their 
condition, washed their bruised backs, and immediately afterwards was, with 
his whole house, baptised in the faith. 6 All this seems to have taken place in 

1 Acts xvi. 26. 

2 See the Dig. Be custodia et exhibitione reorum, xlviii., iii. 12 and 16. 

3 Sen. Be Prov. ii. 6 ; Ep. 58 ; Diog. Laert. vii. 130 ; Cic. Be Fin. i. 15, &c. 

4 Acts xvi. 17, bSbv o-wTTjptaT ; ver. 30, Iva. <rco0&>. 

5 Acts Xvi. 33, ev CKeiv-Q tjj aipa. 

6 ""EKovcrev *cal ekovOri, " he washed and was washed," says Chrysostom. For the bearing 
of the expression oi ai/ToO navres (Acts xvi. 33), and 6 ol/cos <xutt}s (ver. 15), cf. xviii. 8 ; 
1 Cor. i. 16. On infant baptism, see Coleridge, Aids to Reflection. The Church of England 
wisely makes no direct use of this argument in Art. xxvii. But though Bengel's remark, 



284 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

the prison precincts. Not till then did they think of food or rest. Leading 
them upstairs into his house, he set a table before them, and in that high 
hour of. visitation from the Living God, though he had but heard words and 
been told of a hope to come, he and his whole house felt that flow of elevated 
joy which sprang naturally from a new and inspiring faith. 1 

Day dawned, and the Duumvirs were troubled. Whether they had felt 
the earthquake, 2 and been alarmed lest these " slaves of the Most High God " 
should be something more than the poor Jewish wanderers that they seemed 
to be, or whether the startling events of the night had reached their ears — 
they had at any rate become heartily ashamed of their tumultuary injustice. 
They felt it incumbent on them to hush up the whole matter, and get rid as 
quickly as possible of these awkward prisoners. Accordingly, they sent their 
lictors, no longer to use their rods in outrageous violation of justice, but to 
" set those people free." The jailer hurried to Paul with the message of 
peaceful liberation, which no doubt he thought would be heartily welcomed. 
But Paul felt that at least some reparation must be offered for an intolerable 
wrong, and that, for the sake of others if not for his own, these provincial 
justices must be taught a lesson not to be so ready to prostitute their autho- 
rity at the howling of a mob. Sending for the lictors themselves, he sternly 
said, in a sentence of which every word was telling, " After beating us 
publicly un condemned, Romans though we are by right, they flung us into 
prison ; and now they are for casting us out secretly. No such thing. Let 
them come in person, and conduct us out." 3 The lictors took back the 
message to the " Praetors," and it filled them with no small alarm. They 
had been hurried by ignorance, prejudice, and pride of office into glaring 
offences against the Roman law. 4 They had condemned two Roman citizens 
without giving them their chartered right to a fair trial ; 5 and, on condemning 
them, had further outraged the birthright and privilege of citizenship by 
having them bound and scourged ; and they had thus violated the Porcian 
law 6 in the presence of the entire mob of the forum, and in sight of some at 
lnast who would be perfectly able to take the matter up and report their con- 
d act in high quarters. Their worships had simply flagellated in public the law 

"Quis credat in tot familiis nullum fuisse infantem?" is not decisive, the rest of his 
observation, " Et Judaeos circumcidendis, Gentiles lustrandis illis assuetos, non etiam 
obtulisse illos baptismo ? " has much weight 

1 Acts xvi. 34, ^yaAAiaTo, impf. C, D various versions, &c. k<utoi bvSev Ijv dAAa (hfricfa 

Plovov leal eA.7uSes xprjcrai. 

2 In Acts xvi. 35, D adds avaixvr)cr9evTe<; rbv <retcrfx.bv tov yeyovora. 

3 Acts xvi. 37. The 'Pw/aa/ovs vn6. P xovTa<; is perhaps an allusion to the insolent 'Iov&uot 
vndpxovres and Pw/uaiW ofiati/ of the accusers (ver. 21). See the Lex Cornelia, Diet, of 
AntL, p. 638 ; Paulus, Instt., let. iv. ; De incuriis, § 8. 

4 Zeller starts [HilgenfeloVs Zcitsch. 1864, p. 103) the amazing theory that this is a 
reproduction of the story found in Lucian's Toxaris (27 — 34), about a Greek medical 
student named Antiphilus, who ia imprisoned in Egypt with his servant on a false charge 
of theft from a temple. Krenkel (p. 221) characterises it as "a subtle conjecture " that 
the narrative of the Acts is an imitation of this story. And this is criticism 1 

6 Cic. in Vert', ii. 1, 9 ; Haut. CurcuL v. 3, 16 j Tac. if. 1, & 
• (Jio. pro Ilabir. & 



THESSALONICA AND BEBCEA. 285 

and majesty of Rome. 1 They did not at all like the notion of being them- 
selves summoned before the Proconsul's court to answer for their flagrant 
illegality ; so, trusting to the placability of the Jewish character as regards 
mere personal wrongs, they came in person, accompanied, says one manu- 
script, by many friends. 2 Entreating the pardon of their prisoners, they 
urged them, with reiterated requests, to leave the city, excusing themselves 
on the plea that they had mistaken their true character, and pleading that, 
if they stayed, there might be another ebullition of public anger. 3 Paul and 
Silas, however, were courageous men, and had no intention to give any colour 
of justice to the treatment they had received by sneaking out of the city. 
From the prison they went straight to the house of Lydia ; nor was it till 
they had seen the assembled brethren, and given them their last exhortation, 
that they turned their backs on the beautiful scenes where a hopeful work 
had been rudely ended by their first experience of Gentile persecution. But, 
in accordance with a frequent custom of St. Paul, 4 they left Luke behind 
them. 5 Perhaps at Philippi he had found favourable opportunities for the 
exercise of his art, and he could at the same time guide and strengthen 
the little band of Philippian converts, before whom days and years of bitter 
persecution were still in store. 6 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THESSALONICA AND BERCEA. 



VIvTiiJLOveieTe yap ade\<po\ t6v k6ttov rificov naX rhu /j.6xQov.— 1 Thess. ii. 9. 
" In oppidum devium Beroeam profugisti." — Cic. in Fls. 36. 

Leaving Philippi, with its mingled memories of suffering and happiness, 
Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus took an easy day's journey of about three- 
and-thirty miles to the beautiful town of Amphipolis. It lies to the south of 
a splendid lake, under sheltering hills, three miles from the sea, and on the 
edge of a plain of boundless fertility. The strength of its natural position, 

l "Facinus est vinciri civem Eomanum, scelus verberari," Cic. in Verr. v. 66. 

* Acts XVI. 39, D, 7ra.payevoju.evoi juera. <f>i\o)v 7roAAa>v eis rrjv (JwAaKTyv. 

3 All this is intrinsically probable, otherwise I would not, of course, insert it on the 

sole and fantastic authority of D, eiTrovres 'HyvoTjcra/aev to. naff u/j-as Sri eare avSpes St/caiot, &C, 
and /uwjTroTe 7roA.iv (rvarpatywo-Lv r)p.iv e7riKpa£ovTes naff vjucov. 

* Cf . xvii. 14 ; xviii. 19 ; Titus i. 5 ; 2 Tim. iv. 20. 

5 The third person is resumed in Acts xvii. 1, and the first person only recurs in 
Acts xx. 5. 

6 Phil. i. 28 — 30. Although here and there the Apostles won a convert of higher rank, 
it was their glory that their followers were mainly the babes and sucklings of human 
intellect — not many wise, not many noble, not many rich, but the weak things of the 
world. " Philosophy," says Voltaire, "was never meant for the people. The canaille of 
to-day resembles in everything the canaille of the last 4,000 years. We have never cared 
to enlighten cobblers and maid-servants. That is the work of Apostles. " Yes ; and it was 
the work of Christ. 



286 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAtTL. 

nearly encircled by a great bend of the river, the mines which were near it, and 
vhe neighbouring forests, which furnished to the Athenian navy so many 
pines, fit 

" To be the mast 
Of some great ammiral," 

made it a position of high importance during the Peloponnesian wars. If St. 
Paul had ever read Herodotus he may have thought with horror of the human 
sacrifice of Xerxes 1 — the burial alive at this place of nine youths and nine 
maidens; and if he had read Thucydides — which is excessively doubtful, in 
spite of a certain analogy between their forms of expression — he would have 
gazed with peculiar interest on the sepulchral mound of Brasidas, and the 
hollowing of the stones in the way-worn city street which showed the feet of 
men and horses under the gate, and warned Kleon that a sally was intended. 2 
If he could read Livy, which is by no means probable, he would recall the fact 
that in this town Paulus iEmilius 3 — one of the family from whom his own 
father or grandfather may have derived his name — had here proclaimed, in 
the name of Rome, that Macedonia should be free. But all this was little or 
uothing to the Jewish missionaries. At Amphipolis there was no synagogue, 
and therefore no ready means of addressing either Jews or Gentiles. 4 They 
therefore proceeded the next day thirty miles farther, through scenery of sur- 
passing loveliness, along the Strymonic Gulf, through the wooded pass of 
Aulon, where St. Paul may have looked at the tomb of Euripides, and along 
the shores of Lake Bolbe to Apollonia. Here again they rested for a night, 
and the next day, pursuing their journey across the neck of the promontory of 
Chalcidice, and leaving Olynthus and Potidaea, with their heart- stirring 
memories, far to the south, they advanced nearly forty miles farther to the 
far-famed town of Thessalonica, the capital of all Macedonia, and though a 
free city, 5 the residence of the Roman Proconsul. 

Its position on the Egnatian road, commanding the entrance to two great 
inland districts, and at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, had made it an 
important seat of commerce. Since the days when Cassander had re-founded 
it, and changed its name from Therma to Thessalonica in honour of his wife, 
who was a daughter of Philip of Macedon, it had always been a flourishing 
city, with many historic associations. Here Cicero had spent his days of 
melancholy exile. 6 Here a triumphal arch, still standing, commemorates the 
victory of Octavianus and Antony at Philippi. From hence, as with the blast 
of a trumpet, not only in St. Paul's days, 7 but for centuries afterwards, the 
Word of God sounded forth among the neighbouring tribes. Here Theodosius 
was guilty of that cruel massacre, for which St. Ambrose, with heroic faith- 
fulness, kept him for eight months from the cathedral of Milan. Here its 
jpod and learned Bishop Eustathius wrote those scholia on Homer, which 

i Hdt. vii. 114. 3 Thuc. iv. 103—107, v. 6—11. 3 Liv. xlv. 30. 

4 The town had become so insignificant that Strabo does not even mention it. 

» Plin. H. N. iv. 17. 6 Cic. Pro. Plane. 41. 7 1 Thesa. i. 8, cfwfrat. 



THESSALONICA AND BEBCEA. 287 

place him in the first rank of ancient commentators. It received the title of 
" the orthodox city," because it was for centuries a bulwark of Christendom, 
but it was taken by Amurath II. in 1430. Saloniki is still a great commercial 
port of 70,000 inhabitants, of whom nearly one-third are Jews; and the 
outrage of Mohammedan fanaticism which has brought its name into recent 
prominence is but the beginning of events which will yet change the map and 
11.6 destinies of Southern Europe. 

At this city — blighted now by the curse of Islam, but still beautiful on the 
slopes of its vine-clad hills, with Pelion and Olympus full in view — the 
missionaries rested, for here was the one Jewish synagogue which sufficed for 
the entire district. 1 After securing the means of earning their daily bread, 
which was no easy matter, they found a lodging in the house of a Jew, who 
had Grsecised the common name of Jesus into Jason. 2 Even if their quarters 
were gratuitously allowed them, St. Paul, accepting no further aid, was forced 
to daily and nightly labour of the severest description 3 to provide himself 
with the small pittance which alone sufficed his wants. Even this was not 
sufficient. Poor as he was — for if he ever possessed any private means he had 
now lost them all 4 — the expenses of the journey from Philippi had probably left, 
him and his companions nearly penniless, and but for the timely liberality of 
the Philippians it would have fared hardly with the Apostle, and he might 
even have been left without means to pursue his further journeys. 5 There 
is no contradiction between the two contributions from Philippi and the 
Apostle's account of his manual labours ; for there is nothing to show that he 
only stayed in Thessalonica a little more than three weeks. 6 In addition to the 
fact that the second contribution wo aid be partly wanted for his new journeys, 
we find that at this time a famine was raging, which caused the price of wheat 
to rise to six times its usual rate. 7 However much this famine may have 
enhanced the difficulties of St. Paul and his companions, it must have confirmed 
him in the purpose of placing the motives of his ministry above suspicion by 
making it absolutely gratuitous. Such disinterestedness added much to the 
strength of his position, especially in the "deep poverty" which must have 
prevailed in such times among the low-born proselytes of a despised religion. 
If St. Paul did not refuse the contributions from Philippi, it was because they 
came spontaneously, at an hour of bitter need, from those who could spare the 
money, and who, as he well knew, would be pained by any refusal of their 

1 Acts xvii. 1. rj avvayiayrj is probably the right reading, though the ^ is wanting in 
«, A, B, D. In any case it is evidently meant that there was but one synagogue, and 
tradition still points out the mosque — once the Church of St. Demetrius, which is sup- 
posed to stand upon its site. There are now nearly forty Jewish synagogues in 
Saloniki. 

2 Kom. xvi. 21. 

1 TheSS. ii. 9, wktcls yap koX iqp.epas epya£ofjiej/oi, irpo? to juit) eTnfZaprj(ra.C Tiva vfwov, k.t.\. 
4 Phil. hi. 8, ra irdvTa k^iuB-qv. 5 Phil. iv. 15, 16. 

6 He can hardly have failed to stay much longer, for Philippi was a hundred milea 
from Thessalonica, and it would take time for news to travel and the to-and -fro journey 
to be made. 

' Pointed out by Mr. Lewin, Fasti Sacri, p. 290 ; St. Paul, i. 231. 



288 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

proffered aid. Yet all who knew him knew well that the aid came unsought, 
and that, as far as Paul's own personal life was concerned, he was utterly 
indifferent to privations, and set the example of an unflinching endurance 
rendered easy by a perfect trust in God. 1 

For three Sabbaths in succession he went to the synagogue, and argued 
with the Jews. It might well have been that the outrage at Philippi, and its 
still lingering effects, would have damped his zeal, and made him shrink from 
another persecution. But, fresh as he was from such pain and peril, he 
carried on his discussions with undiminished force and courage, 2 explaining 
the prophecies, and proving from them that the Messiah was to suffer, and to 
rist from the dead, and that "this is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I am preaching 
to you." 3 The synagogue audience was mainly composed of Jews, and of 
these some were convinced and joined the Church. 4 Conspicuous among 
them for his subsequent devotion, and all the more conspicuous as being 
almost the only warmly-attached convert whom St. Paul won from the ranks 
of "the circumcision," was Aristarchus, the sharer of St. Paul's perils 5 from 
mob-violence at Ephesus, of his visit to Jerusalem, of his voyage and ship- 
wreck, and of his last imprisonment. A larger number, however, of proselytes 
and of Greeks accepted the faith, 6 and not a few women, of whom some were 
in a leading position. This inveterate obstinacy of the Jews, contrasting 
sadly with the ready conversion of the Gentiles, and especially of women, who 
in all ages have been more remarkable than men for religious earnestness, is a 
phenomenon which constantly recurs in the early history of Christianity. 
Nor is this wholly to be wondered at. The Jew was at least in possession of 
a religion, which had raised him to a height of moral superiority above his 
Gentile contemporaries ; but the Gentile of this day had no religion at all 
worth speaking of. If the Jew had more and more mistaken the shell of 
ceremonialism for the precious truths of which that ceremonialism was but the 
in tegument, he was at least conscious that there were deep truths which lay 
enshrined behind the rites and observances which he so fanatically cherished. 
But on what deep truths could the Greek woman rest, if her life were pure, 
and if her thoughts had been elevated above the ignorant domesticism which 
was the only recognised virtue of her sex ? What comfort was there for her 
in the cold grey eyes of Athene, or the stereotyped smile of the voluptuous 
Aphrodite? And when the Thessalonian Greek raised his eyes to the 

i Phil. iv. 11, 12. 

2 1 Thess. ii. 2, knapp^iaa-a^v ; Acts xvii. 2, SieAiyeTo avrois. The teaching of the syna- 
gogue admitted of discussions and replies (John vi. 25, &c.) ; as it does to this day in the 
Rabbinic synagogues. 

* Acts Xvii. 3, biavoiymv kolI 7rapaTi0e'/u.evos. 

4 One of these was JSecundus (Acts xx. 4), and, perhaps, a Gaius (xix. 29). The names 
are common enough, but it is a curious coincidence to find them, as well as the name 
Sosipater, inscribed among the Politarchs on the triumphal arch of Thessalonica. 

6 Acts xix. 29 ; xx. 4 ; Col. iv. 10, <rwaix^aAwTo? ; Philem. 24. 

6 In Acts xvii. 4, even if there be insufficient MSS. evidence in favour of the reading 
rS,v re mpoptvmv k a! 'EXXrjvwv (A, D, Vulg. , Copt. ), yet the Epistles prove decidedly that 
Gentiles predominated among the converts. 



THESSALONICA AND BBRCEA. 289 

dispeopled heaven of the Olympus, which towered over the blue gulf on which 
his city stood — wheu his imagination could, no longer place the throne of 
Zeus, and the session of his niighty deities, on that dazzling summit where 
Cicero had remarked with pathetic irony that he saw nothing but snow and 
ice — what compensation could he find for the void left in his heart by a dead 
religion ? l By adopting circumcision he might become, as it were, a Helot of 
Judaism ; and to such a sacrifice he was not tempted. But the Gospel which 
Paul preached had no esoteric doctrines, and no supercilious exclusions, and 
no repollent ceremonials; it came with a Divine Example and a free gift 
to all, and that free gift involved all that was most precious to the troubled 
and despondent soul. No wonder, then, that the Church of Thessalonica was 
mainly Gentile, as is proved by the distinct language of St. Paul, 2 and the 
total absence of any Old Testament allusion in the two Epistles. In the 
three weeks of synagogue preaching, St. Paul had confined his argument to 
Scripture; but to Gentile converts of only a few months' standing such 
arguments would have been unintelligible, and they were needless to those 
who had believed on the personal testimony to a risen Christ. 

After mentioning the first three Sabbaths, St. Luke furnishes us with no 
further details of the stay at Thessalonica. But we can trace several interest- 
ing facts about their further residence from the personal allusions of St. Paul's 
Epistles. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians — the earliest of all his 
letters which have come down to us — was written within a month or two 
of his departure. "We trace in it the tone of sadness and the yearning for 
a brighter future which were natural to one whose habitual life at this time 
was that of a hated and hunted outcast. We see that the infant Church was 
remarkable for a faithfulness, love, and patience which made it famous as 
a model church in all Macedonia and Achaia. 3 It shone all the more brightly 
from the fierce afflictions which from the first encompassed the brethren, but 
failed either to quench their constancy or dim their joy. 4 St. Paul dwells 
much on his own bearing and example among them; the boldness which 
he showed in spite of present opposition and past persecutions; the total 
absence of all delusive promises in a teaching which plainly warned them that 
to be near Christ was to be near the fire ; 5 the conviction wrought by the 
present power of the Holy Spirit testifying to his words ; 6 the simplicity and 
sincerity which enabled him to appeal to them as witnesses that his Gospel 
was not stained by the faintest touch of deceitful flattery, or guilty motive, or 
vain-glorious self-seeking; 7 the independence which he had maintained ; 8 the 
self-sacrificing tenderness which he had showed ; the incessant severity of his 
industry ; 9 the blameless purity of his life ; the individual solicitude of his 

1 " Subversae Deorum arae, lares a quibusdam in publicum abjecti " (Suet. CaUg. 5). 
" Plures nusquam jam Deos ullos interpretabantur " (Plin. Epp. vi. 20 ; supra, p. 16). 

2 1 Thess. i. 9 ; ii. 14. 3 1 Thess. i. 2, 3, 6—8. 
4 2 Thess. i. 4, 5 ; 1 Thess. ii. 14 ; i. 6. 

1 Thess. iii. 4, "We told you before that we should suffer tribulation." o eyyvs po« 
eryws to£ 77vp6s (saying of our Lord. Orig. Horn, in Jerem. iii. 778). 

6 Id. ii. 1, 2. 7 Id. L 5. s Id. ii. 3—6. 9 Id. ii. 6 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8—10. 
T 



290 THE LIFE AND WORE OF ST. PAUL. 

instructions. 1 And this high example had produced its natural effects, foi 
they had embraced his teaching with passionate whole-hearteclness as a divine 
message, 2 and inspired him with an affection which made their image ever 
present to his imagination, though untoward hindrances had foiled a twice- 
repeated attempt to visit them again. 

The Epistle also throws light on that special feature of St. Paul's teaching 
which was ultimately made the ground for the attack upon him. His suffer- 
ings had naturally turned his thoughts to the future ; the cruelty of man had 
tended to fix his faith yet more fervently on the help of God ; the wickedness 
of earthly rulers, and the prevalence of earthly wrongs, had combined with 
circumstances on which we shall touch hereafter, to fill his teaching with the 
hopes and prophecies of a new kingdom and a returning King. His expec- 
tation of the rapid revelation of that Second Advent had been a theme of 
encouragement under incessant afflictions. 

Few indeed were the untroubled periods of ministry in the life of St. Paul. 
The jealousy and hatred which had chased him from city to city of Pisidia and 
Lycaonia jmrsued him here. The Jews from first to last — the Jews for whom 
he felt in his inmost heart so tender an affection — were destined to be the plague 
and misery of his suffering life. At Antioch and Jerusalem, Jews nominally 
within the fold of Christ opposed his teaching and embittered his days ; in all 
other cities it was the Jews who contradicted and blasphemed the holy name 
which he was preaching. In the planting of his Churches he had to fear their 
deadly opposition ; in the watering of them, their yet more deadly fraternity. 
The Jews who hated Christ sought his life ; the Jews who professed to love 
Him undermined his efforts. The one faction endangered his existence, the 
other ruined his peace. Never, till death released him, was he wholly free 
from their violent conspiracies or their insidious calumnies. Without, they 
sprang upon him at every opportunity like a pack of wolves ; within, they hid 
themselves in sheep's clothing* to worry and tear his flocks. And at Thessalonica 
he had yet a new form of persecution against which to contend. It was not 
purely Jewish as in Palestine, or purely Gentile as at Philippi, or combined as 
at Iconium, but was simply a brutal assault of the mob, hounded on by Jews in 
the background. Jealous, :< as usual, that the abhorred preaching of a crucified 
Messiah should in a few weeks have won a greater multitude of adherents than 
they had won during many years to the doctrines of Moses — furious, above 
all, to see themselves deprived of the resources, the reverence, and the adhesion 
of leading women — they formed an unholy alliance with the lowest dregs of 
the Thessalonian populace. Owing to the dishonour in which manual pursuits 
were held in ancient days, 4 every large city had a superfluous population of 
worthless idlers — clients who lived on the doles of the wealthy, flatterers who 

1 1 Thess. ii. 9. 2 Id. ii. 13. 

3 This is eufficiently obvious, whether we read fqAwawTes in Acts xvii. 5 (A, B, E, and 
many versions) or not. 

4 " niiberates autem et sorrlidi quaestus mercenarioium omniuinque quorum operas 
non artcs sunt; e»t enira ipsa m^rces auctoramentum servitutis " (Cic. De Off. i. 42). 



THESSALONICA AND BER(EA. 291 

fawned at the feet of the influential, the lazzaroni of streets, mere loafers and 
loiterers, the hangers-on of forum, 1 the claqueurs of law-courts, the scum that 
gathered about the shallowest outmost waves of civilisation. Hiring the 
assistance of these roughs and scoundrels, 2 the Jews disturbed the peace of 
the city by a fanatical riot, and incited the mob to attack the house of Jason, 
in order to bring the Apostles before the popular Assembly. But Paul had 
receivwi kimely warning, and he and his companions were in safe concealment. 
Foiled in this object, they seized Jason and one or two others whom they 
recognised as Christians, and dragged them before the Politarchs, 3 or pre- 
siding magistrates of the free city of Thessalonica. " These fellows," they 
shouted, "these seditious agitators of the civilised world 4 have found their 
way here also. Jason has received them. The whole set of them ought to 
be punished on a crimen majestatis, for they go in the teeth of Caesar's 
decrees, and say that there is a different king, namely Jesus." 6 But the mob 
did not altogether succeed in carrying their point. In dealing with the seven 
Politarchs, under the very shadow of the proconsular residence, they were 
dealing with people of much higher position, and much more imbued with the 
Roman sense of law, than the provincial duumviri of Philippi. Neither the 
magistrates nor the general multitude of the city liked the aspect of affairs. 
It was on the face of it too ludicrous to suppose that hard-working artisans 
like Jason and his friends could be seriously contemplating revolutionary 
measures, or could be really guilty of laesa majestas. A very short hearing 
sufficed to show them that this was some religious opinion entertained by a 
few poor people, and so far from taking strong measures or inflicting any 
punishment, they contented themselves with making Jason and the others give 
some pecuniary security 7 that they would keep the peace, and so dismissed 

1 Subrostrani (Cic. Epp. Fam. viii. 1, 2), Subbasiliccmi {Plant. Capt. iv. 2, 35), turba 
forensis. "Lewd" (A.S. Loewedre) means (1) lay, (2) ignorant, (3) bad. 

2 Acts xvii. 5, TOf a-yopcuW avSpa? nvas novypoix;. Cf. Ar. Eg. 181 ; Sen. De Benef. 7. 

3 This name is unknown to classical literature. It would have furnished fine scope 
for the suspicious ingenuity of Baur and Zeller, had it not been fortunately preserved as 
the title of the Thessalonian magistrates on a still legible inscription over the triumphal 
arch at Thessalonica, known as the Vardar gate (Bockh. Inscr. 1967). This arch was 
recently destroyed, but the fragments were saved by our Consul, and were brought to the 
British Museum in 1876. There are seven, and among them the names of Sosipater, 
Gaius, and Secundus. There are no soi-disant a-rparrfyol or pa/3So0xot in the Urbs Libera 
Thessalonica, as there were at the colony Philippi, but there was a S^o? and 7roA.i rapxcu. 

4 The expression shows how widely Christianity was spreading, and perhaps alludes 
to the recent events at Borne, which may have been a sufficient reason for the Jews 
themselves to keep rather in the background, and incite the Gentiles to get the Apostles 
axpelled. 

5 The half truth, which made this accusation all the more of a lie, is seen in St. 
Paul's preaching of the Second Advent (1, 2 Thess. passim) and the kingdom of Christ 
(1 Thess. ii. 12 ; 2 Thess. i. 5), and not impossibly in some distortion of what he had told 
them of 6 narexuv and to koltsxov (2 Thess. ii. 6, 7). The "nee Caesaribus honor " is one of 
the complaints of Tacitus against the Jews {Hist. v. 5). 

6 "We see in the pages of Tacitus that it was the endless elasticity of this charge — the 
crimen majestatis— which made it so terrible an engine of tyranny {Ann. iii. 38). The 
facts here mentioned strikingly illustrate this. Any one who chose to turn delator might 
thus crush an obscure Jew as easily as he could crush a powerful noble. 

' Acts xvii. 9, Aa/36vT€s to inavov sounds like a translation of the Latin phrase " Satis- 
T 2 



292 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

them. But this was a sufficient sign that for the present further mission work 
would be impossible. No magistrates like the presence of even an innocersfcly 
disturbing element in their jurisdiction, and if Paul and Silas were brought 
in person before them, they might not escape so easily. Nor, in the defective 
police regulations of antiquity, was it at all certain that the moderation of the 
magistrates would be an efficient protection to two poor Jews from the hatred 
and violence of a mob. In any case it is probable that they would be unwilling 
to run the risk of impoverishing Jason and their other friends by causing a 
forfeiture of the scant and much-needed earnings which they had been obliged 
to pledge. The brethren, therefore, devised means to secure the escape of 
Paul and Silas by night. It is not impossible that Timotheus stayed among 
them for a time, to teach and organise the Church, and to add those last 
exhortations which should nerve them to bear up against the persecutions of 
many years. 1 For in the Church of the Thessalonians, which was in some 
respects the fairest gain of his mission, St. Paul felt an intense solicitude, 
manifested by the watchful care with which he guarded its interests. 2 

When night had fallen over the tumult which had been surging through 
the streets of Thessalonica, news of the issue of the trial before the Politarchs 
was brought to Paul and Silas in their concealment. The dawn might easily 
witness a still more dangerous outbreak, and they therefore planned an 
immediate escape. They gathered together their few poor possessions, and 
under the cover of darkness stole through the silent and deserted streets 
under the triumphal Arch of Augustus, and through the western gate. 
Whither should they now turn ? From Philippi, the virtual capital of 
Macedonia Prima, they had been driven to Thessalonica, the capital of Mace- 
donia Secunda. An accidental collision with Gentile interests had cost them 
flagellation, outrage, and imprisonment in the colony; the fury of Jewish 
hatred had imperilled their lives, and caused trouble and loss to their friends 
in the free city. Should they now make their way to Pella, the famous birth- 
place of the young Greek who had subdued the world, and whose genius had 
left an indelible impress on the social and political conditions which they 
everywhere encountered? To do this would be obviously useless. The 
Jewish synagogues of the dispersion were in close connexion with each other, 
and the watchword would now be evidently given to hound the fugitives from 
place to place, and especially to silence Paul as the arch-apostate who was 
persuading all men everywhere, as they caluraniously asserted, to forsake the 
Law of Moses. Another and less frequented road would lead them to a com- 
paratively unimportant town, which lay off the main route, in which their pre- 

datione accepta." Cf. Lev. xxv. 26 (LXX.). It was the Jewish sense that the Romans 
loved justice which made them all the more readily accept their yoke (Jos. Antt. xvii. 9, 
§ 4, and 13, § 1 ; B. J. vi. 6, § 2 ; Dio Cass, xxxvi., p. 37). Titus upbraided them with 
all the generous favours which they had received from Rome (Jos. B. J. vi. 2, § 4). 

1 I agree with Alford in thinking that the mention of Timothy in the superscription 
of both Epistles, and his mission to them from Athens, prove that he was with St. Paul 
during this visit. 

3 These, ii. 18. 



THESSAXONICA AND BERCEA. 293 

sence might., for a time at any rate, remain unsuspected. Striking off from the 
gTeat Via Egnatia to one which took a more southerly direction, the two fugitives 
made their way through the darkness. A night escape of at least fifty miles, along 
an unknown road, involving the dangers of pursuit and the crossing of large and 
frequently flooded rivers like the Axius, the Eehidorus. the Lydias, and some 
of the numerous affluents of the Haliaemon, is passed over with a single word. 
Can we wonder at the absence of all allusion to the beauties, delights, and 
associations of travel in the case of one whose travels were not only the 
laborious journeys., beset with incessant hardships, of a sickly Jewish artisan, 
but ako those of one whose life in its endless trials was a spectacle unto the 
universe, to angels and to men ? x 

The town which they had in view as a place of refuge was Bercea,* and 
their motive in going there receives striking and unexpected illustration from 
& passage of Cicero. In his passionate philippic against Piso he says to him 
that after his gross maladministration of Macedonia, he was so unpopular that 
he had to slink into Thessalonica incognito, and by night ; 3 and that from 
thence, unable to bear the concert of wallers, and the hurricane of complaints, 
he left the main road and fled to the out-of-the-way town of Bercea. "We 
cannot doubt that this comparatively secluded position was the reason why 
Paul and Silas chose it as safer than the more famous and frequented Pella. 

And as they traversed the pleasant streets of the town — " dewy," like 
those of Tivoli, " with twinkling rivulets " — it must have been with sinking 
hearts, in spite of all their courage and constancy, that Paul and Silas once 
more made their way, as their first duty, into the synagogue of the Jews. 
But if the life of the Christian missionary has its own breadths of gloom, it 
also has its lights, and after all the storms which they had encountered they 
were cheered in their heaviness by a most encouraging reception. The Jews 
of this synagogue were less obstinate, less sophisticated, than those whom St. 
Paul ever found elsewhere. When he had urged upon them those arguments 
from the Psalms, and from Isaiah, and from Habakkuk, about a Messiah who 
was to die, and sunder, and rise again, and about faith as the sole means of 
justification, the Jews, instead of turning upon him as soon as they under- 
stood the full scope and logical conclusions of his arguments, proved them- 
selves to be "nobler"' 4 than those of Thessalonica — more generous, more 
simple, more sincere and truth-loving. Instead of angrily rejecting this new 
Gospel, they daily and diligently searched the Scriptures to judge Paul's 
arguments and references by the word and the testimony. The result was 
that many Jews believed, as well as Greeks — men and women of the more 
respectable classes. They must have spent some weeks of calm among these 

1 1 Cor. iv. 9. 

3 Bercea is perhaps a Macedonian corruption for Phercea (cf. BtAt—os for $i'Ai— os). 
It is no^v called Kara Pberia. 

3 Cic. in Pis. 36. Adduced by Wetstein ad loc. 

4 Acts xvii. 11, evyevi<rrepoL. The expression is interesting as an instance of evyerifs, 
used (as in modern times) in a secondary and moral sense. The best comment on it is 
the " Nobilitas sola est at que unica virtus," 



294 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

open-minded Beroeans, for twice during the stay St. Paul conceived the design 
of going back to his beloved Thessalonians. Untoward obstacles prevented 
this, 1 and so heavily did the interests of the persecuted Church rest on his 
mind that either from Bercea. or subsequently from Athens, he sent Timothy 
to inquire into and report their state. One permanent friend, both to St. 
Paul and to Christianity, was gained in the person of Sopater, of Beroea. 

But it would have been too much to hope that all should be thus open to 
conviction, and the news was soon unfavourably reported to the Synagogue of 
Thessalonica. The hated name of Paul acted like a spark on their inflam- 
mable rage, and they instantly despatched emissaries to stir up storms among 
the mob of Beroea. 2 Once more Paul received timely notice from some faith- 
ful friend. It was impossible to face this persistent and organised outburst 
of hatred which was now pursuing him from city to city. And since it was 
clear that Paul, and not Silas, was the main object of persecution, it was 
arranged that, while Paul made good his escape, Silas and Timothy — who 
may have joined his companions during their residence at Bercea — should 
stay to set in order all that was wanting, and water the good seed which had 
begun to spring. 

And so — once more in his normal condition of a fugitive — St. Paul left 
Bercea. He was not alone, and either from the weakness of his eyesight or 
from his liability to epilepsy, all his movements were guided by others. " The 
brethren " sent him away to go seawards, 3 and there can be little doubt that 
they led him sixteen miles to the colony of Dium, 4 whence he sailed fro 
Athens. That he did not proceed by land seems certain. It was the longer, 
the more expensive, the more dangerous, and the more fatiguing route. If 
St. Paul was so little able to make his way alone that, even by the sea 
route, some of the Bercean brethren were obliged to accompany him till 
they left him safe in lodgings at Athens, it is clear that by the land route their 
difficulties, to say nothing of the danger of pursuit, would have been much 
increased. The silence of St. Luke as to any single town visited on the journey 
is conclusive, 5 and we must suppose that some time in autumn, St. Paul em- 
barked on the stormy waves of the Mediterranean, and saw the multitudinous 
and snowy peaks of Olympus melt into the distant blue. He sailed along 
shores of which every hill and promontory is voiceful with heroic memories ; 
past Ossa and Pelion, past the coast of Therinopylse, along the shores of Euboea, 6 

1 1 Thess. ii. 18. 2 Acts XVli. 13, <ra\evovre? tovs oxAovS. 

3 Acts xvii. 14, ws eTi-i tV eiKaa-crav is a mere pleonastic phrase for "in the direction of 
the sea " (Strabo, xvi. 2, &c). *Eo.>s, the reading of N, A, B, F, and other variations of the 
text, seem to have arisen from the comparative rarity of the expression. The notion that 
he only made a feint of going to the sea, and then turned landwards to foil pursuit, arises 
from an erroneous interpretation of the phrase. 

4 Perhaps to Alorus or Methone. (Kenan, St. Paul, p. 166, quoting Strabo, vii., pp. 
20, 22; Leake, in. 435.) 

5 The addition of D, 7nxprjA0ee 8% ttjv ®e<rcraXtav e/ouAutfr) yap ei? avTOVS KTjpv£ai tov \6yor, 

throws no light on the question. 

6 Whether St. Paul sailed down the Euripus or to the east of Euboea is uncertain. 
The former route was the more common, 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 295 

round the " marbled steep " of Sunium, where the white Temple still stood 
entire, until his eye caught the well-known glimpse of the crest and spear- 
head of Athene Promachos on the Acropolis, 1 — the helm was turned, and, 
entering a lovely harbour, his ship dropped anchor in full sight of the Par- 
thenon and the Propylaea. 



3Soofe 



CHRISTIANITY IN ACHAIA. 

Tl rat \inapat Kal loaretyavoi /col aoiSi/xoi 

'E\\ddos "peio-fia, tcAeival 'AOauat, hai}x6viov irroXUQpov. — Pind. Fr. 47. 

Toiovtov avroTs^Apeos evfiovAov irdyov 
iyu> avvi'iSr) x®°' vl0V ovd\ os ovk ia 

Toiovcrtf aX-fjTas rr}& 6/xov vaietv ttSAzi. — Soph. (Ed. Col. 947. 
IIou vvv Trjs 'EWados 6 rv(pos ; irov tS>v 'AOrjuuiv to uvofxa ; ttov twv (pi\oo~6<p(»v 6 
Krjpos ; 6 air6 VaKiAalas, 6 cbrb Brjdaa'tBa, 6 dypoiKOS iravrcou eKelvcov Trepieyevero. 

Chrys. Horn. iv. in Act. iii. {Opp. ix. 38, ed. Montfaucon). 

CHAPTER XXVIL 

ST. PAUL AT ATHENS 

• i Immortal Grt ece, dear land of glorious lays, 
Lo, here the Unknown God of thine unconscious praise." — Keble. 

Athens ! — with what a thrill of delight has many a modern traveller been 
filled as, for the first time, he stepped upon that classic land ! With what an 
eager gaze has he scanned the scenery and outline of that city 



•" on the iEgean shore, 



Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, 
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
And eloquence." 

As he approached the Acropolis what a throng of brilliant scenes has passed 
across his memory ; what processions of grand and heroic and beautiful 
figures have swept across the stage of his imagination ! As he treads upon 
Attic ground he is in " the Holy Land of the Ideal; " he has reached the most 
sacred shrine of the " fair humanities " of Paganism. It was at Athens that 
the human form, sedulously trained, attained its most exquisite and winning 
beauty ; there that human freedom put forth its most splendid power ; there 
that human intellect displayed its utmost subtlety and grace ; there that Art 
reached to its most consummate perfection ; there that Poetry uttered alike 
its sweetest and its sublimest strains ; there that Philosophy attuned to tbo most 

» Pausan. Attic, i. 28, 2 ; Herod, v. 77, 



296 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATH* 

perfect music of human expression its loftiest and deepest thoughts. Had it 
been possible for the world by its own wisdom to know God ; had it been in 
the power of man to turn into bread the stones of the wilderness ; had perma- 
nent happiness lain within the grasp of sense, or been among the rewards of 
culture ; had it been granted to man's unaided power to win salvation by the 
gifts and qualities of his own nature, and to make for himself a new Paradise 
in lieu of that lost Eden, before whose gate still waves the fiery sword of the 
Cherubim, — then such ends would have been achieved at Athens in the day of 
her glory. No one who has been nurtured in the glorious lore of that gay and 
radiant city, and has owed some of his best training to the hours spent in 
reading the history and mastering the literature of its many noble sons, can ever 
visit it without deep emotions of gratitude, interest, and love. 1 

And St. Paul must have known at least something of the city in whose 
language he spoke, and with whose writers he was not wholly unfamiliar. 
The notion that he was a finisliod classical scholar is, indeed, as we have shown 
already, a mere delusion ; and the absence from his Epistles of every historical 
reference proves that, like the vast mass of his countrymen, he was indifferent 
to the history of the heathen, though profoundly versed in the history of 
Israel. He was, indeed, no less liberal and cosmopolitan — nay, in the best 
sense, far more so — than the most advanced Hellenist, the most cultivated 
Hagadist of his day. Yet he looked at " the wisdom of Javan" as something 
altogether evanescent and subsidiary — an outcome of very partial enlighten- 
ment, far from pure, and yet graciously conceded to the ages of ignorance. It 
was with no thrill of rapture, no loyal recognition of grace and greatness, that 
Paul landed at Phalerum or Peiraeus, and saw the crowning edifices of the 
Acropolis, as it towered over the wilderness of meaner temples, stand out in 
their white lustre against the clear blue sky. On the contrary, a feeling of 
depression, a fainting of the heart, an inward unrest and agitation, seems at 
once to have taken possession of his susceptible and ardent temperament; 
above all, a sense of loneliness which imperiously claimed the solace of that 
beloved companionship which alone rendered his labours possible, or sustained 
him amid the daily infirmities of his troubled life. As he bade farewell to the 
faithful Beroean brethren who had watched over his journey, and had been to 
him in the place of eyes, the one message that he impresses on them is 
urgently to enjoin Silas and Timotheus to come to him at once with all possible 
speed. In the words of St. Luke we still seem to catch an echo of the yearning 
earnestness which shows us that solitude 2 — and above all solitude in such a 
place — was the one trial which he found it the most difficult to bear. 

But even if his two friends were able instantly to set out for Athens, a full 
week must, at the lowest computation, inevitably elapse before Silas could reach 

1 We read the sentiments of Cicero, Sulpicius, Germanicus, Pliny, Apollonius, &c, in 
Cic. Ep. ad Quint, fratr. i. 1 ; Epp. Fam. iv. 5 ; ad Att. v. 10 ; vi. 1 ; Tac. Arm. ii. 53 ; 
Plin. Ep. viii. 24 ; Philostr. Vil. Apoll. v. 41 ; Kenan, St. Paul, 167 ; but, as he adds, 
"Paul belonged to another world ; his Holy Land was elsewhere." 

- Acts xvii. 15, Xa/3di/T€S epToAifP Jrpbs roy 2,iKav nai roy Tifidfleoi/ 'iya. ws Ta^iora eMfoxrw nrpbi 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 297 

hiui from Bercea, and a still longer period before Timothy could come from 
Thessalonica ; and during those days of weary and restless longing there was 
little that he could do. It is probable that, when first he was guided by his 
friends to his humble lodging, he would have had little heart to notice the 
sights and sounds of those heathen streets, though, as he walked through the 
ruins of the long walls of Themistocles to the Peiraic gate, one of the brethren, 
more quick-eyed than himself, may have pointed out to him the altars bearing 
the inscription, 'ArNHSTOIS 0EOI2, 1 which about the same time attracted the 
notice of Apollonius of Tyana, and were observed fifty years afterwards by 
the traveller Pausanias, as he followed the same road. 2 But when the brethren 
had left him — having no opportunity during that brief stay to labour with his 
own hands — he relieved his melancholy tedium by wandering hither and 
thither, with a curiosity 3 largely mingled with grief and indignation. 4 

The country had been desolated by the Soman dominion, but the city still 
retained some of its ancient glories. No Secundus Carinas had as yet laid his 
greedy and tainted hand on the unrivalled statues of the Athens of Phidias. 
It was the multitude of these statues in a city where, as Petronius says, 5 it 
was more easy to meet a god than a man, which chiefly absorbed St. Paul's 
attention. He might glance with passing interest at the long colonnades of 
shops glittering with wares from every port in the ^Egean ; but similar scenes 
had not been unfamiliar to him in Tarsus, and Antioch, and Thessalonica. 
He might stroll into the Stoa Pcecile, and there peer at the paintings, 
still bright and fresh, of Homeric councils of which he probably knew 
nothing, and of those Athenian battles about which, not even excepting 
Marathon, 6 there is no evidence that he felt any interest. The vast 
enlargement of his spiritual horizon would not have brought with it 
any increase of secular knowledge, and if Paul stood in these respects 
on the level of even the Gamaliels of his day, he knew little or 
nothing of Hellenic story. 7 And for the same reason he would have been 
indifferent to the innumerable busts of Greeks of every degree of emin- 
ence, from Solon and Epinienides down to recent Sophists and Cosmetae, 

1 Pausan. I. i. 4; Hesych. s. v., 'A-y^Te? OeoC ; v. mfra, p. 357). 

5 They lay on the road between the Phaleric port and the city, and St. Paul may 
possibly have landed at Phalerum, the nearest though not the most frequented harbour 
for vessels sailing from Macedonia. 

8 Acts xvii. 23, Siepxoiu-evos *cal avaQewptai' Ta <rej3atr^aTa vfiwp. 

4 Id. 16, napiagvvero to wvevfj.a avrov. Cf. 1 Cor. xih. 5, ov irapot-vvercu, "is not 

exasperated." 

5 Petron. Sat. 17. 

6 Mr. Martineau, after remarking that modern lives of St. Paul have been too much 
of the nature of " illustrative guide-books, so instructive, that by far the greatest part of 
their information would have been new to St. Paul himself," adds that "in the vicinity 
of Salamis or Marathon he would probably recall the past no more than a Brahmin would 
in travelling over the fields of Edgehill or Marston Moor" {Studies in Christianity, 
p. 417). 

7 Nothing in the Talmud is more amazing than the total absence of the geographic, 
chronological, and historic spirit. A genuine Jew of that Pharisaic class in the midst of 
which St. Paul had been trained, cared more for some pedantically minute Halacha, about 
the threads in a Tsttstih, than for all the Pagan history in the world. 



298 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

and stil] more indifferent to the venal intrusions which Athenian servility 
had conceded to Roman self-importance. A glance would have been more 
than enough for Greek statues decapitated to furnish figures for Roman 
heads, or pedestals from which the original hero had been displaced to 
make room for the portly bulk and bloated physiognomy of some modern 
Proconsul. Some Jew might take a certain pride in pointing out to him 
the statues of Hyrcanus, the Asmonsean High Priest, and of that beautiful 
Berenice before whom he little thought that he should one day plead his 
cause. 1 But his chief notice would be directed to the bewildering multipli- 
city of temples, and to the numberless " idols " which rose on every side. 
Athens was the city of statues. There were statues of Phidias, and Myron, 
and Lysicles, and statues without number of the tasteless and mechanical 
copyists of that dead period of the Empire ; statues of antiquity as vene- 
rable as the olive-wood Athene which had fallen from heaven, and statues 
of yesterday ; statues colossal and diminutive ; statues equestrian, and erect, 
and seated; statues agonistic and contemplative, solitary and combined, 
plain and coloured ; statues of wood, and earthenware, and stone, and mar- 
ble, and bronze, and ivory, and gold, in every attitude, and in all possible 
combinations ; statues starting from every cave, and standing like lines of 
sentinels in every street. 2 -There were more statues in Athens, says Pau- 
sanias, than in all the rest of Greece put together, and their number would 
be all the more startling, and even shocking, to St. Paul, because, during 
the long youthful years of his study at Jerusalem, he had never seen so 
much as one representation of the human form, and had been trained to 
regard it as apostasy to give the faintest sanction to such violations of God's 
express command. His earlier Hellenistic training, his natural large-hearted- 
ness, his subsequent familiarity with Gentile life, above all, the entire 
change of his views respecting the universality and permanence of the Mosaic 
Law, had indeed indefinitely widened for him the shrunken horizon of Jewish 
intolerance. But any sense of the dignity and beauty of Pagan art was im- 
possible to one who had been trained in the schools of the Rabbis. 3 There was 
nothing in Bis education which enabled him to admire the simple grandeur of 
the Propylsea, the severe beauty of the Parthenon, the massive proportions of 
the Theseum, the exquisite elegance of the Temple of the Wingless Yictory. 
From the nude grace and sinewy strength of the youthful processions por- 
trayed on frieze or entablature, he would have turned away with something 
of impatience, if not with something even of disgust. When the tutor of 
Charles the Fifth, the good Cardinal of Tortosa, ascended the Papal throne 
under the title of Adrian the Sixth, and his attendants conducted him to the 
Vatican to show him its splendid treasures of matchless statuary, his sole 

1 Jos. Antt. xix. 8, § 5. 

2 "Athenae simulacra Deorum hominumque habentes omni genere et materia© et 
artium insignia" (Liv. xlv. 27). 

'•'< 'J 1 ) h; reader will recall the censure passed on Gamaliel for having merely entered » 
bath in which was a statue of Aphrodite {infra, p. 



8T. PAUL AT ATHENS. 209 

remark, in those unconth accents which excited so much hatred aud ridicule 
in his worthless subjects, was 

" STJNT IDOLA A1*TIQT70BU3I ! " 1 

It was made a scoff and a jest against him, and doubtless, in a Pontiff of the 
Bixteenth century, it shows an intensity of the Hebraising spirit singularly 
msoftened by any tinsre of Hellenic culture. But, as has been admitted eTen 
oy writers of the most refined aesthetic sympathies, the old German Pope was 
more than half right. At any rate, the sort of repugnance which dictated his 
disparaging remark would have been not only natural, but inevitable, in a 
Pharisee in the capital of Judaism and under the very shadow of the Temple 
of the Most High. TVe who have learnt to see God in all that is refined and 
beautiful ; whom His love has lifted above the perils of an extinct paganism ; 
whom His own word has taught to recognise sunbeams from the Fountain of 
Light in fvery grace of true art and every glow of poetic inspiration, may 
thankfully admire the exquisite creations of ancient genius: — but had Paul 
done so he could not have been the Paul he was. " The prejudices of the 
iconoclastic Jew." says Penan, with bitter injustice, "blinded him: he took 
these incomparable images for idols. 'His spirit,' says his biographer, 'was 
embittered within him when he saw the city filled with idols.' Ah, beautiful 
and chaste images ; true gods and true goddesses, tremble ! See the man 
who will raise the hammer against you. The fatal word has been pronounced : 
von are idols. The mistake of this ugly little Jew will be your death-warrant.'" 2 
Yes, their death- wan-ant as false gods and false goddesses, as " gods of the 
heathen " which " are but idols." 3 but not their death-warrant to us as works 
of art ; not their death-warrant as the imaginative creations of a divinely- 
given faculty : not their death-warrant as echoes from within of that outward 
beauty which is a gift of God: not in any sense their death-warrant as stand- 
ing for anything which is valuable to mankind. Christianity only discouraged 
Art so long as Art was the handmaid of idolatry and vice ; the moment this 
danger ceased she inspired and ennobled Art. It is all veiy well for senti- 
mentalists to sigh over "the beauty that was Greece, and the glory that was 
Rome ;" but Paganism had a very ragged edge, and it was this that Paul daily 
witnessed. Paganism, at its best, was a form assumed by natural religion, 
and had a power and life of its own ; but, alas ! it had not in it enough salt of 
solid morality to save its own power and life from corruption. St. Paul 
needed no mere historical induction to convince him that the loftiest heights 
of culture are compatible with the lowest abysses of depravity, and that a 
shrine of consummate beauty could be a sink of utter infamy. Xay, more, he 

1 He -walled up, and never entered, the Belvedere (Symonds, Renaissance, p. 377). 

2 St. Paul, p. 172. The word K areiSa\ov is, however, it. Luke's, not St. Paul's. 

3 •'The pagau worship of beauty . . . had ennobled art and corrupted nature; 
extracted wonders from the quarries of Pentelicus, and horrors from the populace of 
Rome and Corinth ; perfected the marbles of the temple, and degraded the humanity of 
the worshipper. Heathenism had wrought into monstrous combination physical beauty 
and moral deformity" piartiaeau, Hours of Thought, p. 306). 



300 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

knew by personal observation, what we may only be led to conjecture bj 
thoughtful comparison, that there was no slight connexion between the super- 
ficial brightness and the hidden putrescence ; that the flowers which yielded 
the intoxicating honey of ancient art were poisoned flowers ; that the perfect- 
ness of sculpture might have been impossible without the nude athleticism 
which ministered to vice. For one who placed the sublime of manhood in 
perfect obedience to the moral law, for one to whom purity and self-control 
were elements of the only supreme ideal, it was, in that age, impossible to 
love, impossible to regard even with complacence, an Art which was avowedly 
the handmaid of Idolatry, and covertly the patroness of shame? Our regret 
for the extinguished brilliancy of Athens will be less keen when we bear in 
mind that, more than any other city, she has been the corruptress of the world. 
She kindled the altars of her genius with unhallowed incense, and fed them 
with strange fires. Better by far the sacred Philistinism — if Philistinism it 
were — for which this beautiful harlot had no interest, and no charm, than the 
veiled apostasy which longs to recall her witchcraft and to replenish the cup 
of her abomination. Better the uncompromising Hebraism which asks what 
concord hath Christ with Belial and the Temple of God with idols, than the 
corrupt Hellenism which, under pretence of artistic sensibility or archaeological 
information, has left its deep taint on modern literature, and seems to be never 
happy unless it is raking amid the embers of forgotten lusts. 

Nor was Paul likely to be overpowered by the sense of Athenian greatness. 
Even if his knowledge of past history were more profound than we imagine 
it to have been, yet the Greece that he now saw was but a shadow and a 
corpse — " Greece, but living Greece no more." 1 She was but trading on the 
memory of achievements not her own ; she was but repeating with dead lips 
the echo of old philosophies which had never been sufficient to satisfy the 
yearnings of the world. Her splendour was no longer an innate effulgence, 
but a lingering reflex. Centuries had elapsed since all that was grand and 
heroic in her history had " gone glimmering down the dream of things that 
were ;" and now she was the weak and contemptuously tolerated dependent of 
an alien barbarism, 2 puffed up by the empty recollection of a fame to which 
she contributed nothing, and retaining no heritage of the past except its 
monuments, its decrepitude, and its corruption. Among the things which he 
saw at Athens there were few which Paul could naturally admire. He would 

1 See Apollonius, Ep. lxx. [ubi SUpr.). "EXkqves oleo-Oe Selv bvo(id£eo-6ai . . . oAA ifitav ye ovbe 
to. bv6fj.ara /xeVet tois 7roAAoi9, aAA' vnb veas Tavnjs evSai/jLOvias (the patronage of Rome), 

a.TTo\(j)\eKacn ra tuiv npoyoviov cruju/3oAa. 

2 The nominal freedom of Athens had been spared by successive conquerors. Though 
she had always been on the defeated side with Mithridates, Pompey, Brutus and Cassius, 
and Anthony, yet the Roman Emperors left her the contemptuous boon of an unfettered 
loquacity. This was her lowest period. " She was no longer the city of Theseus; she 
wos not yet the city of Hadrian " (Renan, p. 178). About this very time the city was 
visited by the thaumaturgist Apollonius, and, according to Philostratus, the estimate 
which he formed of the city was most unfavourable . . . ov ixevoures 'EAArjres onus Se ov 

f/LtvovTcg tyio (ppao~(i), Yepiov o~o<j)bs ou'6Vis 'Afljjfaios ... 6 /<6Aa£ napa Tais nv\ais, 6 avKOtpavTrjs nph 
jZiv TTvAutv, 6 /u.a<TTpo7r6s npb t<I>i/ fxaKpiou Ta\(iJi', 6 ^apacruos nph ttj? MovfUX"JS *** ""P T0U UeipatcJ), 

i) fob* bi ovbe iouVcoj/ i%u. (Opp. Philudv. ed. Olear. ii. 40o). 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 301 

indeed have read with interest the moral inscriptions on the Herrnse which 
were presented to her citizens by the tyrant Hipparchus, 1 and would have 
looked with something of sympathy on such altars as those to Modesty and 
to Piety. But, among the many altars visible in every street, there was :ne 
by which he lingered with special attention, and of which he read with the 
deepest emotion the ancient inscription — 

ArNn2Tm©Eni. 

"To the unknown God. "2 
The better-known altars, of which the inscriptions were in the plural, and 
which merely bore witness to the catholicity of Paganism, would have had less 
interest for him. It is merely one of the self-confident assertions which are 
too characteristic of Jerome 3 that St. Paul misquoted the singular for the 
plural. The inscription to which he called attention on the Areopagus was 
evidently an ancient one, and one which he had observed on a single altar. 4 
Whether that altar was one of those which Epimenides had advised the 
Athenians to build to whatever god it might be — r<£ irpoariKovTi de<£ — wherever 
the black and white sheep lay down, which he told them to loose from the 
Areopagus ; or one dedicated to some god whose name had in course of time 
become obliterated and forgotten ; 6 or one which the Athenians had erected 
under some visitation of which they could not identify the source 6 — was to 
St. Paul a matter of indifference. It is not in the least likely that he sup- 
posed the altar to have been intended as a recognition of that Jehovah 7 who 
seemed so mysterious to the Gentile world. He regarded it as a proof of the 
confessed inadequacy, the unsatisfied aspirations, of heathendom. He saw in 
it, or liked to read into it, the acknowledgment of some divinity after whom 
they yearned, but to the knowledge of whom they had been unable to attain ; 
and this was He whom he felt it to be his own mission to make known. It 
was with this thought that he consoled his restless loneliness in that uncon- 
genial city; it was this thought which rekindled his natural ardour as he 
wandered through its idol- crowded streets. 8 

* Such as Mrrj/ua. toS 'ItnrdpxoV <rreixe Si/ccua $poiw, Or 'Mvrj/j.a toS* 'ImrdpxoV fit) <f>i\ov e^andra. 

2 This, and not " to an unknown God," is the right rendering. 

3 " Inscriptio arae non ita erat ut Paulus asseruit Ignoto Dei; sed ita ; Diis Asiae et 
Europae et Africae, Diis ignotis et peregrinis. Yerum quia Paulus non pluribus Diis 
ignotis indigebat sed uno tantum ignoto Deo, singulari verbo usus est. " Jer. ad Tit. i. 12 
(see Biscoe, p. 210). 

4 Acts xvii. 23, 0w/m.bv c5 k-eytypan-o. The fact that Pausanias {Attic, i. 1), Philostratus 
{Vit. Apollon. vi. 3), and others (Diog. Laert. i. x. 100, &c), mentions altars, dyvdxrTtMv 
Sauju.ovuji', does not of course prove that there was no altar with the singular inscription ; 
nor, indeed, is it certain that these words may not mean altars on each of which was an 
inscription, 'AyvcGoTcp 6e<Z, as YTiner understands them. Dr. Plumptre favours the view that 
it means "to the Unknowable God;" and compares it with the famous inscription on the 
veil of Isis, and the Mthraic inscription found on an altar at Ostia, "Signum indeprehen- 
vihilis Dei," and 1 Cor. i. 21. 

5 Eichhorn. 6 Chrysostom. 

7 Called by the Gentiles 6 ndyKpvtios (Just. Mart. Paraenet ad. Gh-aecos, 38 ; Apol. ii. 
10; Philo, Leg. §44). 

8 Acts xvii. 16. And yet his high originality was shown in the fact that he did not, 
like his race in general, vent his indignation in insults, "Gens contumelia numinum 
insignis " (Plin. H. N. xiii. 9 ; Cic. p. Place. § 67). Claudius, in confirming their privi- 



302 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

His work among the Jews was slight. He discoursed, 1 indeed, not unfrs- 
quently with them and their proselytes in the synagogue or meeting-room 2 
which they frequented ; but it is probable that they were few in number, and 
we find no traces either of the teaching which he addressed to them or of the 
manner in which they received it. It was in the market-place of Athens — the 
very Agora in which Socrates had adopted the same conversational method of 
instruction four centuries 3 before him — that he displayed his chief activity in 
a manner which he seems nowhere else to have adopted, by conversing daily 
and publicly with all comers. His presence and his message soon attracted 
attention. Athens had been in all ages a city of idlers, and even in her 
prime her citizens had been nicknamed Gapeirians, 4 from the mixture of eager 
curiosity and inveterate loquacity which even then had been their conspicuous 
characteristics. Their greatest orator had hurled at them the reproach that, 
instead of flinging themselves into timely and vigorous action in defence of 
their endangered liberties, they were for ever gadding about asking for the 
very latest news; 5 and St. Luke— every incidental allusion of whose brief 
narrative bears the mark of truthfulness and knowledge — repeats the same 
characteristic under the altered circumstances of their present adversity. 
Even the foreign residents caught the infection, and the Agora buzzed with 
inquiring chatter at this late and decadent epoch no less loudly than in the 
days of Pericles or of Plato. 

Among the throng of curious listeners, some of the Athenian philosophers 
were sure, sooner or later, to be seen. The Stoa Poecile, which Zeno had 
made his school, and from which the Stoics derived their name, ran along one 
side of the Agora, and not far distant were the gardens of Epicurus. Besides 
the adherents of these two philosophical schools, there were Academics who 
followed Plato, and Peripatetics who claimed the authority of Aristotle, and 
Eclectics of every shade. 6 The whole city, indeed, was not unlike one of our 

leges, warned them, ju.tj t<xs to3v aAAwv e6vwv SeicnSai.fxopiai; e£ov9evi£eiv (Jos. Atltt. xix. 5, 3). 

Ka.TeiSwA.ov means "full of idols," not as in the E. V., "wholly given to idolatry;" "non 
simulacris dedita, sed simulacris referta " (Herm. ad Vig. p. 638) cf. KaTd>7reA.os, KaraSevSpos. 
The word receives most interesting illustration from "Wetstein, from whom all succeeding 
commentators have freely borrowed. 

1 Acts xvii. 17, SieAeyero, not " disputed," but " conversed." 

2 No trace of any building which could have been a synagogue has been found at 
Athens. It has been inferred from passages in the Talmud that Jews were numerous in 
Athens ; but these passages apply to a much later period, and in any case the Talmud is 
perfectly worthless as a direct historic guide. 

3 Socrates died B.C. 399. 

4 Kexr)fauK, Ar. Eg., 1262. Demades said that the crest of Athens ought to be a great 
tongue. " Alexander qui quod cuique optimum est eripuit Lacedaemona servire jubet, 
Athenas tacere" (Sen. Ep. 94; see Demosth. Phil, iv.) rr\ V tt6\iv a7rai/Te? r£>v "EAA^es 

<J7roAa/./.j9dVovcrii/ oj? f/nAdAo-yds re e<TTiv /cai TroAvAoyo? (Plat. Legg. i. 11). 

6 Kaivorepov (cf. Matt. xiii. 52). " Nova statim sordebant, noviora quaerebantur " 
(Bengel). Gill says that a similar question «nn rra was common in the Rabbinic schools 
{Bammidbwr Rabba, f. 212, 4). 

' ' From whose mouth issued forth 

Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools 

Of Academics old and new, with those 

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the school 

P^picurean, and the Stoic severe." (Milton, Par. Reg.) 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 303 

University towns at the deadest and least productive epochs of their past. It 
was full of professors, rhetors, tutors, arguers, discoursers, lecturers, gram- 
marians, pedagogues, and gymnasts of every description ; and among all these 
Sophists and Sophronists there was not one who displayed the least particle of 
originality or force. Conforming sceptics lived in hypocritical union with 
atheist priests, and there was not even sufficient earnestness to arouse any 
antagonism between the empty negations of a verbal philosophy and the 
hollow professions of a dead religion. 1 And of this undistinguished throng 
of dilettanti pretenders to wisdom, not a single name emerges out of the 
obscurity. Their so-called philosophy had become little better than a jingle 
of phrases 2 — the languid repetition of effete watchwords — the unintelligent 
echo of empty formulae. It was in a condition of even deeper decadence than 
it had been when Cicero, on visiting Athens, declared its philosophy to be all 
a mere chaos — &vco Kara) — upside down. 3 Epicureans there were, still main- 
taining the dictum of their master that the highest good was pleasure ; and 
Stoics asserting that the highest good was virtue ; but of these Epicureans 
some had forgotten the belief that the best source of pleasure lay in virtue, 
and of these Stoics some contented themselves with their theoretic opinion 
with little care for its practical illustration. With the better side of both 
systems Paul woidd have felt much sympathy, but the defects and degene- 
racies of the two systems rose from the two evil sources to which all man's 
sins and miseries are mainly due — namely, sensuality and pride. It is true 
indeed that — 

" When Epicurus to the world had taught 

That pleasure was the chiefest good, 

His life he to his doctrines brought, 

And in a garden's shade that sovran pleasure sought ; 

Whoever a true Epicure would be, 

May there find cheap and virtuous luxury." 

But the famous garden where Epicurus himself lived in modest abstinence * 
soon degenerated into a scene of profligacy, and his definition of pleasure, as 
consisting in the absence of physical pain or mental perturbation (arapal-ia), had 
led to an ideal of life which was at once effeminate and selfish. He had mis- 
placed the centre of gravity of the moral system, and his degenerate followers, 

1 See Penan, St. Paul, p. 186, who refers to Cic. ad Fam. xvi. 21 ; Lucian, Dial. 
Mort. xx. 5 ; Philostr. Apollon. iv. 17. 

2 $iA.o<ro(f>ia. 'EAAijvwj/ A.6ycov i//dcf>os. Tertullian asks, "Quid simile philosoplius et Chris- 
tianus?" (Tert. Apol. 46) ; but Paul, catholic aud liberal to all truth, would have hailed 
the truths which it was given to Greek philosophers to see (Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 8, 

§ 65, and passim). xPW'M ^pos Oeoo-dfieiav yiverax TrpoiraiSeia Tts ovcra {Id. i. 5, § 28 ; Aug. De 

Civ. Dei, ii. 7). 

3 "We can the better estimate this after reading such a book as Schneider's Christliche 
Klange aus dem Griech. unci Rom. Classikem (1865). The independence, cheerfulness, 
royalty, wealth of the true Christian recall the Stoic " kingliness," avrdpiceia — the very 
word which St. Paul often uses (2 Cor. ix. 8; Phil. iv. 11—18; 1 Cor. iv. 8—10, &c, 
compared with Cic. De Fin. iii. 22; Hor. Sat. i.— iii., 124—136; Sen. Ep. Mor. ix.). 
But what a difference is there between these apparent resemblances when we look at the 
Stoic and Christian doctrines — i. in their real significance ; and ii. in their surrounding*. 
4 Juv. Sat. xiii. 172 ; xiv. 319. 



304 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

while they agreed with him in avowing that pleasure should be the aim of 
mortal existence, selected the nearer and coarser pleasures of the senses in 
preference to the pleasures of the intellect or the approval of the conscience. 
The sterner and loftier Epicureans of the type of Lucretius and Cassius were 
rare; the school was more commonly represented by the base and vulgar 
Hedonists who took as their motto, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die." * On the other hand, their great Stoic rivals had little reason to boast 
the efficacy of their nobler theory. Aiming at the attainment of a complete 
supremacy not only over their passions, but even over their circumstances 
— professing fictitious indifference to every influence of pain or sorrow, 2 
standing proudly alone in their unaided independence and self-asserted 
strength, the Stoics, with their vaunted apathy, had stretched the power 
of the will until it cracked and shrivelled under the unnatural strain ; and 
this gave to their lives a consciousness of insincerity which, in the worse 
sort of them, degraded their philosophy into a cloak for every form of am- 
bition and iniquity, and which made the nobler souls among them melancholy 
with a morbid egotism and an intense despair. In their worst degeneracies 
Stoicism became the apotheosis of suicide, and Epicureanism the glorification 
of lust. 3 

How Paul dealt with the views and arguments of these rival sects— 
respectively the Pharisees and the Sadducees of the pagan world 4 — we do not 
know. Perhaps these philosophers considered it useless to discuss philo- 
sophical distinctions with one whose formal logic was as unlike that of 
Aristotle as it is possible to imagine — who had not the least acquaintance 
with the technicalities of philosophy, and whom they would despise as a mere 
barbarous and untrained Jew. Perhaps he was himself so eager to introduce 
to their notice the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, that with him all 
questions as to the moral standpoint were subordinate to the religious truth 
from which he was convinced that morality alone could spring. They may 
have wanted to argue about the summum bonum ; but he wanted to preach 
Christ. At any rate, when he came to address them he makes no allusion to 
the more popularly known points of contrast between the schools of philosophy, 
but is entirely occupied with the differences between their views and his own 
as to the nature and attributes of the Divine. Even to the philosophers who 

i Cf . Eccles. v. 18 ; Wisd. ii. 7—9. 

2 "There never was philosopher 

Who yet could bear the toothache patiently." 

8 The ancient philosophers in the days of the Roman Empire (« ir<*y<avo<s <ro<£oi, 
Phoenicides ap. Memeke, Com. Fr. iv. 511; Lucian, Eun. 8; Lact. Instt. iii. 25; 
Bactroperitae, Jer. in Matt. xi. 10, &c.) had as a body sunk to much the same position 
as the lazy monks and begging friars of the Middle Ages (see Sen. Ep. Mor. v. 
1, 2 ; Tac. Arm. xvi. 32 ; Juv. iii. 116 ; Hor. Sat. i. 3, 35, 133). The reproaches ad- 
dressed to them by the Roman satirists bear a close resemblance to those with which 
Chaucer lashed the mendicant preacbcrs, and Ulric von Hutten scathed the degenerate 
monks. 

4 Josephus evidently saw the analogy between the Pharisees and the Stoics (J03. 
Antt. xiii. 1, §5 J xviii. 1, §2; B. J. ii. 8, §§ 2—14) ; and " Epicureans " is a constant name 
for heretics. &c.. in the Talmud. 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 305 

talked with him in the market-place 1 the subject-matter of his conversation 
had been neither pleasure nor virtue, but Jesus and the Resurrection. 2 The 
only result had been to create a certain amount of curiosity — a desire to hear 
a more connected statement of what he had to say. But this curiosity barely 
emerged beyond the stage of contempt. To some he was "apparently a 
proclaimer of strange deities; " 3 to others he was a mere " sparrow," a mere 
"seed-pecker" 4 — "a picker-up of learning's crumbs," a victim of unoriginal 
hallucinations, a retailer of second-hand scraps. The view of the majority of 
these frivolous sciolists respecting one whose significance for the world 
transcended that of all their schools would have coincided nearly with that of 

" Cleon the poet from the sprinkled isles," 
which our poet gives in the following words : — 

" And for the rest 
I cannot tell thy messenger aright, 
Where to deliver what he bears of thine, 
To one called Paulus — we have heard his fame 
Indeed, if Christus be not one with him — 
I know not nor am troubled much to know. 
Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew, 
As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised, 
Hath access to a secret shut from us ? 
Thou wrongest our philosophy, King, 
In stooping to inquire of such an one, 
As if his answer could impose at all. 
He writeth, doth he ? well, and he may write ! 
O, the Jew findeth scholars ! certain slaves, 
Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ; 
And (as I gathered from a bystander) 
Their doctrines could be held by no sane man." 6 

1 When Apollonius landed at the Peiraeus he is represented as finding Athens very 
crowded and intensely hot. On his way to the city he met many philosophers, some 
reading, some perorating, and some arguing, all of whom greeted him. nap-fiei. Se ovSels 

avrbv, aAAa TeK/u/rfpajaei/oi jravres ws ei-q 'AttoAAwj'i.os <ruvave(TTpe<l>ovT6 re koI rjanagovTO \alpovTes 

(Philostr. Fit. iv. 17). 

2 Acts xvii. 18. The word "virtue" occurs but once in St. Paul (Phil. iv. 8), and 
T/Sovrj, in the classic sense only in Tit. hi. 3. The notion that the philosophers took 
"the Resurrection" to be a new goddess Anastasis, though adopted by Chrysostom, 
Theophylacfc, CEcumenius, &c, and even in modern times by Renan ("Plusieurs a ce 
qu'il parait, prirent Anastasis pour un nom de deesse, et crurent que Jesus et Anastasis 
efcr-i.ent quelque nouveau couple divin que ces reveurs orientaux venaient precher," St. 
Paul, p. 190), seems to me almost absurd. It would argue, as has been well said, either 
utter obscurity in the preaching of St. Paul, or the most incredible stupidity in his 
hearers. 

3 It is almost impossible to suppose that St. Luke is not mentally referring to the 
charge against Socrates, aSixel 2w«:pa"7% . . . jcatva Saijudvia etcnfc'pwv (Xen. Mem. I. i.). 

4 SirepjuoA.oyos, a seed-pecking bird, applied as a contemptuous nickname to Athenian 
shoplifters and area sneaks (Eustath. ad Od. v. 490), and then to babblers who talked of 
things which they did not understand. It was the very opprobrium which Demosthenes 
had launched against JEschines {Pro Corond, p. 269, ed JReiske). Compare the terms 
gobemouche, engoulevent, &c. 

5 Browning, Men and Wornm. 

U 



306 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

"With some hearers, however, amusement and curiosity won the day. S© 
far as they could understand him he seemed to be announcing a new religion. 
The crowd on the level space of the Agora rendered it difficult for all to hear 
him, and as the Areopagus would both furnish a convenient area for an 
harangue, and as it was there that the court met which had the cognizance of 
all matters affecting the State religion, it was perhaps with some sense of 
burlesque that they led him up the rock-hewn steps — which still exist — to the 
level summit, and placed him on the " Stone of Impudence," from which the 
defendants before the Areopagus were wont to plead their cause. 1 Then, with 
a politeness that sounds ironical, and was, perhaps, meant by the volatile ring- 
leaders of the scene as a sort of parody of the judicial preliminaries, they 
began to question him as in old days their ancestors had tried and condemned 
Anaxagoras, Diagoras, Protagoras, and Socrates, on similar accusations. 2 
They said to him, " May we ascertain from you what is this new doctrine 
about which you have been talking ? You are introducing some strange topic 
to our hearing. We should like, then, to ascertain what these things might 
mean ?" And so the audience, keenly curious, but brimming over with ill- 
suppressed contempt and mirth, arranged themselves on the stone steps, and 
wherever they could best hear what sort of novelties could be announced by 
this strange preacher of a new faith. 

But it was in no answering mood of levity that St. Paul met their light 
inquiries. The " ugly little Jew," who was the noblest of all Jews, was, 
perhaps, standing on the very stone where had once stood the ugly Greek who 
was the noblest of all Greeks, and was answering the very same charge. And 
Socrates could jest even in immediate peril of his life ; but St. Paul, though 
secure in the tolerance of indifference, had all the solemnity of his race, and 
was little inclined to share in any jest. His was one of those temperaments 
which are too sad and too serious for light humour ; one of those characters 
which are always and overwhelmingly in earnest. To meet badinage by 
badinage was for him a thing impossible. A modern writer is probably correct 
when he says that in ordinary society St. Paul would certainly not have been 
regarded as an interesting companion. On the other hand, he was too deeply 
convinced of his own position as one to which he had been called by the very 
voice and vision of his Saviour to be in the least wounded by frivolous 
innuendos or disdainful sneers. He was not overawed by the dignity of 
his judicial listeners, or by the reputation of his philosophic critics, or 
by the stern associations of the scene in the midst of which he stood, 

1 Acts xvii. 19, e7nXa/36/u.evoi auVoj). It is quite a mistake to suppose that any violence la 
intended. Cf. ix. 27. Pausanias (Attic, i. 28, 5) is our authority for the Ai'0os ' A«/ai8«'a?. 

2 It was the express function >f the Areopagus to take cognizance of the introduction 
of enlOera lepa. M any writers hold that this was a judicial proceeding, and Wordsworth 
that it might have been an Ana/crisis; and our translators, from their marginal note, 
"it was the highest court in Athens," probably shared the same view. The narrative, 
however, giv. s a \ : r;, different impression. The Athenians were far less in earnest about 
their religion than Anytus and Meletus had been in the days of Socrates, and if this was 
meant for a trial it could only have been by way of conscious parody, as I have suggested. 



8T. PAUL AT ATHENS. 307 

Above him, to the height of one hundred feet, towered the rock of the 
Acropolis like the vast altar of Hellas — that Acropolis which was to the 
Greek what Mount Sion was to the Hebrew, the splendid boss of the shield 
ringed by the concentric circles of Athens, Attica, Hellas, and the world. 1 
Beneath him was that temple of the awful goddesses whose presence was 
specially supposed to overshadow this solemn spot, and the dread of whose 
name had been sufficient to prevent Nero, stained as he was with the guilt of 
parricide, from setting foot within the famous city. 2 But Paul was as little 
daunted by the terrors and splendour of Polytheism in the seat of its grandest 
memorials and the court of its most imposing jurisdiction, as he was by the 
fame of the intellectual philosophy by whose living representatives he was 
encompassed. He knew, and his listeners knew, that their faith in these gay 
idolatries had vanished. 3 He knew, and his listeners knew, that their yearn- 
ing after the unseen was not to be satisfied either by the foreign superstitions 
which looked for their votaries in the ignorance of the gynseceum, or by those 
hollow systems which wholly failed to give peace even to the few. He was 
standing under the blue dome of heaven, 4 a vaster and diviner temple than 
any whicn man could rear. And. therefore, it was with the deepest serious- 
ness, as well as with the most undaunted composure, that he addressed them : 
"Athenians! " 5 he said, standing forth amongst them, with the earnest gaze 
and outstretched hand which was his attitude when addressing a multitude, 
" I observe that in every respect you are unusually religious." 6 Their atten- 
tion would naturally be won, and even a certain amount of personal kindliness 
towards the orator be enlisted, by an exordium so courteous and so entirely in 
accordance with the favourable testimony which many writers had borne to 
their city as the common altar and shrine of Greece. 7 " For," he continued, 

1 Aristid. Panathen. i. 99 ; C. and H. i. 383. 

2 The Semnae, or Eumenides. (Suet. Ner. 34.) 

3 It is hard to conceive the reality of a devotion which laughed at the infamous gibes 
of Aristophanes against the national religion {Lysistr. 750). 

4 'Yiratflpioi eSiKd£oi/To (Pollux, viii. 118). 

5 *AvSpes 'Aflrjvauu, &c. It was the ordinary mode of beginning a speech, and it seems 
to be strangely regarded by the author of Supernatural Religion, hi. 82, as a sign that 
these speeches are not genuine. 

6 Acts xvii. 22, Seto-iSai/u-oveo-Tepovs. "Quasi superstitiores," Yulg. ; "someway religious," 
Hooker ; ' ' very devout, " Lardner ; ' ' very much disposed to the worship of divine Beings, " 
Whateley; " Le plus religieux des peuples," Eenan ; " exceedingly scrupulous in your 
religion," Humphry. The word is used five times by Josephus, and always in a respectful 
sense, as it is in Acts xxv. 19. Of the many unfortunate translations in this chapter 
" too superstitious " {allzu abcrglaubisch, Luth.) is the most to be regretted. It at once 
alters the key-note of the speech, which is one of entire conciliatoriness. The value of 
it as a model for courteous polemics — a model quite as necessary in these days as at any 
past period — is greatly impaired in the E. V. It is possible to be "uncompromising" 
in opinions, without being violent in language or uncharitable in temper. St. Paul, how- 
ever, would not have been likely to act contrary to the caution which struck Apollonius 

as necessary — <To)$pov£cnepov icat to Trepl iravrwv ©eujj/ ev Keyetv icai tovto A^tj^tjcti ov ko.1 ayi/tocr-nov 
Satfiovojv J3o>|u.o! i'Spwrcu (Philostr. Vit. vi. 3). 

7 oA.yj /3wju.bs, oKr) Ovixa ©ecus Kal avde-qfxa (Xen. De Rep. Athen. ; Alcib. ii. p. 97 ; Pausan. 
Attic. 24). tov? euo-e0eo-Td-rouf -rw 'EAAijvwv (Jos. c. Ap. ii. 11 ; isocr. Paneg. 33 ; Thuc. ii. 
38 ; iElian, Var. Hist v. 17 ; Pausan. xxiv. 3). When Apollonius landed at Athens 

xniiOStratUS says, ttjj/ p.ev 8r) 7rpa>T7)v SiaA.efii' eTreiSr] (fcikoOvras rovr ' A.6y]vaiovf etSev, virep lepiai 
l«Ae'£aTO {Vit. Vi. 2). (pLhoOeot paXHTTa iravTiav dtri (Jul Misopogon). 

u 2 



308 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

" in wandering through your city, and gazing about me on the objects of your 
devotion, 1 I found among them 2 an altar on which had been carved an inscrip- 
tion, "To the Unknown God." 3 That, then, which ye unconsciously 4 
adore, that am I declaring unto you. The God who made the universe and all 
tilings in it, He being the natural 5 Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands, 6 nor is He in need of anything 7 so as to receive 
service 8 from human hands, seeing that He is Himself the giver to all of life 
and breath and all things ; and He made of one blood 9 every nation of men 
to dwell on the whole face of the earth, ordaining the immutable limits to the 
times and extents of their habitation, 10 inspiring them thereby to seek God, if 
after all they might grope in their darkness 11 and find Him, though, in 
reality, 12 He is not far from each one of us ; for in Him we live, and move, and 
are, as some 13 also of your own poets have said — 

" (We need Him all,) 
For we are e'en His offspring." 

1 Not, as in E.V., "your devotions " (cf. Philostr. Vit. Apollon. iv. 19, p. 156). 

2 Kal. For avaOewpSiv D reads Suoropwv, perspiciens, d. The ineyeypanro implies per- 
manence, and perhaps antiquity. 

3 o . . . tovto, N, A, B, D, with Origen and Jerome. Cf. Hor. Epod. v. 1. "At O 
Deorum quicquid in caelo regit;" and the frequent piacular inscription, "Sei Deo Sei 
Deae." The vague expression " the Divine " is common in Greek writers. 

* Ver. 23, iyvoowTes, not "ignorantly," which would have been unlike Paul's urbanity, 
but " without knowing Who He is," with reference to ayvoaarco (cf. Rom. i. 20). The word 
evo-epe'ire also implies genuine piety. 

5 virdpxtov- 

6 An obvious reminiscence of the speech of Stephen (vii. 48 ; cf . Eurip. Fragm. ap 
Clem. Alex. Strorp,. V. h. 76). 

7 A proposition I; which the Epicureans would heartily assent. 

8 ©epaTreverat, " is served," not " is worshipped," which is meaningless when applied 
to "hands." It means by offerings at the altar, &c. (cf. II. i. 39, & irore. toi xapitvT bri 

vrfbv epe\jja). 

• al>aTos is, to say the least, dubious, being omitted in «, A, B, the Coptic, and Sahidic 
versions, &c. On the other hand, as Meyer truly observes, av6punov would have been a 
more natural gloss than ai>aro? ; and the Jews used to say that Adam was ubv bxo 1KH, 
"the blood of the world." 

JO Job xii. 23. 

11 \irqka4>av, to fumble, like a blind man, or one in the dark (Arist. Pax. 691 ; Gen. 
xxvii. 21 ; Isa. lix. 10 ; cf. Rom. i. 21, x. 6—8) :— 

" I stretch laine hands of faith, and grope 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 
And faintly trust the larger hope." — Tennyson. 

12 He means to imply that the necessity for this groping was then- own fault— was 
due to their withdrawal to a distance from God, not His withdrawal from them. 

13 The poet actually quoted is Aratus of Cilicia, perhaps of Tarsus, and the line corner 
from the beginning of his $a(.v6p.eva : — 

ndvif) Se Aib? KexprineQa iravTCf 
Tov yap Kal yeVos eafxev. 

But he says nws, because the same sentiment, in almost the same words, is found in 
Kleanthes, Hymn in Jov. 5, e< <rov yap y&os ecrjueV, and it was, not improbably, a noble 
common-place of other sacred and liturgical poems. Cf. Virg. Georg. iv. 221—225. 
Bentlcy remarked that this chapter alone proves "that St. Paul was a great master in all 
of th( Greeks " {Boyle Lectures, hi.). This is a very great exaggeration. 
JSee Lxc. 111., p. , »q. 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 309 

Since, then, we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine 
is like gold or silver or brass, the graving of art and of man's genius." 1 

Condensed as this speech evidently is, let ns pause for an instant, before 
we give its conclusion, to notice the consummate skill with which it was 
framed, the pregnant meanings infused into its noble and powerful sentences. 
Such skill was eminently necessary in addressing an audience which attached 
a primary importance to rhetoric, nor was it less necessary to utilise every 
moment during which he could hope to retain the fugitive attention of that 
versatile and superficial mob. To plunge into any statements of the peculiar 
doctrines of Christianity, or to deal in that sort of defiance which is the weapon 
of ignorant fanaticism, would have been to ensure instant failure ; and since 
his sole desire was to win his listeners by reason and love, he aims at becoming 
as a heathen to the heathen, as one without law to them without law, and 
speaks at once with a large-hearted liberality which would have horrified 
the Jews, and a classic grace which charmed the Gentiles. In expres- 
sions markedly courteous, and with arguments exquisitely conciliatory, 
recognising their piety towards their gods, and enforcing his views by 
an appeal to their own poets, he yet manages, with the readiest power 
of adaptation, to indicate the fundamental errors of every class of his 
listeners. While seeming to dwell only on points of agreement, he yet 
practically rebukes in every direction their natural and intellectual self-com- 
placency. 2 The happy Providence — others, but not St. Paul, might have said 
the happy accident 3 — which had called his attention to the inscription on the 
nameless altar, enabled him at once to claim them as at least partial sharers in 
the opinions which he was striving to enunciate. His Epicurean auditors be- 
lieved that the universe had resulted from a chance combination of atoms ; he 
tells them that it was their Unknown God who by His fiat had created the 
universe and all therein. They believed that there were many gods, but that 
they sat far away beside their thunder, careless of mankind ; he told them that 
there was but one God, Lord of heaven and earth. Around them arose a 
circle of temples as purely beautiful as hands could make them — yet there, 
under the very shadow of the Propylsea and the Parthenon, and with all those 
shrines of a hundred divinities in full view with their pillared vestibules and 
their Pentelic marble, he tells the multitude that this God who was One, not 



1 "Judaea gens Deum sine simulacro colit" (Varro, Fr. p. 229). Hence the "Nil 
praeter nubes et caeli ntunen adorat " of Juv. xiv. 97 and ' ' Dedita sacris Incerti Judaea 
Dei " of Luc. ii. 592 ; Tac. H. v. 6. 

2 Paid had that beautiful spirit of charity which sees the soul of good even in things 
evil. Hostile as he was to selfish hedonism, and to hard "apathy," he may yet have 
seen that there was a good side to the philosophy both of Epicurus and Zeno, in so far 
as Epicurus taught "the happiness of a cultivated and self-contented mind," and Zeno 
contributed to diffuse a lofty morality. ' ' Encore que les philosophes soient les pro- 
tecteurs de l'erreur toutefois ils ont frappe a la porte de la verite. (Veritatis fores 
pulsant.^ Tert.) S'ils ne sont pas entres dans son sanctuaire, s'ils n'ont pas eu le bonheur 
de le voir et de l'adorer dans son temple, ils se sont quelquefois presentes a ses portiquea, 
et lui ont rendu de loin quelque hommage " (Bossuet, Pan&g. de Ste. Catherine), 

3 The word Tv'xij does not occur in the N.T. 



310 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

many, dwelt not in their toil-wrought temples, 1 but in the eternal temple of 
His own creation.— But while he thus denies the Polytheism of the multitude, 
his words tell with equal force against the Pantheism of the Stoic, and the 
practical Atheism of the Epicurean. While he thus de-consecrated, as it 
were, the countless temples, the Stoics would go thoroughly with him ; 2 when 
he said that God needeth not our ritualisms, the Epicurean would almost 
recognise the language of his own school ; 3 but, on the other hand, he laid the 
axe at the root of their most cherished convictions when he added that Matter 
was no eternal entity, and God no impersonal abstraction, and Providence no 
mere stream of tendency without us, which, like a flow of atoms, makes for 
this or that ; but that He was at once the Creator and the Preserver, the living 
and loving Lord of the material universe, and of all His children in the 
great family of man, and of all the nations, alike Jew and Gentile, alike Greek 
and barbarian, which had received from His decrees the limits of their endur- 
ance and of their domains. In this one pregnant sentence he also showed the 
falsity of all autochthonous pretensions, and national self-glorifications, at the 
expense of others, as well as of all ancient notions about the local limitations 
of special deities. The afflicted Jew at whom they were scoffing belonged to 
a race as dear to Him as the beautiful Greek ; and the barbarian was equally 
His care, as from His throne He beholds all the dwellers upon earth. And 
when he told them that God had given them the power to find Him, and that 
they had but dimly groped after Him in the darkness — and when he clenched 
by the well-known hemistich of Aratus and Cleanthes (perhaps familiar to 
them at their solemn festivals) the truth that we are near and dear to Him, 
the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand, they would be prepared 
for the conclusion that all these cunning effigies — at which he pointed as he 
spoke — all these carved and molten and fictile images, were not and could not 
be semblances of Him, and ought not to be worshipped 4 were they even as 
venerable as the " heaven-fallen image " — the ALo-rrerhs dyaX/xa — of their 
patron-goddess, or glorious as the chryselephantine statue on which Phidias 
had expended his best genius and Athens her richest gifts. 

Thus far, then, with a considerateness which avoided all offence, and a 
power of reasoning and eloquence to which they could not be insensible, he 
had demonstrated the errors of his listeners mainly by contrasting them with 
the counter-truths which it was his mission to announce. 5 But lest the mere 



1 2 Chron. vi. 32, 33. 7roios 6"' av ot/cos tcktoVwi/ ir\.acr9e\s vtto Ae'jotas to Qelov 7repi/9aAoi Tol\it>v 

Trrvxai? ; (Eur. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. V. xi. 76). 

2 Seneca, ap. Lact. Instt. vi. 25, and Ep. Mor. xxxi. 11. 

3 " Omnis enim per se Divom natura necesse est 
Immortali aevo summa cum pace iruatur . . . 
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri." — Lucr. ii. 650. 

Cf. Sen. Ep. 95, 47. St. Paul, however, more probably derived the sentiment, if from 
any source, from 2 Mace. xiv. 35, or from Ps. 1. 11, 12 ; Job xli. 11. 

4 See for the Pagan view Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 18. 

5 The Epicurean notion of happiness as the result of coarser atoms was as material ai 
Paley's, who considers it to be "a certain state of the nervous system in that part of the 
system in which we feel joy and grief . . . which may be the upper region of the stomach 
or the fine net- work lining the whole region of the praecordia ' {Moral. JPhiloa* ch. vi.). 



ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 311 

demonstration of error should end only in indifference or despair, he desired 
to teach the Stoic to substitute sympathy for apathy, and humility for pride, 
and the confession of a weakness that relied on God for the assertion of a 
self -dependence which denied all need of Him ; and to lead the Epicurean to 
prefer a spiritual peace to a sensual pleasure, and a living Saviour to distant 
and indifferent gods. He proceeded, therefore, to tell them that during long 
centuries of their history God had overlooked or condoned 1 this ignorance, 
but that now the kingdom of heaven had come to them — now He called them 
to repentance — now the day of judgment was proclaimed, a day in which the 
world should be judged in righteousness by One whom God had thereto 
appointed, even by that Jesus to whose work God had set His seal by raising 

Him from the dead 

That was enough. A burst of coarse derision interrupted his words. 2 
The Greeks, the philosophers themselves, could listen with pleasure, even with 
something of conviction, while he demonstrated the nullity of those gods of 
the Acropolis, at which even their fathers, four centuries earlier, had not been 
afraid to jeer. But now that he had got to a point at which he mixed up 
mere Jewish matters and miracles with his predication — now that he began to 
tell them of that Cross which was to them foolishness, and of that Resurrection 
from the dead which was inconceivably alien to their habits of belief — all 
interest was for them at an end. It was as when a lunatic suddenly introduces 
a wild delusion into the midst of otherwise sane and sensible remarks. The 
'• strange gods " whom they fancied that he was preaching became too 
fantastic even to justify any further inquiry. They did not deign to waste on 
such a topic the leisure which was important for less extraordinary gossip. 3 
They were not nearly serious enough in their own belief, nor did they consider 
this feeble wanderer a sufficiently important person to make them care to 
enforce against St. Paul that decree of the Areopagus which had brought 
Socrates to the hemlock draught in the prison almost in sight of them ; but 
they instantly offered to the great missionary a contemptuous toleration more 
fatal to progress than any antagonism. As they began to stream away, some 
broke into open mockery, while others, with polite irony, feeling that such a 

1 Ver. 30, v7repiSoiv. " Winked at" is a somewhat unhappy colloquialism of the E. V. 
(cf. Eom. i. 24). It also occurs in Ecclus. xxx. 11. "Times of ignorance" is a half- 
technical term, like the Arabic jahilujya for the time before Mahomet. 

2 Acts xvii. 32. " The moment they heard the words 'resurrection of the dead,' some 
began to jeer." "Extevafrv, which occurs here only in the N.T., is a very strong word. 
It means the expression of contempt by the lips, as ^v^pl^ by the nostrils. It is used 
by Aquila in Prov. xiv. 9, for "Fools make a mock at sin." Not that the ancients found 
anything ludicrous in the notion of the resurrection of the soul ; it was the resurrection 
of the body which seemed so childish to them. See Plin. iV. H. vii. 55; Lucian, DeMort. 
Peregr. 13. The heathen Caecilius in Minucius Felix {oct. 11, 34), says, " Oraculis fabulas 
adstruunt. Eenasci se f erunt post mortem et cineres et favillas, et nescio qua fiducia men- 
daciis invicem credunt." See Orig. c. Gels. v. 14; Arnob. ii. 13; Athenag. De Besurr. 
ill. 4; Tert. Be Cam. Christi, 15; &c. 

3 There is a sort of happy play of words in the evKalpow of Acts xvii. 21. It is not a 
classical word, but implies that they were too busy to spare time from the important 
occupation of gossiping. 



312 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

speaker deserved at least a show of urbanity, said to him, " Enough for on* 
day. Perhaps some other time we will listen to you again about Him." But 
even if they were in earnest, the convenieut season for their curiosity recurred 
no more to them than it did afterwards to Felix. 1 On that hill of Ares, 
before that throng, Paul spoke no more. He went from the midst of them, 
sorry, it may be, for their jeers, seeing through their spiritual incapacity, but 
conscious that in that city his public work, at least, was over. He could brave 
opposition ; he was discouraged by indifference. One dignified adherent, indeed, 
he found — but one only 2 — in Dionysius the A_reopagite; ? and one more in a 
woman — possibly a Jewess — whose very name is uncertain: 4 but at Athens he 
founded no church, to Athens he wrote no epistle, and in Athens, often as he 
passed its neighbourhood, he never set foot again. St. Luke has no pompous 
falsehoods to tell us. St. Paul was despised and ridiculed, and he does not for a 
moment attempt to represent it otherwise ; St. Paul's speech, so far as any im- 
mediate effects were concerned, was an all but total failure, and St. Luke does not 
conceal its ineffectiveness. 5 He shows us that the Apostle was exposed to the 
ridicule of indifferentism, no less than to the persecutions of exasperated bigotry. 
And yet his visit was not in vain. It had been to him a very sad one. 
Even when Timotheus had come to cheer his depression and brighten his 
solitude, he felt so deep a yearning for his true and tried converts at 
Thessalonica, that, since they were still obliged to face the storm of persecu- 
tion, he had sacrificed his own feelings, and sent him back to support and 
comfort that struggling Church. 6 He left Athens as he had lived in it, a 
despised and lonely man. And yet, as I have said, his visit was not in vain. 
Many a deep thought in the Epistle to the Romans may have risen from the 
Apostle's reflections over the apparent failure at Athens. The wave is flung 
back, and streams away in broken foam, but the tide advances with irresistible 
majesty and might. Little did those philosophers, in their self-satisfied 
superiority, suppose that the trivial incident in which they had condescended 
to take part was for them the beginning of the end. 7 Xerxes and his Persians 

1 Acts xxiv. 25. 

2 " Le pedagogue est le moins convertissable des hommes " (Renan, p. 199). " Cest qu'il 
faut plus d'un miracle pour convertir a rhumilite" de la croix un sage du siecle " (Quesnel). 

3 Christian tradition makes him a bishop and martyr (Euseb. H.E. iii. 4 ; iv. 23 ; 
ITioeph. iii. 11), and he is gradually developed into St. Denys of France. The books 
attributed to him, On the Heavenly Hierarchy, On the Divine Names, &c, are not earlier 
than the fifth century. 

4 AdjuoAt?, " heifer," would be a name analogous to Dorcas, &c. ; Damaris occurs 
nowhere else, and is probably a mere difference of pronunciation. It can have nothing 
to do with Sdixap, and ha* led to the conjecture that she was a Syrian metic. Absolutely 
nothing is known about her. 

5 Yet we are constantly asked to believe, by the very acute and impartial criticism of 
sceptics, that St. Luke is given to inventing the names of illustrious converts to do credit 
to St. Paul. If any one will compare l'liilostratus's Life of Apollonius with the Acta 
of the Apostles he will soon learn to appreciate the difference between the cloudy romance 
of a panegyrist and the plain narrative of a truthful biographer. 

6 As may be inferred from 1 Thess. iii. 2. Did Silas also join him at Athens, and was he 
also sent back (to Bercea) ? The ^eis is in favour of the supposition, the /u.6vo«. is against it. 

7 Renan alludes to the Edict of Justinian suppressing the Athenian chair of Philosophy 
474 years after. 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 813 

had encamped on the Areopagus, and devoted to the flames the temples on the 
Acropolis on the very grounds urged by St. Paul, " that the gods could not be 
shut within walls, and that the whole universe was their home and temple.'* * 
Yet the sword and fire of Xerxes, and all the millions of his vast host, have 
been utterly impotent in their effects, if we compare them to the results which 
followed from the apparent failure of this poor and insulted tent-maker. 
Of all who visit Athens, myriads connect it with the name of Paul who 
never so much as remember that, since the epoch of its glory, it has been 
trodden by the feet of poets and conquerors and kings. They think not of 
Cicero, or Virgil, or Germanicus, but of the wandering tent- maker. In 
all his seeming defeats lay the hidden germ of certain victory. He founded 
no church at Athens, but there — it may be under the fostering charge of the 
converted Areopagite — a church grew up. In the next century it furnished 
to the cause of Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent apologists. 2 
In the third century it flourished in peace and purity. In the fourth century 
it was represented at Nicaea, and the noble rhetoric of the two great Christian 
friends St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus was trained in its Christian 
schools. Nor were many centuries to elapse ere, unable to confront the 
pierced hands which held a wooden Cross, its myriads of deities had fled into 
the dimness of outworn creeds, and its tutelary goddess, in spite of the 
flashing eyes which Homer had commemorated, and the mighty spear which 
had been moulded out of the trophies of Marathon, resigned her maiden 
chamber to the honour of that meek Galilsean maiden who had lived under 
the roof of the carpenter of Nazareth — the virgin mother of the Lord. 3 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ST. PAUL AT COHINTH. 



" Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours 
Shuffled their feet along the pavement white, 
Companioned or alone ; while many a light 
Flared here and there from wealthy festivals, 
And threw their moving shadows on the walls, 
Or found them clustered in the corniced shade 
Of some arched temple-door or dusky colonnade." 

Keats, Lamia. 
"Ecclesia Dei m Gorintho : laetum et ingens paradoxon." 

Bengel, in 1 Cor. i. 2. 

Unnoticed as he had entered it — nay, even more unnoticed, for he was now 
alone — St. Paul left Athens. So little had this visit impressed him, that he 
only once alludes to it, and though from the Acrocorinthus he might often 

1 Cic. Legg. ii. 10. 

2 Puhlius, A.D. 179 ; Quadratus, Euseb. H. E. iv. 23 ; Aristides, A.D. 126 ; Athena- 
goras, circ. A.D. 177. 

3 It was probably in the sixth century, when Justinian closed the schools of philo- 
sophy, that the Parthenon was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the Theseum to St. 
George of Cappadocia. 



314 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

have beheld its famed Acropolis, he never felt the smallest inclination to enter 
it again. This was his only recorded experience of intercourse with the 
Gentile Pharisaism of a pompous philosophy. There was more hope of raging 
Jews, more hope of ignorant barbarians, more hope of degraded slaves, than of 
those who had become fools because in their own conceit they were exceptionally 
wise ; who were alienated by a spiritual ignorance born of moral blindness ; 
who, because conscience had lost its power over them, had become vain in their 
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 

He sailed to Corinth, the then capital of Southern Greece, which formed 
the Roman province of Achaia. The poverty of his condition, the desire to 
waste no time, the greatness of his own infirmities, render it nearly certain 
that he did not make his way over those forty miles of road which separate 
Athens from Corinth, and which would have led him through Eleusis and 
Megara, but that he sailed direct, in about five hours, across the Saronic bay, 
and dropped anchor under the low green hills and pine- woods of Cenchrese. 
Thence he made his way on foot along the valley of Hexamili, a distance of 
some eight miles, to the city nestling under the huge mass of its rocky citadel. 
Under the shadow of that Acrocorinthus, which darkened alternately its double 
seas, 1 it was destined that St. Paul should spend nearly two busy years of his 
eventful life. 

It was not the ancient Corinth — the Corinth of Periander, or of Thucydides, 
or of Timoleon — that he was now entering, but Colonia Julia, or Laus Juli 
Corinthus, which had risen out of the desolate ruins of the older city. When 
the Hegemony had passed from Sparta and Athens, Corinth occupied their 
place, and as the leader of" the Achaean league she was regarded as the light 
and glory of Greece. Flamininus, when the battle of Cynoscephalae had 
destroyed the hopes of Philip, proclaimed at Corinth the independence of 
Hellas. 2 But when the city was taken by L. Mummius, B.C. 146, its inhabi- 
tants had been massacred, its treasures carried off to adorn the triumph of the 
conqueror, and the city itself devastated and destroyed. For a hundred years 
it lay in total ruin, and then Julius Caesar, keenly alive to the beauty and 
importance of its position, and desiring to call attention to the goddess for 
whose worship it had been famous, and whose descendant he professed to be, 
rebuilt it from its foundations, and peopled it with a colony of veterans and 
freedmen. 3 

It sprang almost instantly into fame and wealth. Standing on the bridge 
of the double sea, its two harbours — Lechaeum on the Corinthian and Cenchrese 
on the Saronic Gulf — instantly attracted the commerce of the east and west. 
The Diolkos, or land-channel, over which ships could be dragged across the 
Isthmus, was in constant use, because it saved voyagers from the circum- 
navigation of the dreaded promontory of Malea. 4 Jews with a keen eye to 

I Stat. Theb. vii. 106. _ 2 B.C. 196. 

3 B.C. 44. Pausan. ii. 1, 3 ; Hut. Cues. 57 ; Strabo, viii. 6. 

4 Cape Matapan. The Greeks had a proverb, MaAe'as irepurhiwv e^iXaOov rS>v oliutie— ai 
we might say, " Before sailing round Malea, make your will " (Strab. viii. p. 368). 
"Formid&tum Maleae caput" (Stat. Theb. ii. 33). 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 315 

the profits of merchandise, Greeks attracted by the reputation of the site and 
the glory of the great Isthmian games, flocked to the protection of the Roman 
colony. The classic antiquities found amid the debris of the conflagration, and 
the successful imitations to which they led, were among the earliest branches 
of the trade of the town. Splendid buildings, enriched with ancient pillars of 
marble and porphyry, and adorned with gold and silver, soon began to rise 
side by side with the wretched huts of wood and straw which sheltered the 
mass of the poorer population. 1 Commerce became more and more active. 
Objects of luxury soon found their way to the marts, which were visited by 
every nation of the civilised world — Arabian balsam, Egyptian papyrus, 
Phoenician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, Cilician goats'-hair, Lycao- 
nian wool, Phrygian slaves. With riches came superficial refinement and 
literary tastes. The life of the wealthier inhabitants was marked by self- 
indulgence and intellectual restlessness, and the mass of the people, even down 
to the slaves, were more or less affected by the prevailing tendency. Corinth 
was the Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire, at once the London and the Paris 
of the first century after Christ. 

It was into the midst of this mongrel and heterogeneous population of 
Greek adventurers and Roman bourgeois, with a tainting infusion of Phoeni- 
cians — this mass of Jews, ex- soldiers, philosophers, merchants, sailors, 
freedmen, 2 slaves, tradespeople, hucksters, and agents of every form of vice — 
a colony " without aristocracy, without traditions, without well-established 
citizens " — that the toil-worn Jewish wanderer made his way. He entered it 
as lie had entered Athens — a stricken and lonely worker ; but here he was 
lost even more entirely in the low and careless crowd. Tet this was the city 
from which and to whose inhabitants he was to write those memorable letters 
which were to influence the latest history of the world. How little we under- 
stand what is going on around us ! How little did the wealthy magnates of 
Corinth suspect that the main historic significance of their city during this 
epoch would be centred in the disputes conducted in a petty synagogue, and 
the thoughts written in a tent-maker's cell by that bent and weary Jew, so 
solitary and so wretched, so stained with the dust of travel, so worn with the 
attacks of sickness and persecution ! How true it is that the living world 
often knows nothing of its greatest men ! 

For when we turn to the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, 
and trace the emotions which during this period agitated the mind of the 
Apostle, we find him still suffering from weakness 3 and anxiety, from outward 
opposition and inward agonies. He reminds the Thessalonians that he had 
prepared them for his tribulations and their own, and speaks touchingly of the 
comfort which he had received from the news of their faith in the midst of his 
afflictions. 4 Had he possessed the modern temperament he might often have 
been helped to peace and calm as he climbed the steep Acrocorinthus and gazed 

1 1 Cor. iii. 12 ; Hausrath, p. 317. 

E7roucovs tov aneKevdepLKOV yeVous 7rXet(TTovs (Strab. viii. 6). 

8 Probably another attack of his malady (1 Cor. ii. 3). 4 Thess. iii. 4, ?. 



816 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

from its lofty summit on the two seas studded with the white sails of many 
lands, or watched the glow of sunset bathing in its soft lustre the widespread 
pageant of islands and mountaius, and groves of cypress and pine. But all 
his interest lay in those crowded streets where his Lord had much people, and 
in the varied human surroundings of his daily life. How deeply he was 
impressed by these may be seen in the Corinthian Epistles. His illustrations 
are there chiefly drawn from Gentile customs — the wild- beast fights, 1 which 
Athens would never admit while she had an Altar to Pity ; the lovely stadium, 
in which he had looked with sympathy on the graGe and strength and swiftness 
of many a youthful athlete ; the race 2 and the boxing-matches, 3 the insulting 
vanity of Roman triumph, 4 the long hair of effeminate dandies, 5 the tribunal 
of the Proconsul, 6 the shows of the theatre, 7 the fading garland of Isthmian pine. 8 
But there was one characteristic of heathen life which would come home 
to him at Corinth with overwhelming force, and fill his pure soul with infinite 
pain. It was the gross immorality of a city conspicuous for its depravity 
even amid the depraved cities of a dying heathenism. 9 Its very name had 
become a synonym for reckless debauchery. This abysmal profligacy of 
Corinth was due partly to the influx of sailors, who made it a trysting-place 
for the vices of every land, and partly to the vast numerical superiority of the 
slaves, of Avhich, two centuries later, the city was said to contain many myriads. 10 
And so far from acting as a check upon this headlong immorality, religion 
had there taken under its immediate protection the very pollutions which it 
was its highest function to suppress. A thousand Hierodouloi were conse- 
crated to the service of Impurity in the infamous Temple of Aphrodite 
Pandemos. The Lais of old days, whose tomb at Corinth had been marked 
by a sphinx with a human head between her claws, had many shameless and 
rapacious representatives. East and west mingled their dregs of foulness in 
the new Gomorrah of classic culture, 11 and the orgies of the Paphian goddess 
were as notorious as those of Isis or of Asherah. It was from this city and 
amid its abandoned proletariate that the Apostle dictated his frightful sketch 
of Paganism. 12 It was to the converts of this city that he addressed most 
frequently, and with most solemn warning and burning indignation, his stern 
prohibitions of sensual crime. 13 It was to converts drawn from the reeking 

1 1 Cor. xv. 32 ; Lucian, Demonax, 57 ; Philostr. Apollon. iv. 22. 

2 1 Cor. ix. 24. 

8 Id. ver. 27. 5 1 Cor. xi. 14. 7 1 Cor. iv. 9. 
« 2 Cor. ii. 14—16. 6 2 Cor. v. 10. » 1 Cor. ix. 25. 

9 Hesych. 8. v. KopivOia&vQai., Wetstein (the great source of classical quotations 
in illustration of the New Testament, whose stores have been freely rifled by later 
authors) and others refer to Ar. Plut. 149 ; Hor. Epp. I. xvii. 30 ; Athen. vii. 13 ; xiii. 
21, 32, 54 ; Strabo, viii. 6, 20—21 ; xii. 3, 36 ; Cic. De Rep. ii. 4 ; and Aristid. Or. III., 

p. o'J, &C. 

10 On the numbers of slaves in ancient days, see Athenoeus vi. p. 275 (ed. Casaubon). 

11 Juv. viii. 112 ; Hor. Ep. I. xvii. 36; Strabo, viii. 6; Athen. xiii. p. 573, ed. Casaubon. 
A reference to the immorality of the city may still be heard in the use of the word 
" ( orintljians " for profligate idlers. 

12 Rom. i. 21—32. 

u 1 Cor. v. 1 ; vi 9-20 ; x. 7, 8 ; 2 Cor. vi. 14 ; vii. 1. 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 317 

haunts of its slaves and artisans that he writes that they too had once been 
sunk in the lowest depths of sin and shame. 1 It is of this city that we hear the 
sorrowful admission that in the world of heathendom a pure life and an honest 
life was a thing well-nigh unknown. 2 All sins are bound together by subtle 
links of affinity. Impurity was by no means the only vice for which Corinth 
was notorious. It was a city of drunkards ; 3 it was a city of extortioners and 
cheats. But the worse the city, the deeper was the need for his labours, and 
the greater was the probability that many in it would be yearning for delivery 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
In such a place it was more than ever necessary that St. Paul should not 
only set an example absolutely blameless, but that he should even abstain from 
things which were perfectly admissible, if they should furnish a handle to the 
enemies of Christ. And therefore, lest these covetous shopkeepers and traders 
should be able to charge him with seeking his own gain, he determined to 
accept nothing at their hands. There seemed to be a fair chance that he 
would be able to earn his bread by tent-making in a port so universally fre- 
quented. In this respect he was unusually fortunate. He found a Jew of 
Pontus, named Aquila, 4 who worked at this trade with his wife Priscilla. 
As nothing is said either of their baptism or their conversion, it is probable 
that they were already Christians, and Paul formed with them a lifelong 
friendship, to which he owed many happy hours. This excellent couple were 
at present living in Corinth in consequence of the decree of Claudius, expelling 
all Jews from Rome. 5 Tyrannous as the measure was, it soon became a dead 
letter, and probably caused but little inconvenience to these exiles, because 

» 1 Cor. vi. 9—11 ; 2 Cor. xii. 21. 2 1 Cor. v. 9, 10. 

3 Corinthians were usuallv introduced drank on the stage (iElian. V. H. iii. 15; Athen. 
x. 43S, iv. 137 ; 1 Cor. xi. 21 ; Hausrath, p. 323). 

4 The Aquila, a Jew of Pontus, -who translated the Old Testament into Greek more liter- 
ally than the LXX., lived more than half a century later, and may conceivably have been 
a grandson of this Aquila. Pontius Aquila was a noble Roman name (Cic. ad Fam. x. 33; 
Suet. Jul. 78) ; but that Aquila may have been a freedman of that house, and that Luke 
has made a mistake in connecting him with Pontus, is without the shadow of probability 
(cf. Acts ii. 9 ; 1 Pet. i. 1). His real name may have been Onkelos (Deutsch, Lit. Rem., 
p. 336), Hebraised from 'A/ci/Aa?, or may have been "ve:, Latinised into Aquila ; but these 
are mere valueless conjectures. He was a tent-maker, married to an active and kindly 
wife, who lived sometimes at Eome, sometimes at Corinth, and sometimes at Ephesus 
(Acts xviii. 26 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 19 ; Rom. xvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19) ; and they were much 
beloved by St. Paul, and rendered extraordinary services to the cause of Christianity. 
Priscilla was probably the more energetic of the two, or she would not be mentioned 
first in Acts xviii. 18, 26; Rom. xvi. 3; 2 Tim. iv. 19. (Ewald, vi., p. 489; Plumptre, 
Bibl. Studies, p. 417.) 

5 In A.D. 52 the relations of Judsea to Rome began to be extremely unsettled (Tac. 
Ann. xii. 54), and just as the Gauls and Celts were expelled from Rome (A.D. 9) on 
receipt of the news about the loss of Varus and his legions, so the Jews were now 
ordered to quit Rome. Suetonius says, "Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumul- 
tuantes Roma expulit " {Claud. 25). Whether Chrestos was some unknown ringleader 
of tumult among the immense Jewish population of Rome — so immense, that from their 
Ghetto across the Tiber no less than 8,000 had petitioned against the succession of 
Archelaus (Jos. Antt. xvii. 11, § 1) — or an ignorant misreading of the name of Christ, 
cannot be ascertained. "We know that Christianity was very early introduced into 
Rome (Rom. xvi. 7 ; Acts xxviii. 14), and we know that wherever it was introduced, 
Jewish tumults followed (Acts xvii. 13 ; xiv. 19 ; xiii. 50), and that the Romans never 



318 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

the nature of their trade seems to have made it desirable for them to move 
from place to place. At Corinth, as subsequently at Ephesus, Paul worked 
in their employ, and shared in their profits. These profits, unhappily, were 
scanty. It was a time of general pressure, and though the Apostle toiled 
night and day, all his exertions were unable to keep the wolf from the door. 1 
He knew what it was to suffer, even from the pangs of hunger, but not even 
when he was thus starving would he accept assistance from his Achaian con- 
verts. He had come to an absolute determination that, while willing to receive 
necessary aid from churches which loved him, and which he loved, he would 
forego at Corinth the support which he considered to be the plain right of an 
Apostle, lest any should say that he too, like the mass of traffickers around 
him, did but seek his own gain. 2 Contentedly, therefore — nay, even gladly, did 
he become a fellow-labourer with the worthy pair who were both compatriots 
and brethren ; and even when he was working hardest, he could still be giving 
instruction to all who sought him. But now, as ever, the rest of the Sabbath 
furnished him with his chief opportunity. On that day he was always to be 
found in the Jewish synagogue, and his weekly discourses produced a deep 
impression both on Jews and Greeks. 

But when the period of his solitude was ended by the arrival of Silas from 
Bercea, and Timotheus from Thessalonica, he was enabled to employ a yet 
more intense activity. Not only did he find their presence a support, but they 
also cheered him by favourable intelligence, and brought him a contribution 
from the Philippians, 3 which alleviated his most pressing needs. Accordingly, 
their arrival was followed by a fresh outburst of missionary zeal, and he bore 
witness with a yet more impassioned earnestness to his Master's cause. 4 At 
this period his preaching was mainly addressed to the Jews, and the one object 
of it was to prove from Scripture the Messiahship of Jesus. 5 But with them 

took the trouble to draw any^distinction between Jews and Christians. It is, therefore, 
quite possible that these incessant riots may have arisen in disputes about the Messiah. 
Dion Cassius, indeed, corrects Suetonius, and says that the Jews were so numerous that 
they could not be expelled without danger, and that Claudius therefore contented himself 
with closing their synagogues (Dion, lx. 6). Perhax^s the decree was passed, but never 
really enforced; and Aquila may have been one of the Jews who obeyed it without difficulty 
for the reasons suggested in the text. Nay, more, he may have been selected for special 
banishment as a ringleader in the agitation, if, as some suppose, he and his wife were 
the founders of Christianity at Rome. In any case its operation was brief, for shortly 
afterwards we again find the Jews in vast numbers at Rome (Rom xvi. 3 ; Acts xxviii. 
17). It is not at all impossible that the edict may have been identical with, or a part 
of, that De Mathematicis Italia pellendis which Tacitus mentions as atrox et irritum. 
Certainly that decree was passed at this very period (Tac. Ann. xii. 52), and many of 
the Jews, addicted as they were to all kinds of iniquities (Jos. Antt. xviii. 1), may easily 
have been classed with the Mathematici. (See Lewin, Fasti Sacri, 1774, 5.) 

1 2 Cor. xi. 9 ; 1 Cor. iv. 11, 12 ; ix. 4. 
See Acts xx. 34 ; 1 Cor. ix. 12 ; 2 Cor. vii. 2 ; 1 Thess. ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. hi. 8. 

■' Phil iv. 15 ; 2 Cor. xi. 9. 

4 The undoubted reading of Acts xviii. 5 is (rvueCxero t<2 Aoyu, " was being constrained 
by the word" («, A, B, D, E, G), not ™ npevixan, as in E. V., "was pressed in spirit." 
Cf. for the word a-weCxero, Luke xii. 50; 2 Cor. v. 14. De Wette, &c, make it mean 
"was engrossed" (Vulg., instabat verbo), Imt less correctly. "Sensus est, majore vehe- 
mentis fuiese impulsum ut libere palamque de Christo dissereret" (Calvin). 
1 Cor. xv. :i. 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 319 

he made no further progress. Crispus, indeed, the governor of the synagogue, 
had been converted with all his house ; and — perhaps during the absence of 
his companions — Paul abandoned his usual rule by baptising him with his 
own hands. 1 But, as a body, the Jews met him with an opposition which at 
last found expression in the sort of language of which the Talmud furnishes 
some terrible specimens. 2 No further object could be served by endeavouring 
to convince them, and at last he shook off the dust of his garments, and calling 
them to witness that he was innocent of their blood, 3 he announced that from 
that day forth he should preach only to the Gentiles. 

Already he had converted some Gentiles of humble and probably of slavish 
origin, the first among these being the household of Stephanas. 4 With Crispus 
and these faithful converts, he migrated from the synagogue to a room close by, 
which was placed at his disposal by a proselyte of the name of Justus. 6 In 
this room he continued to preach for many months. The entire numbers of 
the Corinthian converts were probably small — to be counted rather by scores 
than by hundreds. This is certain, because otherwise they could not have met 
in a single room in the small houses of the ancients, nor could they have been 
all present at common meals. The minute regulations about married women, 
widows, and virgins seem to show that the female element of the little con- 
gregation was large in proportion to the men, and it was even necessary to 
lay down the rule that women were not to teach or preach among them, though 
Priscilla and Phoebe had been conspicuous for their services. 6 And yet, small 
as was the congregation, low as was the position of most of them, vile as had 
been the antecedents of some, the method and the topics of the Apostle's preach- 
ing had been adopted with much anxiety. He was by no means at home 
among these eager, intellectual, disputatious, rhetoric-loving, sophisticated 
Greeks. They had none of the frank simplicity of his Thessalonians, none 
of the tender sympathy of his Philippians, none of the emotional suscep- 
tibility of his Galatian converts. They were more like the scoffing and self- 
satisfied Athenians. At Athens he had adopted a poetic and finished style, 
and it had almost wholly failed to make any deep impression. At Corinth, 
accordingly, he adopted a wholly different method. Ill and timid, and so 
nervous that he sometimes trembled while addressing them 7 — conscious that 
his bodily presence was mean in the judgment of these connoisseurs in beauty, 



i 1 Cor. i. 14. 

2 Acts xviii. 6, avTi/ra<rcro|u.eVa>v . . . *a! pXatr^ij/uiovvTwv. See " Life of Christ,'' ii. 452. 

3 Ezek. xxxiii. 4. 

4 1 Cor. xvi. 15, "the firstf raits of Achaia" (in Eom. xvi. 5 the true reading is "of 
Asia "). Fciianatus and Achaicus were probably slaves or freedmen, as were " Chloe's 
household " ; Quartus and Tertius — who had the high honour of being the amanuensis of 
the Epistle to the Romans — were probably descendants of the Roman veterans who were 
the first colonists, and may have been younger brothers of Secundus. Lucius, Jason, 
and Sosipater were Jews (Rom. xvi. 21). 

5 There is no sufficient ground for calling him Titius Justus on the strength of E and 
one or two versions ; it seems to be simply due to the homceoteleuton in 6i/6/uaTt. There 
Is still less ground for identifying him with Titus. 

6 Rom. xvi. L 2. ?1 Cor. ii- 8- 



320 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

and his speech contemptible in the estimation of these judges of eloquence 3 — 
thinking, too, that he had little in the way of earthly endowment, unless it 
were in his infirmities, 2 he yet deliberately decided not to avoid, as he had 
done at Athens, the topic of the Cross. 3 From Corinth he could see the snowy 
summits of Parnassus and Helicon ; but he determined never again to adorn 
his teaching with poetic quotations or persuasive words of human wisdom, 4 
but to trust solely to the simple and unadorned grandeur of his message, and 
to the outpouring of the Spirit by which he was sure that it would be accom- 
panied. There was, indeed, a wisdom in his words, but it was not the wisdom 
of this world, nor the kind of wisdom after which the Greeks sought. It was 
m spiritual wisdom of which he could merely reveal to them the elements — not 
strong meat for the perfect, but milk as for babes in Christ. He aimed at 
nothing but the clear, simple enunciation of the doctrine of Christ crucified. 5 
But what was lacking in formal syllogism or powerful declamation was more 
than supplied by power from on high. Paul had determined that, if converts 
were won, they should be won, not by human eloquence, but by Divine love. 
Nor was he disappointed in thus trusting in God alone. Amid all the sufferings 
which marked his stay among the Achaians, he appeals to their personal 
knowledge that, whatever they may have thought or said among themselves 
about the weakness of his words, they could not at least deny the " signs, and 
wonders, and powers" 6 which, by the aid of the Spirit, were conspicuous in his 
acts. They must have recalled many a scene in which, under the humble roof 
of Justus, the fountains of the great deep of religious feeling were broken up, 
the strange accents of "the tongues" echoed through the thrilled assembly, 
and deeds were wrought which showed to that little gathering of believers 
that a Power higher than that of man was visibly at work to convince and 
comfort them. And thus many Corinthians — the Gentiles largely exceeding 
the Jews in number — were admitted by baptism into the Church. 7 The 
majority of them were of the lowest rank, yet they could number among 
them some of the wealthier inhabitants, such as Gaius, and perhaps Chloe, 
and even Erastus, the chamberlain of the city. Nor was it in Corinth only 
that Christians began to be converted. Paul, like Wesley, " regarded all the 
world as his parish," and it is little likely that his restless zeal would have 
made him stay for nearly two years within the city walls. We know that 
there was a church at Cenchrese, whose deaconess afterwards " carried under 
the folds of her robe the whole future of Christian theology ; " 8 and saints 
were scattered in small communities throughout all Achaia. 9 

And yet, though God was thus giving the increase, it must have required 

1 2 Cor. x. 1, 10. Luther, who seems to have entered into the very life of St. Paul, 
calls hirn " Ein armes diirres Mannlein wie unser Philippus " (Melancthou). 

2 2 Cor. xii. 5, 9. 

a 1 Cor. i. 23; ii. 2. 

4 1 Cor. ii. 1 — 5. avOpuminqs is a good explanatory gloss of A, C, J, &c. 
« 1 Cor. i. 17 ; ii. 2 ; 2 Cor. i. 18. 

• 2 Cor. xii. 12. 7 Acts xviii. 8. 8 Renan, p. 219. 

9 2 Cor. i. 1 ; Rom. xvi. 1. The nearest Achaian towns would beLeohaeuin, Sckcenub, 
Oenchreae, Crommyon, Sicyon, ArgoB. 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 321 

no small courage in snch a city to preach such a doctrine, and the very vicinity 

of the synagogue to the house of Justus must have caused frequent and pain- 
ful collisions between the Jews and the little Christian community. Among 
all the sorrows to which St. Paul alludes whenever he refers to this long stay 
at Corinth, there is none that finds more bitter expression than his complaint 
of his fellow-countrymen. He speaks of them to the Thessalonians in words of 
unusual exasperation, saying that they pleased not God, and were contrary 
to all men, and that by their attempts to hinder the preaching to the Gentiles 
of the Christ whom they had murdered, they had now filled up the measure 
of their sins. 1 The rupture was open and decisive. If they had excommu- 
nicated him, and he was filled with such anger and despair when he thought 
of them, it is certain that the struggle between them must have been a constant 
source of anxiety and peril. This might even have ended in Paul's with- 
drawal to new fields of labour in utter despondency but for the support which 
again, as often at his utmost need, he received from a heavenly vision. The 
Lord whom he had seen on the road to Damascus appeared to him at night, 
and said to him : " Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace ; for I am 
with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people 
in this city." 

But at last the contest between the Jews and the Christians came to a 
head. The Proconsul of Achaia 2 ended his term of office, and the Proconsul 
appointed by the emperor was Marcus Annseus Novatus, who, having been 
adopted by the friendly rhetorician Lucius Junius Gallio, had taken the name 
of Lucius Junius Annseus Gallio, by which he is generally known. Very 
different was the estimate of Gallio by his contemporaries from the mistaken 
one which has made his name proverbial for indifferentism in the Christian 
world. To the friends among whom he habitually moved he was the most 
genial, the most lovable of men. The brother of Seneca, and the uncle of 
bucan, he was the most universally popular member of that distinguished 
family. He was pre-eminently endowed with that light and sweetness which 
are signs of the utmost refinement, and " the sweet Gallio " is the epithet by 
which he alone of the ancients is constantly designated. 3 " No mortal man 
is so sweet to any single person as he is to all mankind," 4 wrote Seneca of him. 

» 1 Thess. ii. 14—16. 

2 The term Proconsul is historically exact. The Government of Achaia had been so 
incessantly changed that a mistake would have been excusable. Achaia had been Procon- 
sular under Augustus ; imperial, for a time, under Tiberius (Tac. Ann. i. 76) ; Procon- 
sular, after A. D. 44, under Claudius (Suet. Claud, xxv.) ; free under Nero (Suet. Ner. 
24) ; and again Proconsular under Yespasian (Suet. Vesp. viii.). See supra, p. 197, and 
Excursus XYI. 

3 " Dulcis Gallio " (Stat. Sylv. ii. 7, 32). See Seekers after God, 16—21. I need not 
here recur to the foolish notion that Gailio sent some of St. Paul's writings to his 
brother Seneca. On this see Aubertin, Seneque et St. Paul, p. 117. Nor need I 
recur to the resemblance between the Roman philosopher and the Apostle, which I have 
examined in Seekers after God, 174—183, and which is fully treated by Dr. Lightfoot 
(Phil. pp. 268—331). 

4 ' Nemo mortalium uni tarn dulcis est quam hie omnibus" (Sen. Quaest. Nat, iv. 
praef. § 11). He dedicates to him his Be Ird and De Vita Beatd, and alludes to him 
in Ep. civ. Consol. ad Helv. 16. 

V 



322 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

" Even those who love my brother Gallio to the very utmost of their power 
yet do not love him enough,'* x he says in another place He was the very 
flower of pagan courtesy and pagan culture — a Roman with all a Roman's 
dignity 2 and seriousness, and yet with all the grace and versatility of a 
polished Greek. 3 

^uch was the man on whose decision the fortunes of Paul were to depend. 
Whoever the former Proconsul had been, he had not been one with whom the 
Jews could venture to trifle, nor had they once attempted to get rid of their 
opponent by handing him over to the secular arm. But now that a new Pro- 
consul had arrived, who was perhaps unfamiliar with the duties of his office, and 
whose desire for popularity at the beginning of his government might have 
made him complaisant to prosperous Jews, they thought that they could with 
impunity excite a tumult. They rose in a body, seized Paul, and dragged him 
before the tesselated pavement on which was set the curule chair of the Pro- 
consul. It was evident that they had presumed on his probable inexperience, 
and on his reputation for mildness; and, with all the turbulent clamour of 
their race, they charged Paul with " persuading men to worship God contrary 
to the Law." Though Claudius had expelled them from Rome, their religion 
was a religio licita — i.e., it was licensed by the State ; but the religion of 
" this fellow," they urged, though it might pass itself off under the name of 
Judaism, was not Judaism at all — it was a spurious counterfeit of Judaism, 
which had become a religio illicita by running counter to its Mosaic Law. 4 
£uch was the charge urged by a hubbub of voices, and, as soon as it had 
become intelligible, Paul was on the point of making his defence. But Gallio 
was not going to trouble himself by listening to any defence. He took no 
notice whatever of Paul, and, disregarding him as completely as though he 
had been non-existent, replied to the Jews by a contemptuous dismissal of 
them and their charge. With a thorough knowledge of, and respect for, the 
established laws, but with a genuinely Roman indifference for conciliatory 
language, and a more than Roman haughtiness of demeanour towards a 
people whom, like his brother, he probably despised and detested, he stopped 
the proceedings with the remark that their accusation against St. Paul, as a 
violator of any law, Mosaic or otherwise, which he could recognise, was 
utterly baseless. "Had this been a matter of civil wrong or moral outrage 5 
it would have been but right for me to put up with you, and listen to these 
charges of yours ; but if it be a number of questions 6 about an opinion, and 

1 " Gallionem, fratrem meum, quem nemonon parum amat etiam qui amare plus non 
potest " {Nat. Qu. iv. praef. § 10). 

2 Seneca {Up. 104), in allusion to his high rank, playfully calls him "my Lord 
Gallio." He committed suicide after the ruin of his family in the plot against Nero, 
though his life had heen spared (Tac. Ann. xv. 73 ; Dion Cass. lxii. 25 ; Euseb. Charon. 
adA.U.C. 818). 

3 Dion Cass. lx. 35. 

4 Hence though ™pa- rbv vofiov, ver. 13, means "contrary to the Jewish law " (cf. ver 
15), it might in this way come under the cognisance of the lloman law. 

6 Ver. 14, aSUiqiia, a legal injury ; pa^ovpy^xa., a moral offence. 

t grjnjftaTa i/nfr. A, B, D 2 , E, Coptic, Sanidic, Armenian, &c. "My lord's" Roman 
disdain lor the yens scchratisdma is hoard in every accent. 



ST. PAUL AT CORINTH. 323 

about mere names, and your law, see to it yourselves ; for a judge of these 
matters I do not choose to he."' Having thus, as we should say, quashed 
the indictment, " my I ord Gallio " ordered his lictors to clear the court. We 
may be sure they made short work of ejecting the frustrated but muttering 
mob, on whose disappointed malignity, if his countenance at all reflected the 
feelings expressed by his words, he must have been looking down from his 
lofty tribunal with undisguised contempt. 1 Tt took the Romans nearly two 
centuries to learn that Christianity was something infinitely more important 
than the Jewish sect which they mistook it to be. It would have been better 
for them and for the world if they had tried to get rid of this disdain, and 
to learn wheiein lay the secret power of a religion which they could neither 
eradicate nor suppress. But while we regret this unphilosophic disregard, let 
us at least do justice to Roman impartiality. In Gallio, in Lysias, in Felix, 
in Festus, in the centurion Julius, even in Pilate, 2 different as were their 
degrees of rectitude, we cannot but admire the trained judicial insight with 
which they at once saw through the subterranean injustice and virulent ani- 
mosity of the Jews in bringing false charges against innocent men. Deep as 
was his ignorance of the issues which were at stake, the conduct of Gallio 
was in accordance with the strictest justice when " he drave them from his 
judgment-seat." 

But the scene did not end here. The volatile Greeks, 3 though they 
had not dared to interfere until the decision of the Proconsul had been 
announced, were now keenly delighted to see how completely the malice of 
the Jews had been foiled ; and since the highest authority had pronounced 
the charge against St. Paul to be frivolous, they seized the opportunity of 
executing a little Lynch law. The ringleader of the Jewish faction had 
been a certain Sosthenes, who may have succeeded Crispus in the function 
of Ruler of the Synagogue, and whose zeal may have been all the more 
violently stimulated by the defection of his predecessor. 4 Whether the 
Corinthians knew that St. Paul was a Roman citizen or not, they must at 
least have been aware that he had separated from the synagogue, and that 

1 Perhaps no passage of the ancient authors, full as they are of dislike to the 
Jews (see infra, Excursus XIV.), expresses so undisguised a bitterness, or £3 so 
thoroughly expressive of the way in which the Romans regarded this singular people, 
as that in which Tacitus relates how Tiberius banished 4,000 freedmen "infected with 
that superstition " into Sardinia, to keep down the brigands of that island, with the 
distinct hope that the unhealthy climate might help to get rid of them — " et si, ob 
gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum" {Ann. ii. 85). Suetonius tells us, with yet 
more brutal indifference, that Tiberius, on pretext of military service, scattered them 
among all the unhealthiest provinces, banishing the rest on pain of being reduced to 
slavery (Suet. Tib. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, § 5). 

2 Acts xxiii. 29 ; xxv. 19. The ignorant provincialism of the justices at Philippi was* 
of too low a type to understand Roman law. 

3 Acts xviii. x l7, ^avTes. The ot'EAATjve? of D, E is a gloss, though a correct one. If 
this Sosthenes is identical with the Sosthenes of 1 Cor. i. 1, he must have been sub- 
sequently converted ; but the name is a common one, and it is hardly likely that two 
rulers of the synagogue would be converted in succession. 

4 I give the view which seems to me the most probable, passing over masses of idle 
conjectures. 

v 2 



324 THE LIFE AND WORE! OP ST PAUL. 

many Gentiles espoused his views. They thought it intolerable that Jew s 
should try to trump up charges against one who in some measure belonged 
to themselves. The opportunity to show these Jews what they thought of 
them, and give them a lesson as to the way in which they should behave in 
the future, was too tempting. Accordingly they seized Sosthenes, and gave 
him a beating in the actual basilica in front of the tribunal, and under the 
very eyes of the Proconsul. An ancient gloss says that he pretended not 
to see what they were doing, 1 but the text implies that he looked on at the 
entire proceeding with unfeigned indifference. So long as they were not 
guilty of any serious infraction of the peace, it was nothing to him how 
they amused themselves. He had been familiar with similar disturbances in 
Rome. The Jews were everywhere a turbulent, fanatical race. What was 
it to him if the Greek gamins liked to inflict a little richly -deserved casti- 
gation ? It would be so much the better if they taught this Sosthenes and 
any number more of these Jews a severe lesson. They would be more likely 
(he thought) to keep order in future, and less likely to trouble him again 
with their meanness and their malevolence, their riots and their rancours. 2 

There is one thing that we cannot but deeply regret. It is that Gallio's 
impatient sense of justice has deprived us of another speech by St. Paul 
which, delivered under such circumstances, and before such a judge, would 
have been of the deepest interest. But Gallio dismissed the whole scene 
from his mind as supremely unimportant. Had he ever thought it worth 
alluding to, in any letter to his brother Seneca, it would have been in some 
such terms as these : — " I had scarcely arrived when the Jews tried to play 
on my inexperience by dragging before me one Paulus, who seems to be an 
adherent of Chrestus, or Christus, of whom we heard something at Rome. 
I was not going to be troubled with their malefic superstitions, and ordered 
them to be turned out. The Greeks accordingly, who were favourable to 
Paulus, beat one of the Jews in revenge for their malice. Tou would have 
smiled, if you had been present, at these follies of the turba forensis. Sed 
haec hactenus." 

But the superficiality which judges only by externals always brings its 
own retribution. It adores the mortal and scorns the divinity ; it welcomes 
the impostor and turns the angel from its door. It forms its judgment on 
trivial accidents, and ignores eternal realities. The haughty, distinguished, 
and cultivated Gallio, brother of Seneca, Proconsul of Achaia, the most 
popular man and the most eminent litterateur of his day, would have been 
to the last degree amazed had any one told him that so paltry an occurrence 
would be for ever recorded in history ; that it would be the only scene in his 
life in which posterity would feel a moment's interest ; that he would owe 

1 "Tunc Gallio fingebat enim non videre " (MS. d). 

2 Paley (Hor. Paul.) points out the honesty with which St. Luke narrates the super- 
cilious indifference of gr*at men to the circumstances which affected the life of the 
Apostle. The "things," however, for which Gallio "did not care" were not "tiw 
things of the kingdom of heaven," but the beating of a Jew by Greeks. 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSA7/>NIANS. 325 

to it any immortality he possesses; that he would for all time be mainly 
judged of by the glimpse we get of him on that particular morning ; that 
he had flung away the greatest opportunity of his life when he closed the 
lips of the haggard Jewish prisoner whom his decision rescued from the 
clutches of his countrymen ; that a correspondence between that Jew Shaul, 
or Paulus, and his great brother Seneca, would be forged and would go down 
to posterity; 1 that it would be believed for centuries that that wretched 
prisoner had converted the splendid philosopher to his own " execrable super- 
stition," and that Seneca had borrowed from him the finest sentiments of 
his writings ; that for all future ages that bent, ophthalmic, nervous, unknown 
Jew, against whom all other Jews seemed for some inconceivably foolish 
reason to be so infuriated, would be regarded as transcendently more impor- 
tant than his deified Emperors and immortal Stoics; that the "parcel of 
questions " about a mere opinion, and names, and a matter of Jewish law, 
which he had so disdainfully refused to hear, should hereafter become the 
most prominent of all questions to the whole civilised world. 

And Paul may have suspected many of these facts as little as " the sweet 
Gallio" did. Sick at heart with this fresh outrage, and perhaps musing 
sadly on the utterance of his Master that He came not to send peace on earth 
but a sword, he made his way back from the Bema of the great Proconsul to 
the little congregation in the room of Justus, or to his lodging in the squalid 
shop of Aquila and Priscilla. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALON I ANS. 
"Ergo latet ultimus dies ut observentur omnes dies." — Aug. 

At some period during his stay in Corinth, and probably before his arrest by 
the Jews early in the year 53, or at the close of A.D. 52,°an event had taken 
place of immense significance in the life of the Apostle and in the history of 
the Christian faith. He had written to the Thessalonians a letter which may 
possibly have been the first he wrote to any Christian church, 2 and which 

1 No one in these days doubts that the letters of St. Paul and Seneca (Fleury, St. 
Paul and Seneque, ii. 300 ; Aubertin, Seneque et St. Paul, 409 ; Lightfoot, Phil. 327 ; 
Boissier, La Religion Romaine, ii. 52 — 104) are spurious. On tbe real explanation of the 
resemblances between the two, see Seekers after God, p. 270, sq., and passim. It will 
there be seen how small ground there is for Tertullian's expression "Seneca saepe 
noster." 

2 < only put this as a possibility. It will be seen hereafter (see 1 Cor. v. 9 ; 2 Cor. 
x. 9) that I regard it as certain that St. Paul wrote other letters, of which some — perhaps 
many — have perished ; and it is difficult to believe that (for instance) he wrote no word 
of thanks to the Philippians for the contributions which they had twice sent to him at 
Thessalonica, or that he wrote nothing to the Thessalonians themselves when he sent 
Timothy to them from Athens. Does not the whole style of these Epistles show that 
they could not have been the first specimens of their kind ? We cannot be surprised that. 



326 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

certainly is the earliest of those that have come down to us. He had begun, 
therefore, that new form of activity which has produced eff ei ts so memorable 
to all generations of the Christian world. 

"We have already seen that Paul had left Timotheus in Macedonia, had 
been joined by him in Athens, and had once more parted from him, though 
with deep reluctance and at great self-sacrifice, because his heart yearned for 
his Thessalonian converts, and he had been twice prevented from carrying out 
his earnest desire to visit them once more. After doing all that he could to 
comfort and support them in their many trials, Timotheus had returned, in 
company with Silas, to Corinth, and doubtless there the Apostle had talked 
with them long and earnestly about the friends and brethren who had been 
won to Christ in the Macedonian city. There was deep cause for thankfulness 
in their general condition, but there was some need for advice and consolation. 
Paul could not send Timothy again. There was other work to be done. Other 
Churches required his own personal services. Nor could he spare the com- 
panions of his toils in the midst of a city which demanded his whole energy 
and strength. But since he could neither come to the Thessalonians himself, 
nor send them back his truest and dearest fellow- workers, he would at least 
write to them, and let his letter supply, as far as possible, the void created by 
his absence. It was a very happy Providence which inspired him with this 
thought. It would come quite naturally to him, because it had been a custom 
in all ages for Jewish communities to correspond with each other by means of 
travelling deputations, and because the prodigious development of intercourse 
between the chief cities of Italy, Greece, and Asia rendered it easy to send one 
or other of the brethren as the bearer of his missives. And epistolary 
correspondence was the very form which was of all others the best 
adapted to the Apostle's individuality. It suited the impetuosity of 
emotion which could not have been fettered down to the composition of 
formal treatises. It could be taken up or dropped according to the 
necessities of the occasion or the feelings of the writer. It permitted 
of a freedom of expression which was far more intense and far more 
natural to the Apostle than the regular syllogisms and rounded periods of a 
book. It admitted something of the tenderness and something of the 
familiarity of personal intercourse. Into no other literary form could he have 
infused that intensity which made a Christian scholar truly say of him that he 
alone of writers seems to have written, not with fingers and pen and ink, but 
with his very heart, his very feelings, the unbared palpitations of his 
inmost being ; x which made Jerome say that in his writings the words 
were all so many thunders ; 2 which made Luther say that his expressions 
were like living creatures with hands and feet. The theological importance of 
this consideration is immense, and has, to the deep injury of the Church, been 

amid the disorders of the times, letters written on fugitive materials should have perished, 
i peciaUy as many of them may have heen wholly undoctrinal. In 2 Thess. iii. 17 could 
:->t. Paul say 8 eon orj/xeioz/ kv ndo-fl emo-nXy, if h c had only written one? 

» Casaubuii, Adversaria ap. Wolf., p. 135. 2 Jer. ad Pammach. Ep. 18- 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 327 

too muck neglected. Theologians have treated the language of St. Paul as 
though he wrote every word with the accuracy of a dialectician, with the 
scrupulous precision of a school-man, with the rigid formality of a philosophic 
dogmatist. His Epistles as a whole, with their insoluble antinomies, resist 
this impossible and injurious method of dealing with them as absolutely as 
does the Sermon on the Mount. The epistolary form is eminently spontaneous, 
persona], flexible, emotional. A dictated epistle is like a conversation taken 
down in shorthand. In one word, it best enabled Paul to be himself, and to 
recall most vividly to the minds of his spiritual children the tender, suffering, 
inspired, desponding, terrible, impassioned, humble, uncompromising teacher, 
who had first won them to become imitators 1 of himself and of the Lord, and 
to turn from hollow ritualisms or dead idols to serve the living and true God, 
and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even 
Jesus who delivereth us from the coming wrath. 

And one cause of this vivid freshness of style which he imparted to his 
Epistles was the fact that they were, with few if any exceptions, not deeply 
premeditated, not scholastically regular, but that they came fresh and burning 
from the heart in all the passionate sincerity of its most immediate feelings. 
He would even write a letter in the glow of excited feeling, and then wait with 
intense anxiety for news of the manner of its reception, half regretting, or 
more than half regretting, that he had ever sent it. 2 Had he written more 
formally he would never have moved as he has moved the heart of the world. 
Take away from the Epistles of St. Paul the traces of passion, the invective, 
the yearning affection, the wrathful denunciation, the bitter sarcasm, the dis- 
tressful boasting, the rapid interrogatives, the affectionate entreaties, the frank 
colloquialisms, the personal details — those marks of his own personality on 
every page which have been ignorantly and absurdly characterised as intense 
egotism — and they would never have been, as they are, next to the Psalms of 
David, the dearest treasures of Christian devotion ; — next to the four Gospels 
the most cherished text-books of Christian faith. We cannot but love a man 
whose absolute sincerity enables us to feel the very beatings of his head ; who 
knows not how to wear that mask of reticence and Pharisaism which enables 
others to use speech only to conceal their thoughts ; who, if he smites under 
the fifth rib. will smite openly and without a deceitful kiss ; who has fair blows 
but no precious balms that break the head ; who has the feelings of a man, 
the language of a man, the love, the hate, the scorn, the indignation of a man ; 
who is no envious cynic, no calumnious detractor, no ingenious polisher of 
plausible hypocrisies, no mechanical repeater of worn-out shibboleths, but who 
will, if need be, seize his pen with a burst of tears to speak out the very 
thing he thinks ; 3 who, in the accents of utter truthfulness alike to friend and 
to enemy s can argue, and denounce, and expose, and plead, and pity, and 
forgive , to whose triumphant faith and transcendent influence has been due 

1 1 Thess. i. 6, mw™". not " followers," as in E.V. See Excursus I., on " The Style 
of St. Paul as Illustrative of his Character," p. , sq. 

* 2 Cor. vii 8. 3 2 Cor. ii. 4. 



328 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

in no small measure that fearless and glad enthusiasm which pervaded the 
life of the early Church. 

And thus, when Timothy had told him all that he had observed among the 
brethren of Thessalonica, we may feel quite sure that, while his heart was full 
of fresh solicitude, he would write to guide and comfort them, 1 and that many 
days would not elapse before he had dictated the opening words : — 

" Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus to the Church 2 of the Thessalonians 
in God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, grace to yon and peace [f rom 
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ 3 ]." 

This opening address is in itself an interesting illustration of St. PauTs cha- 
racter. Though his letters are absolutely his own, yet with that shrinking from 
personal prominence which we often trace in him, he associates with himself in 
the introduction not only the dignified Silas, 4 but even the youthful Timothy; 5 
and in these his earlier, though not in his later Epistles, constantly uses " we " 
for " I." By " we " he does not mean to imply that the words are conjointly 
those of his two fellow-labourers, since he adopts the expression even when he 
can only be speaking of his individual self ; 6 but he is actuated by that sort of 
modesty, traceable in the language and literature of all nations, which dislikes 
the needlessly frequent prominence of the first personal pronoun. 7 In his 
letters to all other Churches, except to the Philippians, to whom the designa- 
tion was needless, he calls himself Paul an Apostle, but he does not use the 

1 That the external evidence to the genuineness of the Epistles to the Thessalonians 
is amply sufficient may be seen in Alford, hi., Prolegom. ; Davidson, Introduct. i. 19 — 28; 
Westcott, On the Canon, 68, n., 168, &c. The internal evidence derived from style, &c, 
is overwhelming (Jowett, i. 15 — 26). The counter- arguments of Kern, Schrader, Baur, 
&c, founded, as usual, alike on divergences and coincidences, on real similarities and 
supposed discrepancies, on asserted references and imaginary contradictions to the Acts, 
are silently met in the text. They carry no conviction with them, and have found few 
followers ; Baur (Paul, ii. 85 — 97), to a great extent, furnishing positive arguments 
against his own conclusion. (See Liinemann, Br. an die Thcssal. 10 — 15.) Grotius, 
Ewald, Baur, Bunsen, Davidson, &c, consider that the First Epistle is really the second ; 
but the hypothesis is against external and internal evidence, is wholly needless, and 
creates obvious difficulties. It would require many volumes to enter into all these dis- 
cussions for every Epistle ; but though I have no space for that here, I have respectfully 
and impartially considered the difficulties raised, and in many cases shown incidentally 
my grounds for disregarding them. One most inimitable mark of genuineness is the 
general resemblance of tone between the Epistle and that written ten years later to the 
other chief Macedonian Church — Philippi. (See Lightfoot in Smith's Bibl. Diet.) 

2 So in 1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., and Gal. But in the other Epistles toi? ayiois. 

3 This addition is probably spurious. It belongs to 2 Thess. i. 2, and was added 
because the greeting is so short. As we have now reached St. Paul's first Epistle I must 
refer the reader to the Excursus which gives the Uncial Manuscripts of the Epistles, infra, 
Excursus I. 

i Acts xv. 22, 32, 34. 

6 Silas and Timothy are associated with him in 2 Thess. ; Sosthenes in 1 Cor. ; Timothy 
in 2 Cor., Phil., Col., and Philem. Paul writes in his own name only to the Romans and 
Laodiceans, which Churches he had not personally visited. Origen says that the con- 
currence of Paul and Silas flashed out the lightning of these Epistles (Horn. v. in Jerem. 
588 &). 

8 J ii 1 Thess. iii. 2, 6, and in Phil. ii. 19, Timothy is spoken of, though associated 
with Paul in the greeting. 1 Thess. ii. 18, " we . . even I Paul." 

7 "We" is chiefly characteristic of 1,2 Thess. In 2 Thess. the only rassage which 
relapses into "I" is ii. 5. 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 329 

title directly 1 to the Thessalonians, because his claim to it in its more special 
sense had not yet been challenged by insidious Judaisers. 2 In his five earlier 
Epistles he always addresses "the Church;" in his later Epistles "the Saints," 
and the reason for this is not clear ; 3 but to all Churches alike he repeats this 
opening salutation, "Grace and peace." 4 It is a beautiful and remarkable 
blending of the salutations of the Jew and the Greek, the East and the West, 
with their predominant ideals of calm and brightness. The solemn greeting 
of the Jew was Shalom, " Peace be to you ; " the lighter greeting of the 
Greek was x a ' l P* LV , u Kejoice ; " the Church of Christ — possessed of a joy that 
defied tribulation, heir to a peace that passeth understanding — not only com- 
bined the two salutations, but infused into both a deeper and more spiritual 
significance. 6 

After this salutation 6 he opens his letter with that expression of thankful- 
ness on their behalf which he addresses even to the Corinthians, whose deeds 
were so sad a contrast to their ideal title of saints, and which is never wanting, 
except in the burning letter to the apostatising Galatians. So invariable is 
this characteristic of his mind and style that it has acquired a technical 
description, and German writers call it the Danksagung of the Epistles. 7 It 
was no mere insincere compliment or rhetorical artifice. Those to whom he 
wrote, however much they might sink below their true ideal, were still converts, 
were a Church, were saints, were brethren. There might be weak, there might 

i See 1 Thess. ii. 6. 

2 It would have been inappropriate in the private note to Philemon. 

8 Another slight peculiarity is that in his first two Epistles he says "the Church of 
the Thessalonians ;" whereas in the next three he prefers the expression " the Church in " 
such and such a city. This may be a mere trifle. 

4 In his Pastoral Epistles he adds the word eAeos, "mercy." We may thus sum 
up the peculiarities of the salutations: — i. "An Apostle," in all except Philem. and 
Phil. ii. "To the Church," in 1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., Gal. hi. "To the Church of the," 
1, 2 Thess. ; but "to the Church which is in," 1, 2 Cor., Gal. In all other Epistles 
"To the saints." iv. "Grace and peace," in all but the Pastoral Epistles, which have 
" Grace, mercy, and peace." 

6 Xapis, quae est principium omnis boni ; elprjvrf, quae est finale bonorum omnium 
(Tho. Aquin.). 

6 The Epistle, which is mainly personal and practical, may be analysed as follows : — 
I. i. — iii. Historical; II. iv., v. Hortatory ; each ending with a prayer. (I.) i. 1. Brief 
greeting, i. 2 — 10. Thanksgiving for their conversion and holiness, ii. 1 — 12. Appeal 
to them as to the character of his ministry, ii. 13 — 16. Renewed expression of thanks- 
giving for their constancy under persecutions, and bitter complaint of the Jews. ii. 
17 — iii. 10. His personal feelings towards them, and the visit of Timothy, iii. 11 — 13. 
His prayer for them. (II.) iv. 1 — 8. Warning against impurity, iv. 9, 10. Exhortation 
to brotherly love ; and 11, 12, honourable diligence, iv. 13 — v. 11. The only doctrinal 
part of the Epistle, iv. 13 — 18. Consolation about the dead. v. 1 — 11. Duty of watch- 
fulness, since the Lord's advent is near, and the time uncertain, v. 12 — 15. Their duties 
to one another. 16 — 22. Spiritual exhortations. 23, 24. His prayer for them. 25 — 28. 
Lai.t words and blessing. The Epistle is characterised by simplicity of style, and the 
absence of controversy and of developed doctrine. Its keynote is "hope," as the keynote 
of the Epistle to the Philippians is "joy." 

7 Ewald, Die Sendschreiben des Ap. Paulus, 19,39, &c. It may perhaps be urged that 
some of these peculiarities may be due to the ordinary stereotyped formula of correspon- 
dence in the humbler classes. Thus, in papyrus rolls of the British Museum (edited for 
the Trustees by J. Forshall), we find such phrases as el-q av J>? toZ? Oeols ev X <>i>-ev7) SiaTeAw, and 
even, apparently, a-ov Sia navTb? pveCav iroioviJ.evoi. But St. Paul's incessant variations show 
how little he was inclined to mere formulae. 



830 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

be false, there inigM be sinful members among them, but as a body they were 
washed and sanctified and justified, and the life of even those who were un- 
worthy of their high vocation yet presented a favourable contrast to the lives 
of the heathen around them. But the expression of thankfulness 0} behalf 
of the Thessalonians is peculiarly full and earnest. It is an overflow of 
heartfelt gratitude, as indeed the special characteristic of the letter is its sweet- 
ness. 1 St. Paul tells them that he is always giving thanks to God for them all, 
mentioning them in his prayers, filled with the ever-present memory of the 
activity of their faith, the energy of their love, the patience of their hope. 2 
He reminds them of the power and fulness and spiritual unction which had 
accompanied his preaching of the Gospel, and how they had become 3 imitators 4 
of liim and of Christ with such spiritual gladness in the midst of such deep 
affliction 5 that they had become models to all the Churches of Northern and 
Southern Greece, and their faith had been as a trumpet-blast 6 through all the 
Mediterranean coasts. So universally was their belief in God known and 
spread abroad, that there was no need for St. Paul or his companions to tell 
how they had worked at Thessalonica, because every one had heard of their 
conversion from idolatry to belief in the very and living God, 7 and to the 
waiting for the return of that risen Saviour who delivereth us from the coming 
wrath. 8 

He appeals to them, therefore, as to unimpeachable witnesses of the 
earnestness of his visit to them, and of the boldness with which he had faced 
the dangers of Thessalonica, after such recent and painful experience of the 

1 " Habet haec Epistola meram quandam dulcedinem " (Bengel). 

2 Cf. Gal. v. 6. Thus in the very first lines which we possess from his pen we meet 
with his fundamental trilogy of Christian virtues — faith, hope, love. Cf. v. 8 ; Col. 
i. 4 ; Eph. i. 15, 18 ; iii. 17, 18, 20, &c. See Reuss, Thiol, Chret. ii. 240. 

3 St. Paul, like many emotional and impressible writers, is constantly haunted by 
the same word, which he then repeats again and again— tjti? aeiSovreo-o-t veuTa.rr) a.^m£kf\Ta.i 
aKovovreaai. He uses the verb •yiVo/j.ai no less than eight times, although, as Bishop 
Ellicott points out, it only occurs twelve times in all the rest of the New Testament, 
except in quotations from the LXX. "Un mot l'obsede, il le ramene dans une page a tout 
propos. Ce n'est pas de la sterilite : c'est de la contention de l'esprit et une complete 
insouciance de la correction du style " (Renan, p. 233). 

4 (xi^TjTat, E.V. "followers." 

5 i. 6. The reader will notice the exquisite originality of conception in the words 
kv 6ki\(j6i TTokXij ixeTa x a P°-s rii/eu^aTos 'AyCov. It is no rhetorical oxymoron, but the sign of 
a new aeon in the world's history. 

6 i. 8, e£77x??Tai. a><r enl traAiriyyo? \a,xnpbv r)xovo~q<; (Theoph.). Admitting for the warmth 
of feeling which dictated the expre-Bion, it suggests no difficulty when we remember that 
a year may have elapsed since his visit, and that Thessalonica was " posita in gremio 
imperii Romani " (Cic), and stood " on a level with Corinth and Ephesus in its share 
of the commerce of the Levant." 

7 i. 10, 'A\ri6iv<Z (1 John v. 20). Zwim as contrasted with dead men and idols (Wisd. 
xiv. 15; Gal. iv.'8), which are mere eliltm, "nullities" (Lev. xix. 4), and habhdlim, 
' ' vapours. " The expression shows that the Thessalonian Church was mainly composed 
of Gentiles, which accords with Acts xvii. 4, if we read koX 'EA\v?iw {supra, p. 288). If we 
omit koX there is still no contradiction, for obviously many Gentiles, especially women, 
were converted, and even the proselytes had once been idolaters. 

8 Not as in E. V., "who delivered (pvonevov) us from the wrath to come" (epxo/oieVTjs, 
not fieWov<rri<>). The deliverance is continuous ("Christus nos semel eAvrpwo-o/o semper 
pvVrcu " - -Bengel) ; the wrath works as a normal law (i. 1 — 10). 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. S31 

outrages of Philippi. It has been evident, even through these opening sen- 
tences of thanksgiving, that there is in his words an undercurrent of allusion 
to some who would, if they could, have given a very different account of his 
conduct and motives. 1 These appeals to their knowledge of the life and 
character and behaviour of Paul and his two fellow-missionaries would have 
been needless if they had never been impugned. But it is easy to understand 
that alike the Jews in their eagerness to win back the few members of the 
synagogue who had joined the brethren, and the Gentiles vexed at the silent 
rebuke against their own sins, would whisper calumnies about the new teachers, 
and try to infuse into others their own suspicions. The cities of that age 
swarmed with every kind and denomination of quack and impostor. Might 
not these three poor Jews — that silent and dignified elder, the shy, gentle 
youth, and the short enthusiast of mean aspect — might they not be only a 
new variety of the genus goes — like the wandering Galli and worshippers of 
Isis, or Chaldaei, or Matheinatici, or priests of Mithras ? 2 Were they not a 
somewhat suspicious-looking trio 1 What was their secret object ? Was it with 
sinister motives that they gathered into their communities these widows and 
maidens ? Were they not surreptitiously trying to get hold of money ? or 
might it not be their own exaltation at which they were aiming? — Now 
there were some charges and attacks which, in after days, as we shall see, 
filled Paul with bitter indignation ; but insinuations of this nature he can 
afford to answer very calmly. Such calumnies were too preposterous to be 
harmful ; such innuendos too malevolent to be believed. In order to disprove 
them he had but to appeal at once to notorious facts ; and, indeed, no elaborate 
disproof was needed, for his Thessalonian friends hnew, and God was witness, 3 
that there had been no deceit, no uncleanness, no base motives, no secret 
avarice, no desire to win favour, no fawning flattery in the exhortations of the 
missionaries. They had come, not for selfishness, but for sacrifice ; not for 
glory, but to pour out their hearts' tenderness, and spend their very fives for 
the sake of their converts, 4 cherishing them as tenderly 5 as a nursing mother 
fosters her children in her warm bosom, 6 yet waiving their own rights, and 
taking nothing whatever from them, nor laying the smallest burden upon 
them. 7 The brethren knew that while they were preaching they regarded 

1 1 Thess. ii. 5, 9. These phrases are not accounted for by contrast with heathen 
deceptions. The vn.lv rols mcrrevovcrtv of verse 10 means "though others did not so regard 
our conduct. " 

2 Hausrath, p. 300 ; juayoi «al yorjTes (Theoph.) ; ii. 3, kv 86\o>{2 Cor. ii. 17; iv. 2; xi. 13). 
anaOapaca may only mean "impure motives " {e.g., covetousness ; cf. 2 Cor. xi. 8 ; 1 Tim. 
iii. 8; Titus i. 7); " Unlauterkeit, Beimischung menschlicher Begehrnisse " (Ewald) ; 
verse 5, irKeovegia (Acts xx. 33 ; 1 Cor. ix. 15 ; 2 Cor. xii. 14). 

3 1 Thess. ii. 5. 

4 ii. 8, leg. 6/u.eip6/Aevoi, K, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, "clinging to you;" TrpoaSeSejueVoi (Theoph.); 

avTexofJ-evot. Vfjuav (CEcumen. ). 

5 ii. 7, TjTrtot, found also in 2 Tim. ii. 24. The vrj-rrioi of N, B, C, D, F, Gr, is an obvious 
instance of mere homoeoteleuton. 

6 ii. 7, OaKiqi. 

7 h |3dpei etvai, "oneri esse " (Yulg.). It may mean to be dictatorial (ttoAAtjs a.7roAav»w 
rifi^s — Chrys.), but see verse 9 ; 2 Cor. xi. 9 ; xii. 16 ; 2 Thess. iii 8. 



332 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

their mission as a glorious privilege ; 1 and because their one desire was to 
please God, they endured and laboured 2 night and day 3 to win the. r own 
bread, setting blameless examples of holiness towards God, and righteousness 
towards men, and all the while exhorting their followers one by one 4 to live 
lives worthy of God and of the kingdom of His Christ. 5 

And this was why, thank God, the Thessalonians had accepted their preach- 
ing for what it was— a divine and not a human message ; and had borne 
suffering at the hands of their Gentile neighbours with the same exemplary 
courage as the Churches of Judsea, who in like manner had been persecuted 
by the Jews. And here Paul, as he so constantly does, " goes off at a word." 
The mere incidental mention of Jews makes him digress to denounce them, 
writing as he did in the very heat of those conflicts which ended in his indig- 
nant withdrawal from their synagogue at Corinth, and recalling the manner 
in which these murderers of the Lord and of the Prophets, 6 displeasing 7 to 
God and the common enemies of man, 8 chased him from city to city, and tried 
to prevent his mission to the Gentiles. And it is thus, he says, that they 
are always filling up the measure of guilt, and the wrath came upon them to 
the end — potentially overtook them — in that sudden consummation of their 
sins. Their very sin, he seems to say, in hindering the proclamation of the 
Gospel, was itself their punishment; their wrath against Christ was God's wrath 
against them ; their dementation would be, and was, their doom. 9 

And having been thus diverted by his feeling of indignation against them 

1 ii. 4, SeSoKifjida-fxeea. 2 ii. 9, kottos, " active toil ; " jadx^os, "steady endurance of toil." 
3 St. Paul uses the ordinary Hebrew expression (iii. 10; 2 Thess. iii. 8, &c), which 
arose from the notion, found in an old border oath, that " God made the earth in six days 
and seven nights. " Hence too the term wxH^pov. St. Luke, writing in his own person, 
says, " day and night " (Acts ix. 24). The fact that there were wealthy and distinguished 
women among the proselytes (Acts xvii. 4) made this self-denial the more striking. 

■* 11. 11, eW e/cacTTOi' iijacov. Chrysostom Says, J3d/3ai. ev toctoutco TrXrjOei. ju.r)8eva 7rapaA.i.xreii> ; 

but probably the Christians in Thessalonica would have made an exceedingly small 
modern parish. 

5 ii. 1—12. 

6 Omit tS/ovs, «» A, B, D, &c. " Suos adjectio est haeretici" (i.e., of Marcion) — Tert. 
adv. Marc. v. 15. 

7 ju.rj apeo-Kovruiv. The m, though "the prevailing New Testament combination with 
the participle " (Ellicott), is slightly less severe than if he had used ovk. 

8 The momentary exacerbation against the Jews in the mind of St. Paul must have 
been unusually intense to wring from him such words as these. We almost seem to catch 
the echo of the strong condemnation uttered against them by Gentiles as a God-detested 
race, who hated all men ("odium generis humani" — Tac. H. v. 5 ; Juv. Sat. xiv. 100), 
and such a view of them (which Lunemann here fails to overthrow) must have caused a 
deep pang to one who remained at heart a genuine patriot. (See Rom. ix. 1—5.) But 
the triumph of the Jews over the impious attempts of Caligula had caused a great recru- 
descence of fanaticism among them. 

,J ii. 14 — 16. Baur, in arguing that this could only have been written after the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, makes a double mistake. First, he takes tyOacrev in the sense of 
eyQaKtv (like the E. V. " has come "), which is the erroneous gloss of B, D ; and secondly, 
he does not see the ethical conception which I have here tried to bring out. The wrath of 
God found its full consummation in the fulness of their criminality (Matt, xxvii. 25); 
the fiat of their doom had then gone forth. It was not finally consummated till the fall 
of Jerusalem, eighteen years later, but signs were already obvious that its execution 
would not long be delayed. To the prescient eye of St. Paul the commencing troubles 
in Palestine — and the recent expulsion of the Jews from Rome — would be ample to 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 333 

from the topic of self-defence— on which, indeed, nothing more was necessary 
to be said— he goes on to tell them that regarding them as his glory and joy 
and crown of boasting * at the coming of Christ — feeling, in his absence from 
them, like a father bereaved of his children 2 — he had twice purposed to come 
to them, and had twice been hindered by Satan. 3 He had, however, done the 
next best thing he could. He had parted from Timothy in Athens, and sent 
him to prevent them from succumbing 4 to those fierce afflictions, of the cer- 
tainty of which they had been faithfully forewarned ; and to ascertain their 
faith, as shown by the dubious result of too definite temptations. 5 When 
Timothy rejoined him at Corinth, the news which he had brought back was 
so reassuring — he was able to give so good an account of their faith, and love, 
and steadfastness, and affection — that it had cheered the Apostle in the midst 
of his own heavy afflictions, and been to him like a fresh spring of life. No 
thanks to God could be too hearty for this blessing, and it added intensity to 
his prayer that God would yet enable him to come and see them, and to perfect 
all deficiencies of their faith. He concludes this historic or personal section 
of his Epistle with the fervent prayer that God would deepen the spirit of 
love which already prevailed among them, and so enable them to stand before 
Him in blameless holiness at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. 6 
From these earnest and loving messages he turns to the practical part of 
his letter. He beseeches 7 and exhorts them not to be stationary, but to 
advance more and more in that Christian course which he had marked out 
for them. And then he enters on those special injunctions which he knew to 
be most needful First and foremost he puts the high virtue of purity. 

justify his expression. In the true prophetic spirit he regards the inevitable as the 
actual. It is possible, too, that St. Paul may be alluding to the great discourse of 
Christ (Matt, xxiii. 37—39 ; xxiv. 6, 16 ; cf. Rom. i. 18 ; Dan. ix. 24). 

1 Ezek. xvi. 12 (LXX.). 2 ii. 17, d7rop(2>avi<r0ei/Tes d^' vfjMV. 

3 Once apparently at Bercea, once at Athens. The Satanic hindrance may have been 
in Bercea Jewish persecutions, in Athens feeble health. (Cf. Bom. xv. 22. ) He is writing 
to Gentile converts, to whom it will be observed that he does not adduce, in either 
Epistle, a single quotation from the Old Testament, with which they could have been 
as yet but little familiar ; but the immediate reference of trials, sickness, and hindrances 
to Satan is found to this day in all Oriental forms of speech. Even in the Bible the 
term Satan is sometimes applied to "any adversary'' or "opposing influence" (cf. 
1 Chron. xxi. 1 with 2 Sam. xxiv. 1). "The devil," 6 Sia£oAos, as distinguished from 
unclean spirits, Saifxovia, is only used by St. Paul in Eph. iv. 27 ; vi. 11; and three times 
in the letters to Timothy. "Where he regarded the hindrance as Satanic he carries out 
his purpose another time, but where it is a divine prohibition (Acts xvi. 6, 7) he finally 
gives it up. Acts xxi. 4 is only an apparent exception. 

4 He here uses the metaphor aaiveaBai, derived from the fawning cowardice of frightened 
animals ; elsewhere he uses the metaphor ariXXea-Bat, "to furl the sails in a high wind." 
He calls Timothy "a fellow-worker with God" [avvepybv tov ©eov, D), an expression only 
altered in the MSS. because of its boldness (1 Cor. hi. 9; 2 Cor. vi. 1). 

3 lil. 5, JU.JJ —to? eire Cpacrev . . . Kai ets icevbv y ivqrai. 

6 ii. 17— hi. 13. Parousia occurs six times in these two Epistles, and only besides in 
1 Cor. xv. 23. The word "advent " is said to occur first in Tert. De Resurrect. 24. The 
" saints " seems to be a reference, not to angels (Ps. lxxxix. 7; Matt. xvi. 27; Jude 14, &c), 
because St. Paul does not use this term of angels {kedoshim, Ps. cxxxix. 7), but to those 
mentioned in iv. 16 ; 1 Cor. vi. 2. 

7 epto-rcVev, as in v. 12; 2 Thess. ii. 1; only elsewhere to his other Macedonian 
Church (Phil. iv. 3). 



334 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

These converts had but recently been called out of a heathenism which looked 
very lightly on the sins of the flesh. The mastery over lifelong habits of 
corruption "was not to be won in a day. They were still in danger of relaps- 
ing into sensual crime. It was necessary to remind them that, however small 
might be the censure which Gentiles attached to fornication, 1 and even to 
yet darker and deadlier sins, 2 they were in direct opposition to the command, 
and would immediately deserve the retribution of that God whose will was 
their sanctifieation, and who laid on them the duty, however difficult, of ac- 
quiring a secure and tranquil mastery over their body and its lusts. 3 If then 
any one among them professed to despise these precepts as though they were 
merely those of the Apostle, he must now be reminded that he was thereby 
despising, not any human teacher, but God, who called them, not for un- 
cleanliness, but in sanctifieation, 4 and by giving them His Holy Spirit, not 
only deepened the duty, but also inspired them with the power to sanctify His 
Temple in their hearts. 5 

The next Christian virtue of which he speaks is brotherly love. He feels 
it unnecessary to do so, 6 for God Himself had taught them both to recognise 
that duty and to put it in practice, not only towards the members of their 
own church, but towards all Macedonian Christians (vs. 9, 10). 

Further, they should make it their ambition to be quiet, 7 working with 

1 Cic. pro Caelio, 48 ; Hor. Sat. I. ii. 32 ; Ter. Adelph. I. ii. 21 ; Jer. Ep. 77 ; Aug. 
De Civ. Dei. xiv. 18. 

2 Ver. 7, ov . . . €7rl a.K.a.6ap(jia aW ev ayta<r/U.a). 

3 iv. 4. The exact meaning of eiSevai iicacrTov ifxCov to eavrov (J/ceuo? KTacrdai, K.T.X., must 

remain uncertain. It is wrongly translated in the E.V. "that every one of you should 
know ho w to possess his vessel," &c, for KraaOaL is "to acquire." I have given what would 
be a very fine and forcible meaning of the words, but it cannot be regarded as certain 
that ovceuo? means "body" (cf. 2 Cor. iv. 7, Chrys., Theoph., (Ecu men., Theod., Tert., 
and most modern writers). I regard it, however, as by far the most probable interpreta- 
tion (cf. 1 Sam. xxi. 5 ; 2 Cor. iv. 7). So ayyelov is used for "body " in Philo, and vas in 
Latin writers (see Cic. T. Disp., i. 22 ; Lucr, hi. 44). Theodore of Mopsuestia and 
Augustine make it mean " his own wife ; " and then it would be a recommendation to 
the spirit of chastity at once preserved and continued in a holy marriage (Heb. hi. 4). 
This view has been recently adopted by De Wette, Schott, &c, as it was by Aquinas 
and Estius. In favour of it are the Hebrew ^3 for wife (see Rabbinic instances in 
Schoettgen, Hor. Hebr., ad loc), and the phrase KTao-Bai ywawa (Ecclus. xxxvi. 29; cf. 
Eph. v. 28 ; 1 Cor. vii. 2 ; 1 Pet. iii. 7 ). But would the Thessalonians, whose women 
held a much higher and freer position than Oriental women, have been aware of this 
somewhat repulsive Orientalism ? Would the use of it have been worthy of St. Paul's 
refinement? and is he not, as Theoiloret observes, speaking to celibates and to women as 
well as to men ? 

4 Leg. hiBovra, n, B, D, E, F, G. 

5 iv. 1 — 8. The dark warning of iv. 6 is lost in the E. V., because, though it would 
be but too intelligible to Pagan converts, St. Paul veils it under the delicate euphemisms, 
the honesta ayosiopesis, familiar to his sensitive refinement (cf. 1 Cor. v. 1, 2; 2 Cor. vii. 11, 
&c. ; Eph. v. 3, 12). At any rate, the Greek commentators, who would here be most 
likely to see his meaning, take him to mean not only adultery, but yet deeper abysses of 
wickedness. It cannot be " business," which would be tois 7rpdy/xacne. (See Dollinger, 
Judenth. u. Hcidenth.) 

6 This sort of TrapaAeu/n? (or praeteritio), noticed here by Theophylact, is a rhetorical 
figure characteristic of St. Paul's kindliness (see v. 1 ; 2 Cor. ix. 1 ; Philem. 19). But the 
phrase also implies that it is easier to teach Christian virtue than to eradicate habitual vice. 

7 One of St. Paul's happy turns of expression (oxymoron, Rom. xii. 11 ; cf. Isa. xxx. 7). 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSAXONIANS. 335 

their own hands, 1 and not to meddle with others, and not to rely on the 
assistfNnce of others, but to present to the outer world a spectacle of honour- 
able and active independence (vs. 11, 12). 

And now, by these moral exhortations, by thus recalling them from over- 
eschatologi^al excitement to the quiet fulfilment of the personal duties which 
lay nearest at hand, he has prepared the way for the removal of a serious 
doubt which had troubled some of them. Since he left them there had been 
deaths in the little community, and these deaths had been regarded by some 
of the survivors with a peculiar despondency. They had been taught again 
and again to hope for, to look unto, the coming of Christ. That blessed 
Presence was to be for them the solution of all perplexities, the righting 
of all wrongs, the consolation for all sufferings. What the hopes of the 
birth of the Messiah had been to the Jew, that the hope of His return with 
all His saints was to the early Christian. And it was natural that such a 
topic should be prominent in the addresses to a church which, from its very 
foundation, had been, and for years continued to be, peculiarly afflicted. 2 
What, then, was to be said about those who had died, and therefore had not 
seen the promise of Christ's coming ? What could be said of those whose 
life had ended like the common life of men — no wrongs righted, no miseries 
consoled? Had not they been beguiled of their promise, disappointed in 
their hope, deceived, even, as to the event on which they had fixed their 
faith ? And if they, why not others ? If the dead were thus frustrated in 
their expectation, why might not the living be ? St. Paul has already given 
them the advice which would prevent them from brooding too much on that 
one uncertain moment of Christ's coming. He has bidden them be pure, and 
loving, and diligent, and live their daily lives in simple honour and faithful- 
ness. He would have eminently approved the quiet good sense of that 
president of the Puritan assembly, who, when a dense darkness came on, 
and some one proposed that they should adjourn because it might be the 
beginning of the Day of Judgment, proposed rather that candles should be 
lighted, because if it was to be the Day of Judgment, they could not be found 
better employed than in the quiet transaction of duty. But Paul does not 
leave his converts in their perplexity about their departed friends. He tells 
them, in words which have comforted millions of mourners since, not to soi 
row as those that have no hope, 3 for that " if we believe that Jesus died and 

1 This shows that the Thessalonian converts were mainly artisans. 

2 2 Cor. vii. 5. 

3 That the G-entiles were at this time, as a rule, despondent in their views of death, 
in spite of dim hopes and splendid guesses, is certain. " Mortuus nee ad Deos, nee ad 
homines acceptus est" {Corp. Inscr. i. 118; Boissier, La Mel. Mom. i. 304, seq.). See, 
for the more ancient Greek view, iEsch. Humeri. 648, &c. The shade of Achilles says to 
Ulysses in Hades : 

" ' Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, 
Nor think vain words,' he cried, ' can ease my doom; 
Better by far laboriously to bear 
A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air 
Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread, 
Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead* " 



336 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 

rose again, even so them also which had been laid asleep by Jesus will God 
bring with Him." 1 He even enters into details. He tells them " by the word 
of the Lord " 2 that death would practically make no difference whatever be- 
tween the living and the dead, for that in the tremendous " now " of the Day 
of Judgment 3 the Lord Himself should descend from heaven with a cry of 
summons, with the voice of the archangel, 4 and with the trump of God, 6 and 
that then the dead in Christ should rise first, and we who are alive and 
remain 6 be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so be for ever with 
Him. " Wherefore," he says, '' comfort one another with these words." 7 

But when should this be ? — after what period, at what critical moment ? 8 
That was a question which he need not answer, because they themselves knew 
precisely 9 the only answer which could be given, which was that the day of 
the Lord should come as a thief in the night, overwhelming those that chose 
darkness with sudden destruction. But they were not of the darkness, 
but children of light ; so that, however suddenly it came, that day could 
not find them unprepared. 10 For which purpose let them be sober and 
vigilant, like soldiers, armed with faith and love for a breastplate, and the 
hope of salvation for a helmet ; u since God had not appointed them for wrath, 
but to obtain salvation through Him who had died in order that they, whether 
in life or in death, might live with Him for ever. 12 The Thessalonians are 
bidden to continue edifying and comforting one another with these words. 
Did none of them ask, " But what will become of the Jews ? of the heathen? 
of the sinners and backsliders among ourselves ? " Possibly they did. But 
here, and in the Romans, and in the Corinthians, St. Paul either did not 
anticipate such questions, or refused to answer them. Perhaps he had heard 
the admirable Hebrew apophthegm, " Learn to say, ' I do not know? " This 
at least is certain, that with him the idea of the resurrection is so closely 
connected with that of faith, and hope, and moral regeneration, that when he 
speaks of it he will speak of it mainly, indeed all but exclusively, in con- 
nexion with the resurrection of the saints. 13 



1 iv. 14. If the fiiA tow 'Itjo-oO be taken with Koi/u.Tj0eVrae, "laid asleep by Jesus." Cf. 
Acts iii. 16 ; Rom. i. 8 ; v. 11 ; 2 Cor. i. 5, &c. 

2 " Quasi Eo ipso loquente " (Beza). As this can hardly be referred to Matt. xxiv. 31, 
and must be compared with the Hebrew phrase (1 Kings xx. 35, &c), we can only under- 
stand it either of a traditional utterance of Christ or a special revelation to the Apostle. 
Ewald, however, says (Sendsclvr. 48), "Aus Christusworten die ihnen gewiss aucb 
Bchriftlich vorlagen." 

3 Luther. 4 Archangel only here and in Jud. 9. 
6 The imagery is borrowed from Ex. xix. 16. 

8 These words will be explained infra. 

I iv. 13 — 18. These verses furnish one leading motive of the Epistle. 

8 V. 1, 7repl fie tojv xP° vuiV KaL ™ v * at P^»'. v - 2, aKpi/3a)S. 

10 v. 4, A, B, read jcAeVra?, which would be a slight change of metaphor. " Weil der 
Dieb nur in und mit der Nacht kommt, vom Tage aber iiberrascht wird " (Ewald). Cf. 
Matt. xxiv. 37 ; Rom. xiii. 11—14. 

II The germ of the powerful and beautiful figure of the Christian's panoply which is 
elaborated in Eph. vi. 13—17 ; Rom. xiii. 12. (Cf. Wisd. v. 18 ; Baruch. v. 12.) 

»2 v. 1—11. 

» Pfloiderer, i. 275 ; Rom. vi. 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 22, &c. See Reuss, Theol. Chret. ii. 214. 



THE FIRST EPlSTIiS TO THE THESSALONIANS. 337 

To the thoughts suggested by St. Paul's treatment of this weighty topic 
we shall revert immediately. He ends the Epistle with moral exhortations — 
all, doubtless, suggested by the needs of the Church — of extraordinary fresh- 
ness, force, and beauty. There were traces of insubordination among them, 
and he bids them duly respect and love, for their work's sake, the spiritual 
labourers and leaders of their community, 1 and to be at peace among them- 
selves. He further tells them — perhaps in these last verses especially 
addressing the presbyters — to warn those unruly brethren who would not obey. 
There was despondency at work among them, and he bids them " comfort the 
feeble-minded, take the weak by the hand, be patient towards all men." They 
were to avoid all retaliations, and seek after all kindness 2 (vers. 12 — 15). Then 
follow little arrow-flights of inestimably precious exhortation. Was depression 
stealing into their hearts ? Let them meet it by remembering that God's 
will for them in Christ Jesus was perpetual joy, unceasing prayer, universal 
thanksgiving. Had there been any collisions of practice, and differences of 
opinion, among the excited enthusiasts whose absorption in the expected return 
of Christ left them neither energy nor wish to do their daily duties, while it 
made them also set very little store by the calmer utterances of moral 
exhortation ? Then, besides the exhortation to peace, and the noble general 
rule to avoid every kind of evil, 3 he warns them that they should neither 
quench the Spirit nor despise prophesyings — that is, neither to stifle an 
impassioned inspiration nor to undervalue a calm address 4 — but to test all 
that was said to them, and hold fast what was good. 5 

Then, once more, with the affirmation that God's faithfulness would grant 
the prayer, he prays that God would sanctify them wholly, and preserve their 
bodies, their wills and affections, their inmost souls, 6 blamelessly till that 
coming of the Lord to which he has so often alluded. He asks their prayers 
for himself ; bids them salute all the brethren with a holy kiss ; 7 adjures 
them by the Lord 8 that his letter be read to the entire community ; and so 

1 These vague terms seem to show that the ecclesiastical organisation of the Church 
was as yet very flexible. 

2 v. 15, contrast this with Soph. Philoct. 679. 

3 Not " every appearance of evil " (E. V.), grand as such an exhortation undoubtedly 
is. It may perhaps be " from every evil appearance," everything which has an ill look : 
possibly it refers to bad yerq of spiritual teaching. 

* 1 Cor. xiv. 39. 

6 "Vers. 16 — 21. What they needed was the Sia/cpioxs nvev^dTOiv (1 Cor. xii. 10 ; Heb. 

V. 14), and to be So/a/moi TpanegiTai. 

6 v. 23, <rw^.a, "body;" *ln>xh, the entire human life and faculties; nvevna, the divinely 
imbreathed spirit, the highest region of life. oAoTeAets, 6a.6kA.tjp<h (James i. 4). Trench, 
Synon, p. 70. 

7 The tous aSekQovs irdvTas must mean " one another," as in Rom. xvi. 16 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 
20; 2 Cor. xiii. 12; 1 Pet. y. 14, unless these few concluding lines are addressed specially 
to the elders. On the "kiss of charity" — an Oriental custom — see Bingham, Antiq. hi. 
3, 3 ; Hooker, Pref. iv. 4. 

8 The very strong adjuration may have been rendered necessary by some of the 
differences between the converts and the leading members of the community, at which 
the Apostle hints in v. 12 — 15. Some influential persons, to whom the letter was first 
handed, might be inclined to suppress any parts of it with which they disagreed, or which 
seemed to condemn their views or conduct. Timothy may have brought the news that 



338 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

concludes with his nsual ending, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ "be 
with you. Amen." l These last three verses were probably written in his 
own hand, 

It may easily be imagined with what rapture the arrival of such a letter 
would be hailed by a young, persecuted, and perplexed community ; how 
many griefs it would console ; how many doubts it would resolve ; how much 
joy, and hope, and fresh enthusiasm it would inspire. It could not but have 
been delightful in any case to be comforted amid the storm of outward 
opposition, and to be inspirited amid the misgivings of inward faithlessness, 
by the words of the beloved teacher whose gospel had changed the whole 
current of their lives. It was much to feel that, though absent from them in 
person, he was present with them in heart, 2 praying for them, yearning over 
them, himself cheered by the tidings of their constancy ; but it was even more 
to receive words which would tend to heal the incipient disagreements of that 
small and loving, but inexperienced, and as yet but half-organised community, 
and to hear the divinely authoritative teaching which silenced their worst fears. 
And further than this, if the words of St. Paul shine so brightly to us through 
the indurated dust of our long familiarity, how must they have sparkled for 
them in their fresh originality, and with heaven's own light shining on those 
oracular gems ! " Having received the word in much affliction with joy of 
the Holy Ghost ; " 3 — that was no mere artificial oxymoron, but an utterance 
which came from a new world, of which they were the happy lords. " Jesus 
which delivereth us from the coming wrath ; " 4 " God who called you unto 
His kingdom and glory ; " 5 " This is the will of God, even your sanctifica- 
tion ; " G " So shall we ever be with the Lord ;" 7 " Te are all the children of the 
light and the children of the day ; " 8 " See that none render evil for evil unto 
any ;" 9 " Rejoice evermore." 10 What illimitable hopes, what holy obligations, 
what golden promises, what glorious responsibilities, what lofty ideals, what 

Bome previous letter of the Apostle to this, or other churches, had not properly been 
made known. How easily such an interference was possible we see from 3 John 9, "I 
wrote to the Church, but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, 
receiveth us not " (see Ewald, Sendschr, p. 51). Dionysius of Corinth deplores the falsi - 
fication of his own letters (Euseb. H. E. iv. 23). St. Paul generally asked for a prayer 
himself towards the close of a letter (Eph. vi. 19 ; Col. iv. 3 ; 2 Thess. hi. 1). 

1 This yvJjpLcrfj.a or badge of cognisance is found, with slight variations, at the close of 
all St. Paul's Epistles. Thus :— 

(a.) In 1 Thess. v. 28 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 23 we have, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
be with you," to which the word "all" is added in 2 Thess. hi. 18; Rom. xvi. 24 ; 
Phil. iv. 23. 

03) In Philem. 25 ; Gal. vi. 18 we have, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with 
your spirit " ("brethren," Gal.). 

(y) In Col. iv. 18 ; 1 Tim. vi. 21 ; 2 Tim. iv. 22 we have the shortest form, " Grace 
be with you " (thee), to which Titus iii. 15 adds " all." 

(5) In Eph. vi. 24 we have the variation, " Grace be with all them that love the Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity," and in 2 Cor. xiii. 14 alone the full " Apostolic benediction." 
The subscriptions added to the Epistles at a much later period are mostly valueless 
;see Paley, Horae Paulinae, chap. xv.). 

2 1 Thess. ii. 17. 

a i. 6. * i. 10. 6 ii. 12. « iv 3. 

7 iv, 17. 9 t. 5. • v. 15. w ▼. 1ft. 



THE FIEST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONTANS. 339 

reaches of morality beyond any which their greatest writers had attained, 
what strange renovation of the whole spirit and meaning of life, lay hidden 
for them i a those simple words ! 1 The brief Epistle brought home to them 
the glad truth that they could use, for their daily wear, that glory of thought 
which had only been attained by the fewest and greatest spirits of their 
nation at their rarest moments of inspiration ; and therewith that grandeur of 
life which, in its perfect innocence towards God and man, was even to these 
unknown. 

It is a remarkable fact that in this Epistle St. Paul alludes no less than 
four times to the coming of Christ, 2 and uses, to describe it, the word parousia 
— " presence " — which also occurs in this sense in the second Epistle, 3 but 
in only one other passage of all his other Epistles. 4 Whether, after the 
erroneous conclusions which the Thessalonians drew from this letter, and the 
injurious effects which this incessant prominence of eschatology produced in 
their characters, he subsequently made it a less salient feature of his own 
teaching, we cannot tell. Certain, however, it is that the misinterpretation of 
his first letter, and the reprehensible excitement and restlessness which that 
misinterpretation produced, 5 necessitated the writing of a second very shortly 
after he had received tidings of these results. 6 It is equally certain that, from 
this time forward, the visible personal return of Christ and the nearness of 
the end, which are the predominant topics in the First Epistle to the Thessa- 
lonians, sink into a far more subordinate topic of reference ; and that, 
although St. Paul's language in the letter was misunderstood, yet the mis- 
understanding was not a wilful but a perfectly natural one ; and that in his 
later letters he anticipates his own death, rather than the second Advent, as 
his mode of meeting Christ. The divine and steady light of history first 
made clear to the Church that our Lord's prophetic warnings as to His 
return applied primarily to the close of the Jewish dispensation, and the 
winding up of all the past, and the inauguration of the last great aeon of 
God's dealings with mankind. 

1 Baur (Paul. iL), Kern {Tilb. Zeitschr. 1839), Van der Yaier (Die beiden Brief en aan 
de Thessal.), De Wette (Einleit.), Volkmar, Zeller, &c, and the Tubingen schoo 1 
generally, except Hilgenfeld (Die Thessaloaicherbriefe), reject both Epistles to the Thes- 
salonians as ungenuine, and Baur calls the First Epistle a " mattes Nachwerk." I have 
carefully studied tbeir arguments, but they seem to me so slight as to be scarcely 
deserving of serious refutation. The difficulties which would be created by rejecting 
these Epistles are ten times as formidable as any -which they suggest. If an unbiassed 
scholar, familiar with the subject, cannot feel the heart of St. Paul throbbing through 
every sentence of these Epistles, it is hardly likely that argument will convince him. 
External evidence (Iren. Haer. v. 6, 1 ; Clem. Alex. Paedag. i, p. 109, ed. Potter ; Tert. 
De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. 24), though sufficiently strong, is scarcely even required. Not 
only Bunsen, Ewald, &c, but even Hilgenfeld (I.e.), Holtzmann (Thessalon. in Schenkel, 
Bibel-lexikon), Pfleiderer (Paulinism, 29), Hausrath, "Weisse, Schmidt, &c, accept the first. 

2 ii. 19 ; iii. 13 ; iv. 15 ; v. 23. 3 2 Thess. ii. 1, 8. 4 1 Cor. xv. 23. 

5 TVe find in St. Paul's own words abundant proof that his teaching was distorted 
and slandered, and St. Peter gives us direct positive assurance that such was the case 
(2 Pet. iii. 16). 

6 Tradition should have some weight, and -pos ©eo-o-oAovLKeTs fi is the reading of A, B, 
D, E, F, G. The internal evidences also, to some of which I have called attention, 
seem to me decisive, 

w 2 



340 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 
'* Aet yap ravra yeve<r9at irpwrov, d\A* ouk ev94(os to reAos." — LUKE xxi. 9. 

Many months could not have elapsed before the Apostle heard that thci 
Thessalonians, with all their merits and virtues, were still, and even mora 
than previously, hindered in moral growth by eschatological enthusiasms. 
"When he wrote to them before, they were tempted to despond about the death 
of friends, whom they supposed likely to be thus deprived of part at least of 
the precious hopes which were their main, almost their sole, support in the 
fiery furnace of affliction. The Apostle's clear assurance seems to have 
romoved all anxiety on this topic, but now they regarded the immediate coming 
of Christ as a thing so certain that some of them were tempted to neglect his 
exhortations, and to spend their lives in aimless religious excitement. 1 St. 
Paul felt how fatal would be such a temperament to all Christian progress, 
and the main object of his second letter was to control into calm, and shame 
into diligence, the gossiping enthusiasm which fatally tended towards irregu- 
larity and sloth. They were not to desert the hard road of the present for the 
mirage which seemed to bring so close to them the green Edens of the future ; 
they were not to sacrifice the sacredness of immediate duty for the dreamy 
sweetness of unrealised expectations. The Advent of Christ might be near 
at hand ; but it was not so instant as they had been led to imagine from an 
erroneous view of what he had said, and by mistaken reports — possibly 
even by written forgeries — which ascribed to him words which he had 
never used, and opinions which he had never held. 

The expression on which the Apocalyptic fanaticism of the less sensible 
Thessalonians seems to have fastened was that which occurs in 1 Thess. iv. 
15 — " We, which are alive and remain to the presence of the Lord, shall 
certainly not anticipate those that have fallen asleep." It was not unnatural 
that they should interpret this to mean that their teacher himself expected to 
survive until the Epiphany of their Lord's presence. 2 If so, it must be very 
close at hand; and again, if so, of what use were the petty details of daily 
routine, the petty energies of daily effort ? Was it not enough to keep them- 
selves alive anyhow until the dawn of that near day, or the shadows of that 
rapidly approaching night, which might be any day or any night, on which all 
earthly interests should be dissipated for ever as soon as the voice of God and 
the trumpet of the dead should sound ? 

Now, we ask, had this been the real meaning of the words of St. Paul ? 

1 The reader will be struck with the close analogy of this temptation to that which 
did so much mischief among the Anabaptists and other sects in the days of the Reforma- 
tion. The Thessalonian Church may have had its Carlstadts whom St. Paul felt it 
necessary to warn, just as Luther fought, with all the force of his manly sense, against 
the crudities of the religious errors which had derived their impulse from a perversion of 
his own teaching. 

1 'Eru^dfeia rffi wapowimt. 



THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 341 

The question has been voluminously and angrily debated. It has been made, 
in fact (and very needlessly), the battle -ground as to the question of verbal 
inspiration. Some have tried to maintain the desperate and scarcely honest 
position that neither St. Paul nor the Apostles generally had any expectation 
of the near visible advent of Christ ; others that they were absolutely 
convinced that it would take place in their own generation, and even in their 
own lifetime. 

Not in the interests of controversy, but in those of truth, 1 will endeavour 
!o prove that neither of these extreme theses can be maintained. If the view 
jf the Thessalonians had been absolutely groundless, it would have been easy 
for St. Paul to say to them, as modern commentators have said for him, 
" You mistook my general expression for a specific and individual one. When 
I said ' we which are alive and remain ' at the presence of Christ, I did not 
mean either myself, or you, in particular, but merely ' the living ' — the class 
to which we at present belong— as opposed to the dead, about whose case I 
was speaking to you. 1 Tou are mistaken in supposing that I meant to imply 
a conviction that before my own death the Lord would reappear." Now, he does 
not say this at all ; 2 he only tells them not to be drif ted from their moorings, 
not, as he expresses it, to be tossed from their sound sense 3 by the supposition 
that he had spoken of the actual instancy 4 of the day of the Lord. He tells 
them plainly that certain events must occur before that day came ; and these 
as certainly are events which precluded all possibility of the Second Advent 
taking place for them to-morrow or the next day. But, on the other hand, he 
does not tell them that the day of the Lord was not near (iyyvs). If he had 
done so he would have robbed of their meaning the exhortations which had 
formed the staple of his preaching at Thessalonica, as they constituted the 
only prominent doctrinal statement of his First Epistle. 5 If we are to judge 
of St. Paul's views by his own language, and not by the preconceptions of 
scholasticism, we can divine what would have been his answer to the plain 
question, " Do you personally expect to live till the return of Christ ? " At 
this period of his life his answer would have been, " I cannot speak positively 
on the matter. I see clearly that, before His return, certain things must take 
place ; but, on the whole, I do expect it." But at a later period of his life he 
would have said in substance, " It may be so ; I cannot tell. On the whole, 
however, I no longer hope to survive till that day ; nor does it seem to me of 
any importance whether I do or not. At that day the quick will have no 
advantage over the dead. What I now look forward to, what I sometimes even 
yearn for, is my own death. I know that when I die I shall be with Christ, 

* ThesS. iv. 15. tyteis . . . <w irepi eavTOv <£t)ctiV — aAAa tov? -rncTTov? Keyei (ChryS.). 

2 It is never his method to explain away his views because they have been perverted, 
but merely to bring tbem out in their full and proper meaning. 

* fir) raxe'ws craKevdrjvai cltto tov vobs (2 Tbess. h. 2). 4 evi<m\K.ev. 

5 As Baur rightly observes (Paulus, ii. 94) : but to assume that therefore the Epistle 
cannot be St. Paul's is to the last degree uncritical. Moreover, though there are no 
other "dogmatic ideas" brought forward with very special prominence, there are 
*' dogmatic ideas " assuvied in every line. 



3*2 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

and it is for that pathway into His presence that I am now watching". In the 
earlier years of my conversion we all anticipated a speedier development of 
Antichrist, a speedier removal of the restraining power, a speedier "brightening 
Bf the clouds about the flaming feet of our Saviour. That for which I now 
look is far more the spiritual union with my Lord than His visible manifesta- 
tion. It may be, too, that He cometh in many ways. If we ever mistook the 
nearer for the farther horizons of His prophecy, it is but a part of that 
ignorance which, as He Himself warned us, should, as regards the details of 
this subject, be absolute and final. For said He not when He was yet with 
us, ' Of that day and that hour hnoweth no man ; no, not the angels which 
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father ' ? But whether He come so 
soon as we have expected, or not, yet in one form or another assuredly now 
and ever ' the Lord is at hand ; ' and the lesson of His coming is that which 
He also taught us, and which we have taught from Him — ' Take ye heed, 
watch and pray, for ye know not when the time is.' " 

That these were the views of St. Paul and of other Apostles on " the crises 
and the periods" respecting which, if they ventured to hold any definite 
opinion at all, they could not but, according to their Lord's own warning, be 
liable to be mistaken, will, I think, be evident to all who will candidly weigh 
and compare with themselves the passages to which I here refer. 1 

Now so far as the fall of Jerusalem and the passing of doom upon 
the Jewish race was " a day of the Lord," so far even the most literal accep- 
tation of their words is in close accordance with the actual results. Nor 
should this remarkable coincidence be overlooked. On December 19th, A.D. 69, 
the Capitoline Temple was burnt down in the war between Vitellius and Ves- 
pasian, which Tacitus calls the saddest and most shameful blow, and a sign of 
the anger of the gods. On August 10, A.D. 70, a Koman soldier flung a 
brand within the Temple of Jerusalem. " Thus," says Bollinger, 2 "within a 
few months the national sanctuary of Rome and the Temple of God, the two 
most important places of worship in the old world, owed their destruction 
to Roman soldiers— thoughtless instruments of the decrees and judgment of 
a higher power. Ground was to be cleared for the worship of God in spirit 
and in truth. The heirs of the two temples, the Capitoline and the Jewish — a 
handful of artisans, beggars, slaves, and women — were dwelling at the time 
in some of the obscure lanes and alleys of Rome ; and only two years before, 

1 Allusions to a near Advent, 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, "ye turned to God .... to wait 
for His Son from heaven ; " 1 Cor. i. 7, " To wait for the coming of the Lord Jesus " 
(cf. 2 Thess. iii. 5) ; 1 Cor. xv. 51, " We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed " 
(cf. 1 Thess. iv. 15 — 17) ; James v. 8, 9, " The coming of the Lord drawethnigh . . . The 
judge standeth before the door;" 1 Pet. iv. 7, "The end of all things is at hand;" 
1 John ii. 18, " Even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last 
time ; " Rev. xxii. 20, " Surely I come quickly." On the sayings of our Lord, on which 
the expectation was perhaps founded (Matt. xxiv. 29, 30, 34), see my Life of Christ, ii. 
257, sq. On the other hand, if St. Paul contemplated the possibility of being alive at 
the Day of the Lord, he also was aware that though near, it would not be immediate 
(2 Cor. iv. 14 ; 2 Thess. ii. ; Rom. xi. 24—27), and at a later period looked forward tc 
hia own death (Phil. i. 20—23). 

8 Judenth. u. Heidenth. ix. aci,/ f 



THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 343 

when they had first drawn public attention to themselves, a number of them 
were sentenced to be burnt alive in the imperial gardens, and others to be 
torn in pieces by wild beasts." 

We may, then, say briefly that the object of the Second Epistle to the 
Thessalonians was partly to assure them that, though St. Paul believed the 
day of the Lord to be near — though he did not at all exclude the possibility 
of their living to witness it — yet it was not so instantaneous as in the least to 
justify a disruption of the ordinary duties of life. 1 He had as little meant 
positively to assert that he would survive to the Advent when he said " we 
that are alive," than he meant positively to assert that he should die before it 
occurred, when, years afterwards, he wrote, " He which raised up the Lord 
Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus." 2 That the " we " in these instances 
was generic is obvious from the fact that he uses it of the dead and of the 
living in the same Epistle, saying in one place, " We shall not all sleep," 3 and 
in another, " God will also raise up us by His own power." 4 

On the nearness of the final Messianic Advent, the Jewish and the Christian 
world were at one ; and even the Heathen were in a state of restless anticipa- 
tion. The trials of the Apostle had naturally led him to dwell on this topic 
both in his preaching at Thessalonica, and in his earlier Epistle. His Second 
Epistle follows the general outlines of the First, which indeed formed a 
model for all the others. Nothing is more remarkable than the way in which 
the Epistles combine a singular uniformity of method with a rich exuberance 
of detail. 5 In this respect they are the reflex of a life infinitely varied in its 
adventures, yet swayed by one simple and supremely dominant idea. Except 
when special circumstances, as in the Epistles to the Corinthians, modify his 
ordinary plan, his letters consist, as a rule, of six parts, viz. : — i. a solemn 
salutation ; ii. an expression of thankfulness to God for His work among those 
to whom he is writing ; iii. a section devoted to religious doctrine ; iv. a section 

1 The dread of some imminent world catastrophe, preluded by prodigies, was at this 
time universal (Tac. Ann. vi. 28 ; xii. 43, 64 ; xiv. 12, 22 ; xv. 22 ; Hist. i. 3 ; Suet. 
Nero, 36, 39; Dion Cass. be. 35; bd. 16—18, &c). Hausrath, N. Zeitgesch. ii. 108. 
Kenan L'Antechrist, p. 35 : " On ne parlait que de prodiges et de malheurs." 

2 2 Cor. iv. 14. 3 1 Cor. xv. 51, on the reading, v. infra, p. 399. 
4 1 Cor. vi. 14. Here, as in so many cases, a passage of the Talmud throws most 

valuable light on the opinions of St. Paul, which, on such a subject — where all special 
illumination was deliberately withdrawn — were inevitably coloured by the tone of opinion 
prevalent in his own nation : — " ' When will Messiah come ?' asked R. Joshua Ben Laive 
of Elijah the Tishbite. ' Go and ask Himself.' ' Where is He ? ' 'At the gateway of 
Rome.' ' How shall I know Him ? ' ' He sits among the diseased poor.' (Rashi quotes 
Isa. liii. 5.) ' All the others change the bandages of their sores simultaneously, but He 
changes them successively, lest, if called, His coming should be delayed.' R. Joshua 
Ben Laive went to Him, and saluted Him with the words ' Peace be to thee, my Rabbi, 
my teacher.' 'Peace be unto thee, Son of Laive,' was the answer of Messiah. 'When 
will the Master come ? ' asked the Rabbi. ' To-day,' was the answer. By the time the 
Rabbi had finished telling the story to Elijah, the sun had set. ' How?' said the Rabbi; 
' He has not come ! Has He lied unto me ? ' ' No,' said Elijah, ' He meant " To-day, if 
ye will hear His voice" ' (Ps. xcv. 7)." Sanheolrin, f. 98, 1. This involves the same 
truth as the famous remark of St. Augustine, " Ergo latet ultimus dies, ut observentu! 
omnes dies," which was also said by R. Eliezer, 
* See Reuss. Theol. Gh/ret. ii. VL 



344 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

devoted to practical exhortation ; v. a section composed of personal details 
and greetings ; and, vi. the final autograph benediction which served to mark 
the authenticity of the Epistle. We have already noticed that this is the 
general structure of the First Epistle, and it will be observed no less in the 
subjoined outline of the Second. 1 

After the greeting, in which, as in the last Epistle, he associates Silas and 
Timothy with himself, 2 he thanks God once more for the exceeding increase 3 
of their faith, and the abounding love which united them with one another, 
which enabled him as well as others 4 to hold them up in the Churches of God fi 
as a model of faith and patience, and that, too, under special tribulations. 
Those tribulations, he tells them, are an evidence that the present state of 
things cannot be final ; that a time is coming when their persecutors will be 
punished, and themselves have relaxation from endurance 6 — which time will 
be at the Epiphany, in Sinaitic splendour, 7 of the Lord Jesus with His mighty 
angels, to inflict retribution on the Gentile ignorance which will not know 
God, and the disobedient obstinacy which rejects the Gospel. That retribu- 
tion shall be eternal cutting off: from the presence and glorious power of 
Christ 8 when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered 

1 i. The greeting, 2 Thess. i. 1, 2. ii. The thanksgiving, or Eucharistic section, 
mingled with topics of consolation derived from the coming of Christ, i. 3 — 12. 
hi. The dogmatic portion, which, in this instance, is the remarkable and indeed unique 
section about the Man of Sin, ii. 1 — 12 ; the thanksgiving renewed with exhortations 
and ending in a prayer, ii. 13 — 17. iv. The practical part, consisting of a request for 
their prayers (hi. 1 — 5). v. Exhortations, and messages, also ended by a prayer, hi. 6 — 16. 
vi. The autograph conclusion and benediction, iii. 17, 18. These divisions, however, are 
not rigid and formal ; one section flows naturally into another, with no marked separa- 
tion. Each of the prayers (ii. 16 ; hi. 16) begins with the same words, Av-rbs Se 6 Kvpios. 

2 This accurately marks the date of the letter, as having been written at Corinth 
shortly after the former. Silas ceases to be a fellow-worker with Paul, and apparently 
joins Peter, after the visit to Jerusalem at the close of the two years' sojourn at Corinth. 
It is probable that the mental and religious affinities of Silas were more closely in accor- 
dance with the old Apostles who had sent him to Antioch than with St. Paul. 

3 vwepavfai/ei. It is a part of St. Paul's emphatic style that he delights in compounds 

of virep, as virepoxri, vnepKiav, u7rep/3aAAo), v7repeK7repi<TO'oO, &C. 

4 2 Thess. i. 4, *?p-as can-ovs. 

5 This is a strong argument against Ewald's view that the Epistle was written from 
Bercea ; but it does not prove, as Chrysostom says, that a considerable time must have 
elapsed. Writing from Corinth, there were Churches both in Macedonia and Achaia to 
which St. Paul alludes. There can be little doubt that the Epistle was written late in 
A.D. 53 or early in A.D. 54. 

6 avecrLv- 

7 Ex. hi. 2 ; xix. 18 ; xxiv. 17 ; 2 Chr. vii. 1, &c. «, A, K, L, have irvpl $\oy6<;. The 
Oomma should be after fire, not, as in E. V., after " angels." 

3 i. 9. It is clear that ivb here means "separation from," not "immediately after," 
or "by." This is the only passage in all St. Paul's Epistles where his eschatology even 
seems to touch on the future of the impenitent. When Chrysostom triumphantly asks, 
"Where, then, are the Origenists? He calls the destruction altiviov ;" his own remarks 
in other places show that he could hardly have been unaware that this rhetoric of 
" oeconomy " might sound convincing to the ignorant and the superficial, but had no bearing 
whatever on the serious views of Origen. Observe, i. SiSovai e/cSiKijo-u/ (cf. 2 Sam. xxii. 
48, LXX.) does not mean "take vengeance." ii. The fire is not penal fire, but is the 
Shechinah-glory of Advent (Dan. vii. 9 ; Ex. iii. 2). iii. Those spoken of are not 
■inners in general, but wilful enemies and persecutors, iv. The retribution is not 
11 destruction," but " destruction-from-the-Presence of the Lord," i.e., a cutting off from 



THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 345 

at in all that believed in Him. 1 And that they may attain to this glory, he 
prayed that God may count them worthy of their calling, and bring to fulfil- 
ment the goodness in which they delight, 2 and the activity of their faith, both 
to the glory of their Lord and to their own glory, as granted by His grace. 3 

Then follows the most remarkable section of the letter, and the one for 
the sake of which it was evidently written. He had, in his first letter, urged 
them to calmness and diligence, but the eagerness of expectation, unwittingly 
increased by his own words, had prevailed over his exhortations, and it was 
now his wish to give them further and more definite instruction on this great 
subject. This was rendered more necessary by the fact that their hopes 
had been fanned into vivid glow, partly by prophecies which claimed to be 
inspired, and partly by words or letters which professed to be stamped with 
his authority. He writes, therefore, in language of which I have attempted 
to preserve something of the obvious mystery and reticence. 4 

"Now we beseech you, brethren, touching 5 the presence of our Lord Jesus 
Christ and our gathering 6 to meet Him, that ye be not quickly tossed from your 
state of mind,7 nor even be troubled either by spirit, 8 or by word, or by letter pur- 
porting to come from us, 9 as though the day of the Lord is here. 10 Let no one deceive 
you in any way, because u — unless the apostasy 12 come first, and the man of sin 

Beatific Vision, v. The " seonian exclusion " of this passage takes place at Christ's First 
Advent, not at the final Judgment Day. 

1 They will inspire wonder, because they will in that day reflect His brightness. 

2 i. 11, TrATjpwoTjevSoKiav a7a0uxrvVrjs. Not as in E.V., " fulfil all the good pleasure of 
his goodness," but "honestatis dulcedinem " — i.e., "honestatem, qua, recreemini." 
EvSoKia, indeed, is often referred to God (Eph. i. 5, 9, kc. ) ; but ayaecoavirq, used four 
times in St. Paul, is " moral and human goodness," the classic xptjotottjs. It is borrowed 
from the LXX. (See Eccl. ix. 18.) 

3 2 Thess. i. 3—12. 

4 Neither this nor any other passage which I translate apart from theE.Y. is intended 
as a specimen of desirable translation. I merely try to translate in such terms as shall 
most easily explain themselves to the modern reader, while they reproduce as closely as 
possible the form of the original. 

5 vnep, not an adjuration in the New Testament, yet a little stronger than nepC. 

6 An obvious allusion to 1 Thess. iv. 17. The substantive em.<rvvayuyri only occurs in 
Heb. x. 25, but the verb in Matt, xxiii. 37 ; xxiv. 31, "as a hen gathereth her chickens 
under her wings " (cf . John xi. 52). 

7 "Fro youre witte " (Wicl.) ; "from your sense " (Rheniish version). 

8 i.e., by utterance professing to be inspired. The " discerning of spirits," or testing 
of what utterances were, and what were not, inspired, was one of the most important 
XapiV^ara in the early Church. 

9 The commentators from Chrysostom and Theodoret downwards are almost unani- 
mous in taking this to mean that a letter on these subjects had been forged in St. Paul's 
name, and had increased the excitement of the Thessalonians. It seems to me that the 
requirements of the expression are fulfilled if we make the surely more probable suppo- 
sition that some letter had been circulated among them— perhaps anonymous, perhaps 
with perfectly honest intentions — which professed to report his exact opinions, while in 
reality it misunderstood them. 

10 This, rather than " is immediately imminent," seems to be the meaning of evearquew 

/Rom. viii. 38; Gal. i. 4, &C.). T ivesyd.p irpo^reiav vnoKpLvojAevot. enhdvaov rbv \abv a s t}Stj 

n-apovTosTovKvpio" (Theod..). At any rate, the word implies the closest possible proximity. 
to. eveorwTa means "things present." (See Eom. viii. 38 ; 1 Cor. iii. 22). 

n He purposely suppresses the discouraging words "The Lord will not come.'* 

tt Certainly not "the revolt of the Jews." 



346 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

be revealed, 1 the son of destruction, 2 who opposeth, 8 and exalteth himself above and 
against every one who is called God, 4 or is an object of worship, so that he enters 
and seats himself in the shrine of God, 5 displaying himself that he is God. Do 
you not recall that, while I was still with you, I used to tell you this ? And now 
the restraining power — you know what it is — which prevents his appearing — that 
he may appear in his own due time [and not before]. For the mystery of the law- 
lessness is alreadjr working, only he who restrains now — until he be got out of the 
way. 6 And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall 
destroy with the breath of His mouth, and shall annihilate with the Epiphany of 
His presence ; 7 whose presence is in accordance with the energy of Satan in all 
power, and signs, and prodigies of falsehood, and in all deceitfulness of iniquity 
for the ruin of those who are perishing, 8 because they received not the love of the 
truth that they might be saved. And, because of this, God is sending 9 them an 
energy of error, so that they should believe the lie 10 that all may be judged who 
believed not the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness. 11 

Of this strange but unquestionably genuine passage, which is nevertheless 
so unlike anything else in St. Paul's Epistles, I shall speak immediately. He 
proceeds to tell them that their case, thank God, was very different from that 
of these doomed dupes of Antichrist, seeing that God had chosen and called 
them from the beginning 12 to sanctification and salvation and glory. 13 He 
exhorts them therefore, to stand fast, and hold the teaching which they had 
received from his words and his genuine letter, and prays that our Lord Jesus 
Christ and God our Father may comfort them and stablish them in all goodness. 14 

1 The apocalypse of the Antichrist. 

2 Whose end is destruction (Phil. iii. 19 ; John xvii. 12). 

3 A human Satan or adversary (Renan, p. 255). 

4 vnepaipo/jievo? . . . inl, perhaps "exceedingly exalteth himself against." Dan. 
xi. 36, speaking of Antiochus Epiphanes. 

5 KaOio-ai . . . ei?. A constructio praegnans. (See my Brief Greek Syntax, § 89), 
Omit J)s 9e6v, N, A, B, D, &c. vabv stronger than lepov, and could only be naturally under- 
stood of the Jewish Temple. 

6 " Tan turn qui nunc tenet (teneat) donee de medio fiat"(Tert. Be Resur. Cam. 
25). I have attempted to preserve the unfinished clauses (anakolutha) of the original, 
which are full of meaning. The b Karlxw may, however, be merely misplaced by hyperbaton. 

7 Isa. xi. 4; Wisd. xi. 20, 21. A rabbinic expression. "Prima adventus ipsius 
amicatio " (Bengel). 

8 I so render toi? a.7roAAvju.eVots because it is the dative of "disadvantage." The Zv is 
probably spurious, being omitted in N, A, B, D, F, G. 

9 Leg. irifxtrei, #, A, B, D, F, G. The " strong delusion " of the B.V. is a happy 
expression ; it is penal blindness, judicial infatuation, the dementation before doom. 

i° 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2. 

11 2 Thess. ii. 1 — 12. In the E.V. there are the following five or six obvious errors, 
which I have corrected : — Ver. 1, vnep -nj? Trapovo-tas, " by the coming ; " ver. 2, inb tov 
i/oo5, "in mind ; " 6/'6o-n)Ke, "is at hand" (which is not strong enough, and contradicts 
''Maranatha," 6 /cv'pios eyyvs) ; ver. 3, r\ anoa-Taa-ia, "a falling away;" ver. 4, eirl navra, k. t. a., 
"above all, &c," instead of "against every one," though this is perhaps defensible — 
w? ®ew, "as God," is probably spurious, not being found in g, A, B, D; ver. 5, e\eyov, 
"I told;" ver. 11, ™ \jjev8u, "a lie;" ver. 12, Kpte^a-i, "be damned." There are also 
minor inaccuracies. But while calling attention to these, let me not be supposed to speak 
with any feeling but admiration and gratitude of our English version. It needs the re- 
vision which it is receiving, but it is magnificent with all its defects ; and while those 
defects are far fewer than might have been reasonably expected, there is incomparable 
merit in its incessant felicity and noble rhythm. 

12 a7r' apxrjs (Eph. i. 4). B, F, G have anapx^v, " as a firstfruit ; " but this was not a 
fact (Acts. xvi.). 

13 el? TrepiTTotTjo-tv 66£»)5, " to the obtaining of glory ; " cf. 1 Thess. v. 9; Heb. x. 39. 
" 2 Thess. ii. 13—17. 



THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSaLUNIaNS. 347 

Beginning the practical section of the Epistle, he asks their prayers that 
the Gospel may have free course among others as among them, and that he 
may be delivered from perverse and wicked men ; x and expressing his trust 
in God, and his confidence in them, prays that the Lord may guide their 
hearts into the love of God and the patience of Christ. 2 That patience was 
lacking to some of them who, he had been told, were walking disorderly, not 
following the precepts he had given, or the example he had set. The rule he had 
given was that a man who would not work had no right to eat, and the example 
he had set, as they well knew, had been one of order, manly self-dependence, 
strenuous diligence, in that he had voluntarily abandoned even the plain right 
of maintenance at their hands. 3 

He therefore commands and exhorts 4 in the name of Christ those who 
were irregular, and whose sole business was to be busybodies, 5 to be quiet 
and diligent, and earn their own living ; and if, after the receipt of this letter, 
any one refused obedience to his advice, they were to mark that man by avoid- 
ing his company that he might be ashamed ; not, however, considering him 
as an enemy, but admonishing him as a brother. As for the rest, let them 
not be weary in fair-doing ; 6 and he again concludes with a prayer that the 
Lord of Peace Himself may give them peace perpetually, and in every way. 
The Lord be with them all ! 7 

And having dictated so far — probably to his faithful Timothy — the Apostle 
himself takes the pen, for the use of which his weak sight so little fitted him, 
and bending over the papyrus, writes : — 

" The salutation of me Paul with my own hand, which autograph salutation 
is the proof of genuineness in every Epistle. 8 This is how I write. The Grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." 9 

1 An allusion to his struggles with the Jews at Corinth. " Synagogas Judaeorum 
fontes persecutionum" (Tert. Scorp. 10). aiwos only in Luke xxiii. 41, and Acts, xxviii. 6. 

2 i.e., a patience like His patience. The " patient waiting for Christ," of the E.V., 
though partially sanctioned by Chrysostom and Theophylact, can hardly be tenable, and 
they prefer the meaning here given. 

3 hi. 1—11. 

4 These injunctions are more emphatic, authoritative, and precise than those of the 
First Epistle ; another sign that this followed it. napayyiWw, so much stronger than 
epajTto, occurs four times in this Epistle (iii. 4, 6, 10, 12), and only elsewhere, of his 
Epistles, in 1 Thess. iy. 11; 1 Tim. yi. 13; 1 Cor. vii. 10; xi. 17. 

5 2 Thess. iii. 11, ovk epyafruevovs dAAa Trepiepya£oju.eVovs (see infra, p. , "The Rhetoric 
of St. Paul "). 

6 KoAoTroioui/Tes, "beautiful conduct;" not exactly ayaOon, "well-doing" (cf. 2 Cor. 
viii. 21). 

7 iii. 12—16. 

8 iii. 17, 18. This emphatic autograph signature, not necessary in the first letter, 
had been rendered necessary since that letter was written by the credence given to the 
unauthorised communication alluded to in ii. 2. The ''every Epistle" shows that St. 
Paul meant henceforth to write to Churches not unfrequently. Of course, Epistles sent 
by accredited messengers {e.g., 2 Cor. and Phil.) would, not need authentication. The 
ordinary conclusion of letters was eppwo-0e, "farewell." On this authenticating signature 
see Cic. ad Att. viii. 1 ; Suet. Tib. 21, 32. 

9 The "all" is only found in 2 Cor., Rom., and Tit. (cf. Eph. vi. 24 and Heb. xiii. 
25), but was peculiarly impressive here, because his last words have been mainly tJ-vow 
of censure 



348 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Valuable to ns, and to all time, as are the practical exhortations of this 
brief Epistle, the distinctive cause for its being written was the desire to dispel 
delusions about the instantaneous appearance of Christ, which prevented the 
weak and excitable from a due performance of their duties, and «o tended to 
diminish that respect for them among the heathen which the blamelessness 
of the early Christians was well calculated to inspire. To the Thessalonians 
the paragraph on this subject would have had the profoundest interest. To 
us it is less immediately profitable, because no one has yet discovered, or ever 
will discover, what was St. Paul's precise meaning; or, in other words, because 
neither in his time, nor since, have any events as yet occurred which Christians 
have unanimously been able to regard as fulfilling the conditions which he 
lays down. We need not, however, be distressed if this passage must be 
ranked with the very few others in the New Testament which must remain to 
us in the condition of insoluble enigmas. It was most important for the 
Thessalonians to know that they did not need to get up every morning with 
the awe-inspiring expectation that the sun might be darkened before it set, 
and the air shattered by the archangelic trumpet, and all earthly interests 
smitten into indistinguishable ruin. So far St. Paul's assurance was perfectly 
distinct. Nor, indeed, is there any want of clearness in his language. The 
difficulties of the passage arise exclusively from our inability to explain it by 
subsequent events. But these one or two obscure passages in no wise affect 
the value of St. Paul's writings. 1 Since his one object is always edification, 
we may be sure that subjects which are with him purely incidental, which 
are obscurely hinted at, or only partially worked out, and to which he scarcely 
ever afterwards recurs, are non-essential parts of the central truths, to the 
dissemination of which he devoted his life. To the Messianic surroundings 
of a Second personal Advent he barely again alludes. He dwells more and 
more on the mystic oneness with Christ, less and less on His personal return. 
He speaks repeatedly of the indwelling presence of Christ, and the believer's 
incorporation with Him, and hardly at all of that visible meeting in the air 
which at this epoch was most prominent in his thoughts. 2 

"We may assume it as a canon of ordinary criticism that a writer intends 
to be understood, 3 and, as a rule, so writes as to be actually understood by 
those whom he addresses. We have no difficulty in seeing that what St. Paul 
here says to the Thessalonians is that Christ's return, however near, was not 
so instantaneous as they thought, because, before it could occur, there must 
come " the apostasy," which will find its personal and final development in the 
apocalypse of " the man of sin " — a human Satan who thrust himself into the 
temple of God and into rivalry with Him. Then, with an air of mystery and 
secrecy which reminds us of the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of St. 

* See Reuss, TMoL CJvret. ii., p. 10. 

2 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; Gal. iii. 28 ; Eph. iv. 6, &c. 

3 " No man writes unintelligibly on purpose " (Paley, Hor. Paulinae). He acutely 
points out how the very obscurity of this passage furnishes one strong argument for the 
genuineness of the Epistle, which I note by way of curiosity that Hilgenfeld regards f# 

a little Pauline Apocalypse of the last year of Trajan " {Einleit. 642). 



THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 349 

John, 1 and with a certain involved embarrassment of language, lie reminds 
them of his repeated oral teachings about something, and some person, 2 whose 
power must first be removed before this mystery of iniquity could achieve its 
personal and final development. They knew, he says, what was " the check" 
to the full development of this opposing iniquity, which was already working, 
and would work, until the removal of " the checker." After that removal, 
with power and lying portents winning the adherence of those who were 
doomed to penal delusion, the Lawless One should be manifested in a power 
which the breath and brightness of Christ's Presence should utterly anni- 
hilate. Between the saved, therefore, and the Second Advent there lay two 
events — " the removal of the restrainer," and the appearance of the Lawless 
One. The destruction of the latter would be simultaneous with the event 
which they had so often been bidden to await with longing expectation. 

This is what St. Paul plainly says ; but how is it to be explained ? and 
why is it so enigmatically expressed ? 

The second question is easily answered. It is enigmatically expressed for 
two reasons — first, because all that is enigmatical in it for us had been orally 
explained to the Thessalonians, who would therefore clearly understand it ; 
and secondly, because there was some obvious danger in committing it to 
writing. This is in itself a sufficient proof that he is referring to the Roman 
Empire and Emperor. The tone of St. Paul is exactly the same as that of 
Josephus, when he explains the prophecy of Daniel. All Jews regarded the 
Fourth Empire as the Eoman ; but when Josephus comes to the stone which is 
to dash the image to pieces, he stops short, and says that "he does not think 
proper to explain it," 3 — for the obvious reason that it would have been politi- 
cally dangerous for him to do so. 

Now this reason for reticence at once does away with the conjecture that 
"the check," or "the checker," was some distant power or person which did 
not for centuries come on the horizon, even if we could otherwise adopt the 
notion that St. Paul was uttering some far-off vaticination of events which, 
though they might find their fulfilment in distant centuries, could have no 
meaning for the Thessalonians to whom he wrote. When a few Roman 
Catholic commentators say that the Reformation was the Apostasy, and 
Lather the Man of Sin, and the German Empire " the check ;" or when a 
mass of Protestant writers unhesitatingly identify the Pope with the Man of 
Sin — one can only ask whether, apart from traditional exegesis, they have 
really brought themselves to hold such a view ? If, as we have seen, St. Paul 
undoubtedly held that the day of the Lord was at hand, though not 

1 These secrets and dim allusions (cf. Dan. xii. 10) current among the early Christians 
(like the greeting and symbol ^x^s), and the riddles of the number of the beast (666= 
nop yra, Nero Caesar : cf. Jos. B. J. vi. 5, 1; Suet. Ner. 40, Vesp. 4; Tac. H. v. 13) in 
Rev. xiii. 18, and in the Sibylline books, were necessitated by the dangers which sur- 
rounded them on every side. The years which elapsed between the Epistle and the 
Apocalypse had made the views of the Christians as to Antichrist much more definite 
(Renan, L'Antechrist, p. 157, &a). 

2 TheSS. li. 6, 7, 6 Kanextav — to /caTe'xov. 

8 See the instructive passage, Jos. Anit. x. 10, § 4, 



350 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

immediate, do tliey really suppose, on the one hand, that St. Paul had any 
conception of Luther ? or, on the other, that the main development of 
lawlessness, the main human representative of the power of Satan, is the 
succession of the Popes? Can any sane man of competent education seriously 
argue that it is the Papacy which pre-eminently arrays itself in superiority to, 
and antagonism against, every one who is called God, or every object of 
worship ? x that its essential characteristic marks are lawlessness, lying won- 
ders, and blasphemous self -exaltation ? or that the annihilation of the Papacy 
— which has long been so physically and politically weak — " by the breath of 
His mouth and the brightness of His coming," is to be one main result of 
Christ's return ? Again, do they suppose that St. Paul had, during his first 
visit, repeatedly revealed anything analogous to the development of the 
Papacy — an event which, in their sense of the word, can only be regarded 
as having taken place many centuries afterwards — to the Thessalonians who 
believed that the coming of Christ might take place on any day, and who 
required two epistles to undeceive them in the notion ? If these suppositions 
do not sink under the weight of their own intrinsic unreasonableness, let them 
in the name of calm sense and Christian charity be consigned henceforth to 
the vast limbo of hypotheses which time, by accumulated proofs, has shown to 
be utterly untenable. 2 

To that vast limbo of exploded exegesis — the vastest and the dreariest that 
human imagination has conceived — I have no intention of adding a fresh con- 
jecture. That " the check " was the Roman Empire, and " the checker " the 
Roman Emperor, may be regarded as reasonably certain ; beyond this, all is 
uncertain conjecture. In the Excursus I shall merely mention, in the briefest 
possible manner, as altogether doubtful, and most of them as utterly valueless, 
the attempts hitherto made to furnish a definite explanation of the expressions 
used ; and shall then content myself with pointing out, no less briefly, the 

1 St. Paul's " Lawless One," and "Man of Sin," who is to be destroyed by the advent 
of Christ must have some chronological analogy to St. John's Antichrist. Now St. John's 
Antichrist in the Epistles is mainly Gnostic heresy ("omnis haereticus Antichristus " — 
Luther), and the denial that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John iv. 3). In the 
Apocalypse it is Nero. In the Old Testament Antichrist is Antiochus Epiphanes. What 
has this to do either with the Papacy or with the Preformation ? 

2 If it be urged that this was the view of Jewell and Hooker, Andrewes and Sander- 
son, &c. , the answer is that the knowledge of the Church is not stationary or stereotyped. 
The Spirit of God is with her, and is ever leading her to wider and fuller knowledge of 
the truth. Had those great men been living now, they too would have enlarged many 
of their views in accordance with the advance now made in the interpretation of the 
Scripture. Few can have less sympathy than I have with the distinctive specialities of 
the Church of Pome ; but in spite of what we hold to be her many and most serious 
errors she is, by the free acknowledgment of our own formularies, a Church, and a Chris- 
tian Church, and has been pre-eminently a mother of saints, and many of her Popes have- 
been good, and noble, and holy men, and vast benefactors of the world, and splendid 
maintainers of the Faith of Christ ; and I refuse to regard them as " sons of perdition," 
or representatives of blasphemy and lawlessness, or to consider the destruction of their 
line with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord as the one thing to be 
looked forward to with joy at the coining of Him who we believe will welcome mary of 
them, and myriads of those who accept their rule, into the blessed company of His 
redeemed. 



PAUL AT ErHESUS. 351 

regions in which we must look for illustrations to throw such light as is 
possible on the meaning of St. Paul. 1 As to the precise details, considering 
the utter want of unanimity among Christian interpreters, I am content to 
say, with St. Augustine, "I confess that I am entirely ignorant what the 
Apostle meant." 



38 n ft If. 

EPHESUS. 
CHAPTER XXXI. 

PAUL AT EPHESUS. 

' ' They say this town is full of cozenage ; 
As, nimbling jugglers that deceive the eye, 
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, 
And many such-like liberties of sin. " 

Shaksp. Comedy of Errori. 
'Diana Ephesia ; cujus nomen unicuin .... totus veneratur oibis." 

Appul. Metam. 

The justice of Gallio had secured for St. Paul an unmolested residence in 
Corinth, such as had been promised by the vision which had encouraged him 
amid his earlier difficulties. He availed himself of this pause in the storm of 
opposition by preaching for many days — perhaps for some months — and then 
determined to revisit Jerusalem, from which he had now been absent for nearly 
three years. It may be that he had collected something for the poor ; but in 
any case he felt the importance of maintaining amicable relations with the 
other Apostles and with the mother church. He wished also to be present at 
the approaching feast — in all probability the Pentecost — and thereby to show 
that, in spite of his active work in heathen cities, and the freedom which he 
claimed for Gentile converts, in spite, too, of that deadly opposition of many 
synagogues which had already cost him so dear, he was still at heart a loyal 
although a liberal Jew. Accordingly, he bade farewell to the friends whom 
he had converted, and, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila, set out for 
Cenchrese. At that busy seaport, where a little church had been already 
formed, of which Phoabe was a deaconess, he gave yet another proof of his 
allegiance to the Mosaic law. In thanksgiving for some deliverance 2 — perhaps 
from an attack of sickness, perhaps from the Jewish riot — he had taken upon 
him the vow of the temporary Nazarite. In accordance with this, he abstained 

1 See infra, Excursus xix., "The Man of Sin." For the symbols employed, »ee 
Ezek. xxxviii. 16, 17 ; Dan. via. 10, 11, 23—26; xi. 31, 36. 

2 See Jos. B. J. ii. 15, § 1, and the Mishna treatise Nazir, ii. 3. Spencer (De Leg. 
Hebr. iii. 6, § 1) thinks, most improbably, that it was done to obtain a fair voyage. Cf. 
Juv. Sat. xii. 8L 



352 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

from wine, and let his hair grow long 1 . At the legal purification which formed 
the termination of the vow, the head could only be shaved at Jerusalem ; but 
as it was often impossible for a foreign Jew to reach the Holy City at the exact 
time when the period of his vow concluded, it seems to have been permitted 
to the Nazarite to cut his hair, 1 provided that he kept the shorn locks until he 
offered the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, and the peace-offering in the 
Temple, at which time his head was shaved, and all the hair burnt in the fire 
under the sacrifice of the peace-offerings. Accordingly, Paul cut his hair at 
Cenchrese, and set sail for Ephesus. The mention of the fact is not by any 
means trivial or otiose. The vow which St. Paul undertook is highly 
significant as a proof of his personal allegiance to the Levitic institutions, and 
his desire to adopt a policy of conciliation towards the Jewish Christians of 
the Holy City. 2 

A few days' sail, if the weather was ordinarily propitious, would enable his 
vessel to anchor in the famous haven of Panormus, which was then a forest of 
masts at the centre of all the Mediterranean trade, but is now a reedy swamp 
in a region of desolation. His arrival coincided either with the eve of a 
Sabbath, or of one of the three weekly meetings of the synagogue, and at once, 
with his usual ardour and self-forgetfulness, he presented himself among the 
Ephesian Jews. They were a numerous and important body, actively engaged 
in the commerce of the city, and had obtained some special privileges from 
the Roman Emperors. 3 Not only was their religion authorised, but their 
youth were exempted from military service. One of their number, the 
'" Chaldean" or "astrologer" Balbillus, had at this period availed himself of 
the deepening superstition which always accompanies a decadent belief, and 
had managed to insinuate himself into the upper circles of Roman society 
until he ultimately became the confidant of Nero. 4 Accustomed in that 
seething metropolis to meet with opinions of every description, the Jews at 
first offered no opposition to the arguments of the wandering Rabbi who 
preached a crucified Messiah. Nay, they even begged him to stay longer with 
them. His desire to reach Jerusalem and pay his vow rendered this impossible : 
but in bidding them farewell he promised that, God willing, 5 he would soon 

1 The word used is iceipdfievos, "polling," not ^vpr)cri(ievot, "shaving," or as in E. V. 
"having shaved" (see 1 Cor. xi. 14; St. Paul dislikes long hair). The notion that it 
was Aquila and not Paul who made the vow may be finally dismissed ; it merely arose 
from the fact that Aquila is mentioned after his wife ; but this, as we have seen, is also 
the case in 2 Tim. iv. 19 ; Rom. xvi. 3, and is an undesigned coincidence, probably due to 
her greater zeal. 

2 " He that makes a vow builds, as it were, a private altar, and if he keeps it, offers, 
as it were, a sacrifice upon it " ( Yebhamoth, f. 109, 2 ; Nedarim, f. 59, 1). The views of 
the Rabbis about vows may be found in Erubhin, f. 64, 2 ; Ghagigah, f. 10, 1 ; Rosh 
Hashanah, f. 10, 1 ; Nedarim, f . 2, 1 ; f. 30, 2, &c. They have been collected by Mr. P. 
J. Hershon in his Hebrew commentary on Genesis exclusively drawn from the Talmud, 
in the synoptical note on Gen. xxviii. 20. They throw very little light on St. Paul's vow. 
The rule is that all votive terms, whether corban, conem, cones, or conech, are equally 
binding (Nedarim, f. 2, 1). Perhaps Paul liked the temporary ascetic element in the vow 
(1 Cor. ix. 25 ; Jos. B. J. ii. 15, $ 1 ). 

» Jo». Antt. xiv. 10. 4 Suet. Nero, 40 ; Dio, 66, 9. 6 James iv. 15. 



PAUL AT EPHESXJS. 353 

return. Once more, therefore, he weighed anchor, and sailed to Ceesarea. 
From thence he hastened to Jerusalem, which he was now visiting for the 
fourth time after his conversion. He had entered it once a changed man ; l 
he had entered it a second time with a timely contribution from the Church of 
Antioch to the famine- stricken poor ; 2 a third time he had come to obtain a 
decision of the loud disputes between the Judaic and the liberal Christians 
which threatened, even thus early, to rend asunder the seamless robe of Christ. 3 
Four years had now elapsed, and he came once more, a weak and persecuted 
missionary, to seek the sympathy of the early converts, 4 to confirm his faithful 
spirit of unity with them, to tell them the momentous tidings of churches 
founded during this his second journey, not only in Asia, but for the first time 
in Europe also, and even at places so important as Philippi, Thessalonica, 
and Corinth. Had James, and the circle of which he was the centre, only 
understood how vast for the future of Christianity would be the issues of these 
perilous and toilsome journeys — had they but seen how insignificant, compared 
with the labours of St. Paul, would be the part which they themselves were 
playing in furthering the universality of the Church of Christ — with what 
affection and admiration would they have welcomed him ! How would they have 
striven, by every form of kindness, of encouragement, of honour, of heartfelt 
prayer, to arm and strengthen him, and to fire into yet brighter lustre his grand 
enthusiasm, so as to prepare him in the future for sacrifices yet more heroic, 
for efforts yet more immense ! Had anything of the kind occurred, St. Luke, 
in the interests of his great Christian Eirenicon — St. Paul himself, in his 
account to the Galatians of his relations to the twelve - could hardly have failed 
to tell us about it. So far from this, St. Luke hurries over the brief visit in 
the three words that " he saluted the Church," 5 not even pausing to inform us 
that he fulfilled his vow, or whether any favourable impression as to his Judaic 
orthodoxy was created by the fact that he had undertaken it. There is too 
much reason to fear that his reception was cold and ungracious ; that even if 
James received him with courtesy, the Judaic Christians who surrounded 
" the Lord's brother" did not; and even that a jealous dislike of that free 
position towards the Law which he established amongst his Gentile converts, 
led to that determination on the part of some of them to follow in his track 
and to undermine his influence, which, to the intense embitterment of his latter 
days, wa* so fatally successful. It must have been with a sad heart, with 
something even of indignation at this unsympathetic coldness, that St. Paul 
hurriedly terminated his visit. But none of these things moved him. He did 
but share them with his Lord, whom the Pharisees had hated and the Sadducees 
had slain. He did but share them with every great prophet and every true 
thinker before and since. Not holding even his life dear unto himself, it is not 
likely that the peevishness of unprogressive tradition, or the non-appreciation 
of suspicious narrowness, should make him swerve from his divinely appointed 

* About A.D. 37. 2 A.D. 44. 3 About A.D. 50. 4 About A.D. 54. 

5 St. Luke does not so much as mention the word Jerusalem, but the word ivaSAg 
disproves the fancy that Paul went no further than Csesarea. 

X 



354 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

course. God had counted him worthy of being entrusted with a sacred cause 
He had a work to do ; he had a Gospel to preach. If in obeying this call oi 
God he met with human sympathy and kindness, well ; if not, it was no great 
matter. Life might be bitter, but life was short, and the light affliction which 
was but for a moment was nothing to the exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. Once more he set forth for a new, and, as it turned out, for the most 
brilliantly energetic, for the most eternally fruitful, for the most overwhelm- 
ingly afflictive period of his life of toil. 

From Jerusalem he went to Antioch, where we can well imagine that a 
warmer and kindlier greeting awaited him. In that more cordial environment 
lie rested for some little time ; and thence, amid many a day of weariness and 
struggle, but cheered in all probability by the companionship of Timothy and 
Titus, and perhaps also of Gains, Aristarchus, and Erastus, he passed once more 
through the famous Cilician gates of Taurus, 1 and travelled overland through 
the eastern region of Asia Minor, 2 confirming on his way the Churches of 
Galatia and Phrygia. In Galatia he ordered collections to be made for the 
poor at Jerusalem by a weekly offertory every Sunday. 3 He also found it 
necessary to give them some very serious warnings ; and although, as yet, 
there had been no direct apostasy from the doctrines which he had taught, he 
could trace a perceptible diminution of the affectionate fervour with which he 
had been at first received by that bright but fickle population. 4 Having thus 
endeavoured to secure the foundations which he had laid in the past, he 
descended from the Phrygian uplands, and caught a fresh glimpse of the 
Marseilles of the ^Egean, the hostelry and emporium of east and west, 5 the 
great capital of Proconsular Asia. Yery memorable were the results of his 
visit. Ephesus was the third capital and starting-point of Christianity. At 
Jerusalem, Christianity was born in the cradle of Judaism ; Antioch had been 
the starting-point of the Church of the Gentiles ; Ephesus was to witness its 
full development, and the final amalgamation of its unconsolidated elements 
in the work of John, the Apostle of Love. It lay one mile from the Icarian 
Sea, in the fair Asian meadow where myriads of swans and other waterfowl 
disported themselves amid the windings of Cayster. 6 Its buildings were 
clustered under the protecting shadows of Coressus and Prion, and in the 
delightful neighbourhood of the Ortygian Groves. Its haven, which had once 
been among the most sheltered and commodious in the Mediterranean, had 
been partly silted up by a mistake in engineering, but was still thronged with 
vessels from every part of the civilised world. It lay at the meeting-point of 
great roads, which led northwards to Sardis and Troas, southwards to Magnesia 
and Antioch, and thus commanded easy access to the great river-valleys of the 
Hermus and Mseander, and the whole interior continent. Its seas and rivers 

1 From Antioch to the Cilician gates, through Tarsus, is 412 miles. 
3 avuiTfpiKa is practically equivalent to avwrokiKo.. 

8 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2. But the collection does not seem to have been sent witl that of 
the Grecian churches (Rom. xv. 25, 26). Perhaps the Judaic emissaries got hold of it. 
« GaL iv. 16 ; v. 21. B Kenan, p. 337. 

• 2 low the Kutschuk Mendere, or Little Mseander. 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 355 

were rich with fish ; its air was salubrious ; its position unrivalled ; its popu- 
lation multifarious and immense. Its markets, glittering with the produce of 
the world's art, were the Vanity Fair of Asia. They furnished to the exile of 
Patmos the local colouring of those pages of the Apocalypse in which he speaks 
of " the merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, 
and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all 
manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of 
brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment and 
frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and 
sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men''' 1 

And Ephesus was no less famous than it was vast and wealthy. Perhaps 
no region of the world has been the scene of so many memorable events in 
ancient history as the shores of Asia Minor. The whole coast was in all 
respects the home of the best Hellenic culture, and Herodotus declares that it 
was the finest site for cities in the world of his day. 2 It was from Lesbos, and 
Smyrna, and Ephesus, and Halicarnassus that lyric poetry, and epic poetry, 
and philosophy, and history took their rise, nor was any name more splendidly 
emblazoned in the annals of human culture than that of the great capital of 
Ionia. 3 It was here that Anacreon had sung the light songs which so 
thoroughly suited the soft temperament of the Greek colonists in that luxurious 
air ; here that Mimnermos had written his elegies ; here that Thales had given 
the first impulse to philosophy ; here that Anaximander and Anaximenes had 
learnt to interest themselves in those cosmogonic theories which shocked the 
simple beliefs of the Athenian burghers ; here that the deepest of all Greek 
thinkers, " Heracleitus the Dark," had meditated on those truths which he 
uttered in language of such incomparable force ; here that his friend Hermo- 
dorus had paid the penalty of virtue by being exiled from a city which felt 
that its vices were rebuked by his mere silent presence ; 4 here that Hipponax 
had infused into his satire such deadly venom ; 5 here that Parrhasius and 
Apelles had studied their immortal art. And it was still essentially a Greek 
city. It was true that since Attalus, King of Pergamos, nearly two hundred 
years before, had made the Romans heirs to his kingdom, their power had 
gradually extended itself in every direction, until they were absolute masters 
of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia, 6 and all the adjacent isles of Greece, and that 
now the splendour of Ephesus was materially increased by its being the 
residence of the Roman Proconsul. But while the presence of a few noble 
Romans and their suites added to the gaiety and power of the city, it did not 
affect the prevailing Hellenic cast of its civilisation, which was far more deeply 
imbued with Oriental than with Western influences. The Ephesians crawled 
at the feet of the Emperors, nattered them with abject servility, built temples 

i Eev. xviii. 12, 13. 

2 Hist. i. 142. For full accounts of Ephesus see Guhl's Ephesiaca (BerL 1843). 

* See Hausrath, p. 339, seqq. 4 See Strabo, xiv., p. 642. 

5 Cic. ad Fam. vii. 24. 

6 Cic. pro Flacco, 27 ; Plin. H. N. v. 28 ; ap. Hausrath, Le. 

x 2 



356 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

to their crime or their feebleness, deified them on their inscriptions and coins. 1 
Even the poor simulacrum of the Senate came in for a share of their fulsome- 
ness, and received its apotheosis from their complaisance. 2 The Romans, 
seeing that they had nothing to fear from these degenerate Ionians, helped 
them with subsidies when they had suffered from earthquakes, flung them 
titles of honour, which were in themselves a degradation, left them a nominal 
autonomy, and let them live without interference the bacchanalian lives which 
passed in a round of Panionic, Ephesian, Artemisian, and Lucullian games. 
Such then was the city in which St. Paul found a sphere of work unlike any 
in which he had hitherto laboured. It was more Hellenic than Antioch, more 
Oriental than Corinth, more populous than Athens, more wealthy and more 
refined than Thessalonica, more sceptical and more superstitious than Ancyra 
or Pessinus. It was, with the single exception of Rome, by far the most 
important scene of all his toils, and was destined, in after-years, to become not 
only the first of the Seven Churches of Asia, but the seat of one of those great 
(Ecumenical Councils which defined the faith of the Christian world. 

The character of the Ephesians was then in very bad repute. Ephesus 
was the head-quarters of many defunct superstitions, which owed their main- 
tenance to th? self-interest of various priestly bodies. South of the city, and 
brightened by the waters of the Cenchrius, was the olive and cypress grove of 
Leto, 3 where the ancient olive-tree was still shown to which the goddess had 
clung when she brought forth her glorious " twin-born progeny." 4 Here was 
the hill on which Hermes had proclaimed their birth ; here the Curetes, with 
clashing spears and shields, had protected their infancy from wild beasts ; 
here Apollo himself had taken refuge from the wrath of Zeus after he had 
slain the Cyclopes ; here Bacchus had conquered and spared the Amazons 
during his progress through the East. Such were the arguments which the 
Ephesian ambassadors had urged before the Roman Senate in arrest of a 
determination to limit their rights of asylum. That right was mainly attached 
to the great world-renowned Temple of Artemis, of which Ephesus gloried in 
calling herself the sacristan. 5 Nor did they see that it was a right which was 
ruinous to the morals and well-being of the city. Just as the mediaeval 
sanctuaries attracted all the scum and villainy, all the cheats and debtors and 
murderers of the country round, and inevitably pauperised and degraded the 
entire vicinity G — just as the squalor of the lower purlieus of Westminster to 
this day is accounted for by its direct affiliation to the crime and wretchedness 
which sheltered itself from punishment or persecution under the shadow of 
the Abbey— so the vicinity of the great Temple at Ephesus reeked with the 
congregated pollutions of Asia. Legend told how, when the temple was 

1 See the Corpus Inscr. Or. 2957, 2961, &c. (Renan, p. 338, who also quotes Plut. 
Vit. Anton. 24). Chandler, Travels, i. 25 ; Falkener, Ephesus, p. Ill ; ^tAoo-e/Saoro? and 
<f>iA.6*aio-ap are common in Ephesian inscriptions. 

2 0eb? or iepa. SvyKArjro? on coins, &c. (Renan, p. 352). 

8 Strabo, xiv., p. 947. 4 Tac. Ann. iii. 61. 5 Acts xix. 35, vewKdpos. 

8 I have already pointed out this faot in speaking of Daphne and Paphos, supra, 
pp. 166, 196. This was why Tiberius tried to abolish all "asyla" (Suet. Tib. 37). 



PAUL AT EPHESTT8. 357 

finished, Mithridates stood on its summit and declared that the right of asylum 
should extend in a circle round it as far as he could shoot an arrow, and the 
arrow miraculously flew a furlong's distance. The consequence was that 
Ephesus, vitiated by the influences which affect all great sea-side commercial 
cities, had within herself a special source of danger and contagion. 1 Ionia had 
been the corruptress of Greece, 2 Ephesus was the corruptress of Ionia — the 
favourite scene of her most voluptuous love -tales, the lighted theatre of her 
most ostentatious sins. 

The temple, which was the chief glory of the city and one of the wonders 
of the world, 3 stood in full view of the crowded haven. Ephesus was the most 
magnificent of what Ovid calls " the magnificent cities of Asia," 4 and the 
temple was its most splendid ornament. The ancient temple had been burnt 
down by Herostratus — an Ephesian fanatic who wished his name to be 
recorded in history — on the night of the birth of Alexander the Great. It had 
been rebuilt with ungrudging magnificence out of contributions furnished by 
all Asia — the very women contributing to it their jewels, as the Jewish women 
had done of old for the Tabernacle of the Wilderness, To avoid the danger 
of earthquakes, its foundations were built at vast cost on artificial foundations 
of skin and charcoal laid over the marsh. 5 It gleamed far off with a star-like 
radiance. 6 Its peristyle consisted of one hundred and twenty pillars of the 
Ionic order hewn out of Parian marble. Its doors of carved cypress-wood 
were surmounted by transoms so vast and solid that the aid of miracles was 
invoked to account for their elevation. The staircase which led to the roof 
was said to have been cut out of a single vine of Cyprus. Some of the pillars 
were carved with designs of exquisite beauty. 7 Within were the masterpieces 
of Praxiteles and Phidias, and Scopas and Polycletus. Paintings by the 
greatest of Greek artists, of which one— the likeness of Alexander the Great 
by Apelles — had been bought for a sum said to be equal in value to £5,000 
of modern money, adorned the inner walls. The roof of the temple itself was 
of cedar- wood, supported by columns of jasper on bases of Parian marble. 8 
On these pillars hung gifts of priceless value, the votive offerings of grateful 
superstition. At the end of it stood the great altar adorned by the bas-relief 

1 This is pointed out by Philostratus in the person of Apollonius. He praises them 
for their banquets and ritual, and adds ju.e/i7TTol Se <tvvoik.oi rfj 0e<p vvktcls re *ai ij/ue'pas >) ovk S.v 

6 KA.e7TT7)s re koX Atjctttjs koL avSpanoBiaTT]? /cat 7ra? et ti? aSi/cos i} tepocrv\os rjv 6pjU.wju.ei/os avroQev. to yap 
twv ancHTTs povvTotv relxos eartv. See, too, Strabo, xiv. 1, 23. 

2 Hence the proverb " Ionian effeminacy. " On their gorgeous apparel, see Athen. 
p. 525. " Taught by the soft Ionians " (Dyer, Ruins of Borne). 

3 Philo, Byzant. De Sept. orbis mvraculis, 7, v° v °s «"* 0ew " oIkoj. Falkener's Ephesus, 
pp. 210—346. 

4 Ov. Pont II. x. 21. 

5 See Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 21 ; Diog. Laert. ii. 8 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei, xxi. 4. Old 
London Bridge was built, not "on woolsacks," but out of the proceeds of a tax on wool. 
The anecdote of the discovery of the white marble by Pisidorus is given in Yitruv. x. 7. 

* (ieTetapo<pavk?. 

7 One splendid example of the drum of one of these " columnae caelatae " (Plin.) is 
now in the British Museum. For a complete and admirable account of the temple and it« 
excavation, see Wood's Ephesus, p. 267, seq. 

8 Now in the mosque of St. Sophia. 



358 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

of Praxiteles, behind which fell the vast folds of a ptirple curtain. Behind 
this curtain was the dark and awful adytum in which stood the most sacred 
idol of classic heathendom ; and again, behind the adytum was the room which, 
inviolable under divine protection, was regarded as the wealthiest and securest 
bank in the ancient world. 

The image for which had been reared this incomparable shrine was so ancient 
that it shared with the Athene of the Acropolis, the Artemis of Tauris, the 
Demeter of Sicily, the Aphrodite of Paphos, and the Cybele of Pessi nus, the 
honour of being regarded as a Aiowerls "AyaX/na — "an image that fell from 
heaven." l The very substance of which it was made was a matter of dispute ; 
some said it was of vine-wood, some of ebony, some of cedar, and some of 
stone. 2 It was not a shapeless meteorite like the Kaaba at Mecca, or the 
Hercules of Hyettus, 3 or the black-stone of Pessinus ; nor a phallic cone like 
the Phoenician Aphrodite of Paphos ; 4 nor a mere lump of wood like the 
Cadmean Bacchus ; 5 but neither must we be misled by the name A rtemis to 
suppose that it in any way resembled the quivered " huntress chaste and 
fair" of Greek and Roman mythology. It was freely idealised in many of the 
current representations, 6 but was in reality a hideous fetish, originally meant 
for a symbol of fertility and the productive power of nature. She was 
represented on coins — which, as they bear the heads of Claudius and Agrip- 
pina, must have been current at this very time, and may have easily passed 
through the hands of Paul — as a figure swathed like a mummy, covered with 
monstrous breasts, 7 and holding in one hand a trident and in the other a club. 
The very ugliness and uncouthness of the idol added to the superstitious awe 
which it inspired, and just as the miraculous Madonnas and images of 
Romanism are never the masterpieces of Raphael or Bernardino Luini, but 
for the most part blackened Byzantine paintings, or hideous dolls like the 
Bambino, so the statue of the Ephesian Artemis was regarded as far more 
awful than the Athene of Phidias or the Jupiter of the Capitol. The Jewish 
feelings of St. Paul — though he abstained from " blaspheming " the goddess 8 
— would have made him regard it as pollution to enter her temple ; but many 
a time on coins, and paintings, and in direct copies, he must have seen the 
strange image of the great Artemis of the Ephesians, whose worship, like 
that of so many fairer and more human idols, his preaching would doom to 
swift oblivion. 9 

1 Pliny {H. N. xvi. 79) and Athenagoras {Pro Christ. 14) say it was made by Eudaeus, 
the pupil of Daedalus. 

2 Vitruv. ii. 9 ; Callim. Hymn Dian. 239. 3 Pausan. ix. 24. 4 V. supra, p. 196. 

5 Pausan. ix. 12. See Guhl, Ephesiaca, p. 185 ; Falkener, Ephesus, 287. The 
Chaeronean Zeus was a sceptre (Pausan. ix. 40) ; the Cimmerian Mars, a scimitar 
(Hdt. iv. 62). 

6 E.g., in the statue preserved in the Museo Borbonico at Naples, which, if we may 
judge from coins, is a very unreal representative of the venerable ugliness of the actual 
■featue. 

7 -oAvVacn-os, multimamma ; "omnium bestiarum et viventium nutrix " (Jer. Proem. 
m Ep. ad Eph.). 

® Acts xix. 37, oure p\a<r<f)rjixovuTas ttji/ 6eav vfxCjv. 

• " What is become of the Temple of Diana ? Can a wonder of the earth be vanished 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 359 

Though the Greeks had vied with the Persians in lavish contributions for 
the re-erection of the temple, the worship of this venerable relic was essen- 
tially Oriental. The priests were amply supported by the proceeds of wide 
domains and valuable fisheries, and these priests, of Megabyzi, as well as the 
" Essen," 1 who was at the head of them, were the miserable Persian or 
Phrygian eunuchs who, with the Melissae, or virgin-priestesses, and crowds of 
idle slaves, were alone suffered to conduct the worship of the Mother of the 
Gods. Many a time, in the open spaces and environs of Ephesus, must Paul 
have seen with sorrow and indignation the bloated and beardless hideousness 
of these coryphaei of iniquity. 2 Many a time must he have heard from the 
Jewish quarter the piercing shrillness of their flutes, and the harsh jangling of 
their timbrels ; many a time have caught glimpses of their detestable dances 
and corybantic processions, as with streaming hair, and wild cries, and shaken 
torches of pine, they strove to madden the multitudes into sympathy with 
that orgiastic worship, which was but too closely connected with the vilest 
debaucheries. 3 Even the Greeks, little as they were liable to be swept away 
by these bursts of religious frenzy, seem to have caught the tone of these dis- 
graceful fanatics. At no other city would they have assembled in the theatre 
in their thousands to yell the same cry over and over again for " about the 
space of two hours," as though they had been so many Persian dervishes or 
Indian yogis. This senseless reiteration was an echo of the screaming 
tdulatus which was one of the characteristics of the cult of Dindymene and 
Pessinus. 4 

We are not surprised to find that under the shadow of such a worship 
superstition was rampant. Ephesus differed from other cities which Paul 
had visited mainly in this respect, that it was pre-eminently the city of 
astrology, sorcery, incantations, amulets, exorcisms, and every form of magical 
imposture. On the statue of the goddess, or rather, perhaps, on the inverted 
pyramid which formed the basis for her swathed and shapeless feet, were 
inscribed certain mystic formulae to which was assigned a magic efficacy. 
This led to the manufacture and the celebrity of those "Ephesian writings," 

like a phantom, without leaving a trace behind ? We now seek the temple in vain ; the 
city is prostrate and the goddess gone " (Chandler ; see Sibyll. Orac. v. 293 — 305). The 
wonder is deepened after seeing the massiveness of the superb fragments in the British 
Museum. That the Turkish name Aia Solouk is a corruption of 'Ay/a ©eoAoyou, and 
therefore a reminiscence of St. John, is proved by the discovery of coins bearing this 
inscription, and struck at Ayasaluk (Wood, p. 183). Perhaps St. John originally received 
the name by way of contrast with the Theologi of the Temple. 

1 The resemblance of the word and character to the ' ' Essenes " is accidental. It 
means "a king (queen) bee." 

2 Quint, v. 12. What sort of wretches these were may be seen in Juv. vi. 512 ; 
Prop. ii. 18, 15 ; Appuleius, Metamorph. 

3 Apollonius, in his first address to the Ephesians, delivered from the platform of 
the temple, urged them to abandon their idleness, folly, and feasting, and turn to the 
study of philosophy. He speaks of these dances, and says av\5>v ixkv navra ^eo-ra fy, peara 
Se avSpoyvvoiv, jite<rTd Se KTuirtav, k.t.a. (Philostr. Vit. Apoll. iv. 2, p. 141). He praises them, 
however, for their philosophic interests, &c. (viii. 8, p. 339). Incense-burners, flute-players, 
*nd trumpeters are mentioned in an inscription found by Chandler (Inscr. Ant., p. 11). 

« Hawath, p, 342 ; 



360 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

which were eagerly supplied by greedy imposture to gaping credulity. 
Among them were the words osteon, hatashion, lix, tetras, damnameneus, 
and aisia, 1 which for sense and efficiency were about on a par with the daries, 
derdaries, astataries, or ista, pista, sista, which Cato the elder held to be a 
sovereign remedy for a sprain, 2 or the shavriri, vriri, iriri, riri, iri, ri, ac- 
companied with knockings on the lid of a jug, which the Rabbis taught as an 
efficacious expulsion of the demon of blindness. 3 

Stories, which elsewhere would have been received with ridicule, at 
Ephesus found ready credence. About the very time of St. Paul's visit it is 
probable that the city was visited by A pollonius of Tyana ; and it is here that 
his biographer Philostratus places the scene of some of his exploits. One of 
these is all the more interesting because it is said to have taken place in that 
very theatre into which St. Paul, though in imminent peril of being torn to 
pieces, could scarcely be persuaded not to enter. During his visit to Ephesus, 
the thaumaturge of Tyana found the plague raging there, and in consequence 
invited the population to meet him in the theatre. When they were assem- 
bled, he rose and pointed out to them a miserable and tattered old man as 
the cause of the prevailing pestilence. Instantly the multitude seized stones 
and, in spite of the old man's remonstrances, stoned him to death. When 
the heaped stones were removed, they found the carcase of a Molossian 
hound, into which the demon had transformed himself ; 4 and on this spot 
they reared a statue of Herakles Apotropaios ! Philostratus did not write 
his romance till A.D. 218, and his hero A pollonius has been put forth by 
modern infidels as a sort of Pagan rival to the Jesus of the Gospels. Let any 
one read this wretched production, and judge ! The Pagan sophist, with all 
his vaunted culture and irritating euphuism, abounds in auecdotes which 
would have been regarded as pitiably foolish if they had been narrated by the 
unlettered fisherman of Galilee, strangers as they were to all cultivation, and 
writing as they did a century and a half before. 

A nother and a far darker glimpse of the Ephesus of this day may be 
obtained from the letter of the pseudo-Heraclitus. Some cultivated and able 
Jew, 5 adopting the pseudonym of the great ancient philosopher, wrote some 
letters in which he is supposed to explain the reason why he was called " the 
weeping philosopher," and why he was never seen to laugh. In these he fully 
justifies his traditional remark that the whole Ephesian population deserved 
to be throttled man by man. He here asks how it is that their state flourishes 
in spite of its wickedness ; and, in the inmost spirit of the Old Testament, he 
sees in that prosperity the irony and the curse of Heaven. For Artemis and 

1 Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 46. 

3 Cato, Be Re Rustica Fr. 160 (see Donaldson, Varron., p. 234). 
* Abhoda Zara, f. 12, 2. 

4 Vit. Apoll. iv. 10, p. 147. Alexander of Abonoteichos, a much more objectionable 
imposter than Apollonius, lived till old age on the wealth got out of his dupes, and 
•enously persuaded the world that the mother of his daughter was the goddess of the 
moon ! 

•» The theory of Bernays is that the letters were written by a Pagan, but interpolated 
by a Jew, 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 361 

her worship hj has no scorn too intense. The dim twilight of her adytum is 
symbolical of a vileness that hateth the light. He supposes that her image 
is " stonen " in the contemptuous sense in which the word is used by Homer 
— i.e., idiotic and brutish. He ridicules the inverted pyramid on which she 
stands. He says that the morals which flourish under her protection are 
worse than those of beasts, seeing that even hounds do not mutilate each 
other, as her Megabyzus has to be mutilated, because she is too modest to be 
served by a man. But instead of extolling her modesty, her priests ought 
rather to curse her for lewdness, which rendered it unsafe otherwise to ap- 
proach her, and which had cost them so dear. As for the orgies, and the 
torch festivals, and the antique rituals, he has nothing to say of them, except 
that they are the cloak for every abomination. These things had rendered 
him a lonely man. This was the reason why he could not laugh. How could 
he laugh when he heard the noises of these infamous vagabond priests, and 
was a witness of all the nameless iniquities which flourished so rankly in con- 
sequence of their malpractices — the murder, and waste, and lust, and gluttony 
and drunkenness ? And then he proceeds to moral and religious exhortations, 
which show that we are reading the work of some Jewish and unconverted 
Apollos, who is yet an earnest and eloquent proclaimer of the one God and 
the Xoaehian law. 

In this city St. Paul saw that " a great door and effectual was open to 
him," though there were " many adversaries." l During his absence an event 
had happened which was to be of deep significance for the future. Among the 
myriads whom business or pleasure, or what is commonly called accident, had 
brought to Ephesus, was a Jew of Alexandria named Apollonius, 2 or Apollos, 
who not only shared the culture for which the Jews of that city were famous 
in the age of Philo, but who had a profound knowledge of Scripture, and a 
special gift of fervid eloquence. 3 He was only so far a Christian that he 
knew and had accepted the baptism of John ; but though thus imperfectly ac- 
quainted with the doctrines of Christianity, he yet spoke and argued in the 
synagogue with a power and courage which attracted the attention of the 
Jewish tent -makers Priscilla and Aquila. They invited him to their house, 
and showed him the purely initial character of John's teaching. It may have 
been the accounts of the Corinthian Church which he had heard from them 
that made him desirous to visit Achaia, and perceiving how useful such a 
ministry as his might be among the subtle and intellectual Greeks, they not 
only encouraged his wish, 4 but wrote for him M letters of commendation " 6 to 
the Corinthian elders. At Corinth his eloquence produced a great sensation, 
and he became a pillar of strength to the brethren. He had so thoroughly 
profited by that reflection of St. Paul's teaching which he had caught from 
Priscilla and Aquila, that in his public disputations with the hostile Jews 
he proved from their own Scriptures, with an irresistible cogency, the 

1 1 Cor. xvi. 9 : 2 So in D. 

3 Acts xviii. 2S. £&» toS Trvevfj.aTL (cf . Rom. xii. 11). 

4 TpoTpetdjjiivoi., SC. avTov (Acts xvui. 27). 5 <n>0Ta7iK7) e77taToAjj (2 Cor. Ui. 1). 



362 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Messiahship of Christ, and thus was as acceptable to the Christians as he was 
formidable to the Jews. He watered what Paul had planted. 1 

By the time of St. Paul's arrival, Apollos had already started for Corinth. 
He had, however, returned to Ephesus before St. Paul's departure, and the 
Apostle must have gazed with curiosity and interest on this fervi 1 and gifted 
convert. A meaner soul might have been jealous of his gifts, and all the 
more so because, while less valuable, they were more immediately dazzling 
and impressive than his own. St. Paul was of too noble a spirit to leave 
room for the slightest trace of a feeling so common, yet so ignoble. Apollos 
had unwittingly stolen from him the allegiance of some of his Corinthian con- 
verts ; his name had become, in that disorderly church, a watchword of 
faction. Yet St. Paul never speaks of him without warm sympathy and 
admiration, 2 and evidently appreciated the high-minded delicacy which made 
him refuse to revisit Corinth, 3 in spite of pressing invitations, from the 
obvious desire to give no encouragement to the admiring partisans who had 
elevated him into unworthy rivalry with one so much greater than himself. 

Ephesus, amid its vast population, contained specimens of every form of 
belief, and Apollos was not the only convert to an imperfect and half -developed 
form of Christianity. Paul found there, on his arrival, a strange backwater 
of religious opinion in the persons of some twelve men who, like Apollos, 
and being perhaps in some way connected with him, were still disciples of the 
Baptist. Although there were some in our Lord's time who stayed with 
their old teacher till his execution, and though the early fame of his preaching 
had won him many followers, of whom some continued to linger on in 
obscure sects, 4 it was impossible for any reasonable man to stop short at this 
position except through ignorance. St. Paul accordingly questioned them, 
and upon finding that they knew little or nothing of the final phase of John's 
teaching, or of the revelation of Christ, and were even ignorant of the very 
name of the Holy Spirit, he gave them further instruction until they were 
fitted to receive baptism, and exhibited those gifts of the Spirit — the speak- 
ing with tongues and prophecy — which were the accepted proofs of full and 
faithful initiation into the Church of Christ. 5 

For three months, in accordance with his usual plan, he was a constant 
visitor at the synagogue, and used every effort of persuasion and argument to 
ripen into conviction the favourable impressions he had at first created. St. 
Luke passes briefly over the circumstances, but there must have been many 

1 1 Cor. iii 6. There can be little reasonable doubt that Apollos was the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. In reading that Epistle (which cannot be dealt with in this 
volume) it is easy to see that, essentially Pauline as is much of its phraseology, the 
main method is original, and would probably be more pleasing and convincing to Jews 
than any which St. Paul was led to adopt. Some have seen a distinction between his 
pupils and St. Paul's in Titus iii. 14, oi ^irepoi, but see infra, ad loc. 

2 Tit. iii. 13, 3 1 Cor. xvi. 12. 

4 Sabaeans, Mendaeans, &c. (Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 57). We find from the Clementine 
Recognitions that there were some of John's disciples who continued to preacl him a> 
the Messiah. 

* Of. Heb. vi. 4-fi. 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 363 

an anxious hour, many a bitter straggle, many an exciting debate, befove the 
Jews finally adopted a tone not only of decided rejection, but even of so 
fierce an opposition, that St. Paul was forced once more, as at Corinth, openly 
to secede from their communion. We do not sufficiently estimate the pain 
which such circumstances must have caused to him. His life was so beset with 
trials, that each trial, however heavy in itself, is passed over amid a multitude 
that were still more grievous. But we must remember that St. Paul, though a 
Christian, still regarded himself as a true Israelite, and he must have felt, at 
least as severely as a Luther or a Wliitefield, this involuntary alienation from 
the religious communion of his childhood. "We must conjecture, too, that it 
was amid these early struggles that he once more voluntarily submitted to the 
recognised authority of synagogues, and endured some of those five beatings 
by the Jews, any one of which would have been regarded as a terrible episode 
in an ordinary life. 

As long as opposition confined itself to legitimate methods, St. Paul was 
glad to be a worshipper in the synagogue, and to deliver the customary 
Midrash ; but when the Jews not only rejected and reviled him, but even 
endeavoured to thwart all chance of his usefulness amid their Gentile neigh- 
bours, he saw that it was time to withdraw his disciples from among them ; * 
and, as their number was now considerable, he hired the school of Tyrannus 
— some heathen sophist of that not very uncommon name. 2 It was one of 
those schools of rhetoric and philosophy which were common in a city like 
Ephesus, where there were many who prided themselves on intellectual pursuits 
This new place of worship gave him the advantage of being able to meet the 
brethren daily, whereas in the synagogue this was only possible three times a 
week. His labours and his preaching were not unblessed. For two full 
years longer he continued to make Ephesus the centre of his missionary 
activity, and, as the fame of his Gospel began to spread, there can be little 
doubt that he hirnself took short journeys to various neighbouring places, 
until, in the strong expression of St. Luke, " all they that dwelt in Asia heard 
the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks." 3 In Ephesus itself 
his reputation reached an extraordinary height, in consequence of the unusual 
works of power which God wrought by his hands. 4 On this subject he is 
himself silent even by way of allusion, and though he speaks to the Ephe- 
sian elders 5 of his tears, and trials, and dangers, he does not say a word as 

1 Epsenetus (Rom. xvi. 5, leg. Ao-ias) was his first convert. 

2 Jos. B. J. i. 26, § 3 ; 2 Mace. iv. 40. It is very unlikely that this was a Beth 
Midrash (Meyer), as it was St. Paul's object to withdraw from the Jews. There was a 
Sophist Tyrannus mentioned by Suidas. The nvos is spurious (n, A, B), which shows 
that this Tyrannus was known in Ephesus (see Heinsen, Pavlns, 218). 

3 Hence forty years later, inBithynia, Pliny {Ep. 96) writes, "Xeque enim civitates 
tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est." 

* Acts SIX. 11, Svj/a/j.e'.s ov Tas rvxovsas. 

5 The " Epistle to the Ephesians," being a circular letter, naturally contains but few 

specific allusions— which, if intelligible to one Christian community, would not have 

been so to another. We should have expected such allusions in his speech: but 

omittit Doctor gentium narrare miracula, narrat labores, narrat aerumnas, narrat 



364 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 

to the signs and wonders which in writing to the Corinthians he distinctly 
claims. Although St. Paul believed that God, for the furtherance of the 
Gospel, did allow him to work " powers " beyond the range of human expe- 
rience, and in which he humbly recognised the work of the Spirit granted to 
faith and prayer, yet he by no means frequently exercised these gifts, and 
never for his own relief or during the sickness of his dearest friends. But 
it was a common thing in Ephesus to use all kinds of magic remedies and 
curious arts. We are not, therefore, surprised to hear that articles of dress 
which had belonged to Paul, handkerchiefs which he had used, and aprons 
with which he had been girded in the pursuit of his trade, 1 were assumed by 
the Ephesians to have caught a magic efficacy, and were carried about to 
sick people and demoniacs. St. Luke was not with the Apostle at Ephesus, 
and enters into no details ; but it is clear that his informant, whoever he was, 
had abstained from saying that this was done by St. Paul's sanction. But 
since Ephesus was the head-quarters of diabolism and sorcery, the use of St. 
Paul's handkerchiefs or aprons, whether authorised by him or not, was so far 
overruled to beneficial results of healing as to prove the superiority of the 
Christian faith in the acropolis of Paganism, and to prepare the way for holy 
worship in the stronghold of Eastern fanaticism and Grecian vice. He who 
" followed not Jesus," and yet was enabled to cast out devils in His name, 
could hardly fail to be the prototype of others who, though they acted without 
sanction, were yet, for good purposes, and in that unsearched borderland 
which lies between the natural and the supernatural, enabled by God's provi • 
dence to achieve results which tended to the furtherance of truth. 

But lest any sanction should be given to false and superstitious notions, 
we can hardly fail to see in the next anecdote which St. Luke has preserved 
for us a direct rebuke of mechanical thaumaturgy. Exorcism was a prac- 
tice which had long been prevalent among the Jews, and it was often connected 
with the grossest credulity and the most flagrant imposture. 2 Now there was 
a Jewish priest of some distinction of the name of Sceva, 3 whose seven sons 
wandered about from place to place professing to eject demons ; and on learn- 
ing the reputation of St. Paul, and hearing doubtless of the cures effected by 
the application of his handkerchiefs, they thought that by combining his name 
with that of Jesus, they could effect cures in the most virulent cases, which 
defeated even the ring and root of Solomon. 4 Encouraged possibly by somo 
apparent initial success — so at least the story seems to imply — two of these 

tribulationes quae Paulo Paulique imitatoribus ipsis miraculis sunt clariores "(Nova, 
rinus). 

1 o-ouSapta, sudaria ; T)/u.i<aV0ia, semicincta. 

2 Jos. Antt. viii. 2, § 5. For this ridiculous jugglery, which seems to have deceived 
Vespasian, see my Life of Christ, i. 237. The prevalence of Jewish exorcists is attested 
by Justin Martyr, Dial. 85. 

3 Acts xix. 14, apxiepews — a general expression ; perhaps a head or one of the twenty- 
four courses. . . 

4 Jos. Antt. I.e. We find many traces of this kind of superstition m the Talmudio 
writings : e.g., the belief that the Minim could cure the bites of serpents by the 
name of Jesus {v. svpra, 63). In the ToJd6th Jcshu, the miracles of our Lord are ex- 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 365 

seven itinerant impostors x visited a man who was evidently a racing maniac 
but who had those sufficiently lucid perceptions of certain subjects which 
many madmen still retain. Addressing the evil demon, they exclaimed, " We 
exorcise you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth." In this instance, however, the 
adjuration proved to be a humiliating failure. The maniac astutely replied, 
" Jesus I recognise, and Paul I know ; 2 but who are you p" and then leaping 
upon them with the superhuman strength of madness, he tore their clothes 
off their backs, and inflicted upon them such violent injuries that they were 
glad to escape out of the house stripped and wounded. 

So remarkable a story could not remain unknown. It spread like wildfire 
among the gossiping Ephesians, and produced a remarkable feeling of dread 
and astonishment. One result of it was most beneficial. We have had re- 
peated occasion to observe that the early Christians who had been redeemed 
from heathendom, either in the coarsenesses of slave-life or in the refined 
abominations of the higher classes, required a terrible struggle to deliver 
themselves by the aid of God's Holy Spirit from the thraldom of past cor- 
ruption. The sternly solemn emphasis of St. Paul's repeated warnings — 
the actual facts which occurred in the history of the early churches — show 
conclusively that the early converts required to be treated with extreme for- 
bearance, while, at the same time, they were watched over by their spiritual 
rulers with incessant vigilance. The stir produced by the discomfiture of the 
Beni Sceva revealed the startling fact that some of the brethren in embracing 
Christianity had not abandoned magic. Stricken in conscience, these secret 
dealers in the superstitious trumpery of " curious arts " now came forward in 
the midst of the community and confessed their secret malpractices. Nor 
was it only the dupes who acknowledged the error. Even the deceivers came 
forward, and gave the most decisive proof of their sincerity by rendering 
impossible any future chicanery. They brought the cabalistic and expensive 
books 3 which had been the instruments of their trade, and publicly burned 

plained by an unutterably silly story as to the means by which He possessed himself of 
the Sliemhamephoresh or sacred name. Witchcraft had in all ages been prevalent among 
the Jews (Ex. xxii. 18 ; 1 Sam. xxviii. 3, 9 ; Mic. v. 12) ; it continued to be so at the 
Christian era, and it was necessary even to warn converts against any addiction to it 
(GaL v. 20 ; 2 Tim. iii. 13, yorp-es). 

1 In verse 16 the reading a^oTepuv of x, A, B, D, is almost certainly conect. They 
were actuated by exactly the same motives as Simon Magus, but had shown less can- 
ning in trying to carry them out. 

2 Acts xix. 15, Tov 'Irjaovv ytyvtoo-Ko) nal rbvUavKov knttTT ay^ai ; Vulg., " Jesum TlOVi et 

Paulum scio." 

3 On these E<f>eVia ypd^ara se e the illustrations adduced by Wetstein. Some of them 
were copies of the mystic words and names engraved in enigmatic formulae (aii/iy/naTuiSios 
— Eustath. in Od. xiv. p. 1864) on the crown, girdle, and feet of the statue of Artemis. 
"Whole treatises were written in explanation of them, which resemble certain Chinese 
treatises. An addiction to magic, therefore, assumed almost necessarily a secret 
belief in idolatry. One of the titles of Artemis was Magos. Balbillus (Suet. JSFer. 36) 
and Maximus (Gibbon, ii. 291, ed. Milman) were both Ephesian astrologers. Eustathius 
{I.e. — cf. Philostr. Vit. Apol. vii. 39) tells us that Croesus was saved by reciting 
them on the pyre, and that in a wrestling bout a Milesian, who could not throw 
an Ephesian, found that he had Ephesian incantations engraved on a die. When 
this was taken from him the Milesian threw hi™ thirty times in succession. 



366 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

them. It was like the Monte della Pieta reared by the repentant Florentines 
at the bidding of Savonarola ; and so extensive had been this secret evil-doing, 
that the value of the books destroyed by the culprits in this fit of penitence 
was no less than fifty thousand drachms of silver, or, in our reckoning, about 
f^OSO. 1 This bonfire, which must have lasted some time, 2 was so striking a 
protest against the prevalent credulity, that it was doubtless one of the cir- 
cumstances which gave to St. Paul's preaching so wide a celebrity throughout 
all Asia. 

This little handful of incidents is all that St. Luke was enabled to preserve 
for us of this great Ephesian visit, which Paul himself tells us occupied a 
period of three years. 3 Had we nothing else to go by, we might suppose that 
until the final outbreak it was a period of almost unbroken success and pros- 
perity. Such, however, as we find from the Epistles 4 and from the Apostle's 
speech to the Ephesian elders, 6 was very far from being the case. It was 
indeed an earnest, incessant, laborious, house-to-house ministry, which carried 
its exhortations to each individual member of the church. But it was a 
ministry of many tears ; and though greatly blessed, it was a time of such 
overwhelming trial, sickness, persecution, and misery, that it probably sur- 
passed in sorrow any other period of St. Paul's life. We must suppose that 
during its course happened not a few of those perils which he recounts with 
•uch passionate brevity of allusion in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 
Neither from Jews, nor from Pagans, nor from nominal Christians was he, 
safe. He had suffered alike at the hands of lawless banditti and stately 
magistrates ; he had been stoned by the simple provincials of Lystra, beaten 
by the Roman colonists of Philippi, hunted by the Greek mob at Ephesus, 
seized by the furious Jews at Corinth, maligned and thwarted by the Pharisaic 
professors of Jerusalem. Robbers he may well have encountered in the 
environs, 6 as tradition tells us that St. John the Evangelist did in later days, 
as well as in the interior, when he travelled to lay the foundation of various 
churches. 7 Perils among his own countrymen we know befell him there, for 
he reminds the elders of Ephesus of what he had suffered from the ambus- 
cades of the Jews. 8 To perils by the heathen and in the city he must have 

Hence the E</>eo-ia ypdnixaTa were sometimes engraved on seals (Athen. xii. 584). Penan 
says (p. 345) that the names of the "seven sleepers of Ephesus " are still a common 
incantation in the East. 

1 On the almost certain supposition that the "pieces of silver" were Attic drachms 
of the value of about 9|d. If they were Roman denarii the value would be £1,770. 
Classic parallels to this public abjuration of magic are quoted from Liv. xl. 29 ; Suet. 
Aug. 31 ; Tac. Ann. xiii. 50 ; Agric. 2. 

2 Ka.reKO.iov, impf. 

3 Acts xx. 31 ; but owing to the Jewish method of reckoning any part of time to the 
whole, the period did not necessarily much exceed two years. 

* Chiefly those to the Corinthians. On the Epistle to " the Ephesians " see p. 637. 

5 Acts xx. 18—35. 6 2 Cor. xi. 26. 

7 He had not, however, visited Laodicea or Colossae, where churches were founded by 
Philemon and Epaphras (Col. i. 7; iv. 12—16). But he may well have made journeys to 
Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, &c. (See 1 Cor. xvi. 19.) 

M Acts xx. 19 ; which again shows the fragmentary nature of the narrative as regard* 
*U particulars of personal sullerU.'f . 



i 



PAUL AT EPHESU8. 367 

often been liable in the narrow streets. Of his perils among false brethren, 
like Phygellus, and Hermogenes, and Alexander, we may see a specimen in 
the slanders against his person, and the internecine opposition to his doctrine, 
of which we shall meet with future proofs. Perils in the wilderness and in 
the sea were the inevitable lot of one who travelled over vast districts in those 
days, when navigation was so imperfect and intercourse so unprotected. It 
was very shortly after his departure from Ephesus that he wrote of all 
these dangers, and if, as is possible, he took more than one voyage from the 
haven of Ephesus to various places on the shores of the Levant, it may have 
been at this time that he suffered that specially perilous shipwreck, in the 
escape from which he floated a day and a night upon the stormy waves. 1 And 
all this time, with a heart that trembled with sympathy or burned with indig- 
nation, 2 he was carrying out the duties of a laborious and pastoral ministry, 3 
and bearing the anxious burden of all the churches, of which some, like the 
churches of Corinth and Galatia, caused him the most acute distress. !Nor 
were physical cares and burdens wanting. True to his principle of refusing 
to eat the bread of dependence, 4 he had toiled incessantly at Ephesus to sup- 
port, not himself only, but even Aristarchus and the others who were with 
him ; and not even all his weariness, and painfulness, and sleepless nights of 
mingled toil and danger, 5 had saved him from cold, and nakedness, and the con- 
stant pangs of hunger during compulsory or voluntary fasts. 6 And while he 
was taking his place like a general on a battle-field, with his eye on every 
weak or endangered point ; while his heart was constantly rent by news of 
the defection of those for whom he would gladly have laid down his life ; 
while a new, powerful, and organised opposition was working against him in 
the very churches which he had founded with such peril and toil; 7 while he 
was being constantly scourged, and mobbed, and maltreated, and at the same 
time suffering from repeated attacks of sickness and depression; while he 
was at once fighting a hand-to-hand battle and directing the entire campaign ; — 
he yet found time to travel for the foundation or confirming of other churches, 
and to write, as with his very heart's blood, the letters which should rivet the 
attention of thousands of the foremost intellects, eighteen centuries after he 
himself had been laid in the nameless grave. In these we find that at the 
very hour of apparent success he was in the midst of foolishness, weakness, 
shame — " pilloried," as it were, " on infamy's high stage," the sentence of 
death hanging ever over his head, cast down, perplexed, persecuted, troubled 
on every side, homeless, buffeted, ill-provided with food and clothes, abused, 

1 Whether a brief and unsatisf actoiy visit to Corinth was among these journeys is a 
disputed point, which depends on the interpretation given to 2 Cor. i. 15, 16 ; xiii. 1, and 
which will never be finally settled. A multitude of authorities may be quoted on both 
sides, and fortunately the question is not one of great importance. 

2 2 Cor. xi. 29. 3 Acts SX- 2 0, 31. * Acts xx. 34. 5 2 Cor. xi. 27. 

6 And that, too, although the tents made at Ephesus had a special reputation, and 
were therefore probably in some demand (Plut. Alcib. 12 ; Athen. xii. 47). 

7 Perhaps the Judaic Christians were more content to leave him alone while he waa 
working in Europe, and were only aroused to opposition by his resumption of work in 
Asia (Krenkel, Pcmlm, p. 183), 



368 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJT,. 

persecuted, slandered, made as it were the dung and filth of all the world. 1 Nay, 
more, he was in jeopardy not only every day, but every hour ; humanly speak- 
ing, he had fought with wild beasts in the great voluptuous Ionic city; he was 
living every day a living death. He tells us that he was branded like some 
guilty slave with the stigmata of the Lord Jesus ; 2 that he was being " killed 
all the day long; 3 that he was "in deaths oft;" 4 that he was constantly 
carrying about with him the deadness of the crucified Christ; 5 his life an 
endless mortification, his story an inscription on a cross. What wonder if, 
amid these afflictions, there were times when the heroic soul gave way? What 
wonder if he speaks of tears, and trembling, and desolation of heart, and 
utter restlessness ; of being pressed out of measure, above strength, despair- 
ing of life itself, 6 tried almost beyond the extreme of human endurance 
— without fightings, within fears ? What wonder if he is driven to declare 
that if this is all the life belonging to our hope in Christ, he would be of 
all men the most miserable ? 7 And yet, in the strength of the Saviour, how 
triumphantly he stemmed the overwhelming tide of these afflictions ; in the 
panoply of God how dauntlessly he continued to fling himself into the 
never-ending battle of a warfare which had no discharge. 8 Indomitable 
spirit ! flung down to earth, chained like a captive to the chariot-wheels of his 
Lord's triumph, 9 haled as it were from city to city, amid bonds and afflictions, 10 
as a deplorable spectacle, amid the incense which breathed through the streets 
in token of the victor's might — he yet thanks God that he is thus a captive, 
and glories in his many infirmities. Incomparable and heroic soul ! many 
saints of God have toiled, and suffered, and travelled, and preached, and been 
execrated, and tortured, and imprisoned, and martyred, in the cause of Christ. 
Singly they tower above the vulgar herd of selfish and comfortable men ; but 
yet the collective labours of some of their greatest would not equal, nor would 
their collective sufferings furnish a parallel to those of Paul, and very few of 
them have been what he was — a great original thinker, as well as a devoted 
practical worker for his Lord. 

But of this period we learn from the Acts only one closing scene, 11 and it 
is doubtful whether even this is painted for us in colours half so terrible as the 
reality. Certain it is that some of the allusions which we have been noticing 
must bear reference to this crowning peril, and that, accustomed though he was 
to the daily aspect of danger in its worst forms, this particular danger and 
the circumstances attending it, which are rather hinted at than detailed, had 
made a most intense impression upon the Apostle's mind. 

At the close of about two years, his restless fervour made him feel that he 
could stay no longer in the school of Tyrannus. He formed the plan of 
starting after Pentecost, and visiting once more the churches of Macedonia 

1 1 Cor. iv. 8—13 ; 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9. 6 2 Cor. i. 8. 

2 Gal. vi. 17. ? 1 Cor. xv. 19. 

■ Horn. viii. 36. 8 See Greg. Naz. Orat. ii 38—40. 

« 2 Cor. xi. 23. 9 2 Cor. ii. 14—16. 

« 2 Cor. iv. 10. 10 Acts xx. 23. 

11 There are further hints in the farewell speech to the Ephesian elders (Acts xx. 18 — 35), 



PATTL AT EPHESUS. 369 

and Achaia, which he had founded in his second journey, and of sailing from 
Corinth to pay a fifth visit to Jerusalem, after which he hoped to see Rome, 
the great capital of the civilisation of the world. 1 In furtherance of this 
purpose he had already despatched two of his little band of fellow- workers, 
Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia with orders that they were to rejoin him 
at Corinth. Erastus 2 — if this be the chamberlain of the city — was a person 
of influence, and would have been well suited both to provide for the Apostle's 
reception and to superintend the management of the weekly offertory, about 
which St. Paul was at present greatly interested. The visit to Jerusalem was 
rendered necessary by the contribution for the distressed Christians of that 
city, which he had been collecting from the Gentile churches, and which he 
naturally desired to present in person, as the best possible token of forgiveness 
and brotherhood, to the pillars of the unfriendly community. This had not 
been his original plan. 3 He had originally intended, and indeed had announced 
his intention, in a letter no longer extant, 4 to sail straight from Ephesus to 
Corinth, make his way thence by land to the churches of Macedonia, sail back 
from thence to Corinth, and so sail once more from Corinth to Jerusalem. 
Weighty reasons, which we shall see hereafter, had compelled the abandon- 
ment of this design. The ill news respecting the condition of the Corinthian 
churches which he had received from the slaves of Chloe compelled him to 
write his first extant letter to the Corinthians, in which he tacitly abandons his 
original intention, but sends Titus, and with him "the brother," to regulate 
to the best of their power the gross disorders that had arisen. 5 Probably at 
the same time he sent a message to Timothy — uncertain, however, whether it 
would reach him in time — not to go to Corinth, but either to return to him or 
to wait for him in Macedonia. The first Epistle to the Corinthians was written 
about the time of the Passover in April, and probably in the very next month 
an event occurred which, at the last moment, endangered his stay and precipi- 
tated his departure. 

It was now the month of May, and nothing seemed likely to interfere with 
the peaceful close of a troubled ministry. But this month was specially 
dedicated to the goddess of Ephesus, and was called from her the Artemisian. 6 
During the month was held the great fair — called Ephesia — which attracted 
an immense concourse of people from all parts of Asia, and was kept with all 
possible splendour and revelry. The proceedings resembled the Christmas 
festivities of the middle ages, with their boy bishops and abbots of misrule. 
The gods were personated by chosen representatives, who received throughout 
the month a sort of mock adoration. There was an Alytarch, who represented 
Zeus ; a Grammateus, who played the part of Apollo; an Amphithales, who per- 

1 Cf. Kom. i. 15 ; xv. 23—28 ; Acts xix. 21. 

2 Rom. xvi. 23 ; 2 Tim. iv. 20, but there is no certainty in the matter. The nam* 
was common. 

» 2 Cor. i. 16—23. 4 V . infra, p. 384. 5 1 Cor. xvi. 5—7. 

6 The decree dedicating the entire month to Artemis has been found by Chandler on 
a slab of white marble near the aqueduct, and is given by Boeck, Corp. Inscr. 2954. It 
is nearly contemporary with the time of St. Paul. 
T 



370 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

gonated Hermes ; and in the numberless processions and litanies, and sacrifices, 
they paced the streets, and were elevated in public places, arrayed in robes of 
pure white or of tissued gold, and wearing crowns which were set with car- 
buncles and pearls. The theatre and stadium were densely crowded by festive 
throngs to listen to the musical contests, to watch the horse-races, and the 
athletic exhibitions, or to look on with thrills of fiercer emotion at the horrible 
combats of men and beasts. The vast expense of these prolonged festivities and 
superb spectacles was entirely borne by the College of the ten Asiarchs, who 
thus fulfilled the same functions as those of the Curule JEdiles at Rome. They 
were men of high distinction, chosen annually from the wealthiest citizens of 
the chief cities of Asia, and it was their duty to preside over the games, and to 
keep order in the theatre. The heavy pecuniary burden of the office was 
repaid in honorary privileges and social distinctions. Their names were 
recorded on coins and in public inscriptions, and the garlands and purple robes 
which distinguished them during the continuance of the feast were the external 
marks of the popular gratitude. 1 

During the sacred month the city rang with every sort of joyous sounds ; 
gay processions were constantly sweeping to the famous temple ; drunkenness 
and debauchery were rife ; even through the soft night of spring the Agora 
hummed with the busy throngs of idlers and revellers. 2 It was inevitable that 
at such a time there should be a recrudescence of fanaticism, and it is far from 
improbable that the worthless and frivolous mob, incited by the Eunuch priests 
and Hierodules of Artemis, may have marked out for insult the little congre- 
gation which met in the school of Tyrannus, and their well-known teacher. 
This year there was a perceptible diminution in the fast and furious mirth of 
the Artemisian season, and the cause of this falling off was perfectly notorious. 3 
Not only in Ephesus, but in all the chief cities of Proconsular Asia, deep 
interest had been excited by the preaching of a certain Paulus, who, in the 
very metropolis of idolatry, was known to be quietly preaching that they were 
no gods which were made with hands. Many people had been persuaded to 
adopt his views ; many more had so far at least been influenced by them as to 
feel a growing indifference for mummeries and incantations, and even for 
temples and idols. Consequently there arose in Ephesus " no small stir about 
that way." Paul and his preaching, the brethren and their assemblages, were 
in all men's mouths, and many a muttered curse was aimed at them by 
Megabyzos and Melissae, and the hundreds of hangers-on which gather around 
every great institution. At last this ill-concealed exasperation came to a head. 
The chief sufferer from the diminished interest in the goddess and her 

1 These particulars are mainly derived from the account of Malalas. 

2 Achill. Tat. 5. 

3 No one will be astonished at this who reads Pliny's account of the utter neglect into 
which heathen institutions had fallen half a century after this time, in the neighbouring 
province of Bithynia, as a direct consequence of Christian teaching, and that though the 
( Christians were a persecuted sect. There, also, complaints came from the priests, the 
purveyors of the sacrifices, and other people pecuniarily interested. They had the 
•agacity to see that their peril from Christianity lay in its universality. 



PAITL AT EPHESXTS. 371 

Hieromenia, had been a certain silversmith, named Demetrius, who sold to the 
pilgrims little silver shrines and images in memorial of their visits to Ephesns * 
and her temple. They were analogous to the little copies in alabaster or silver 
of the shrine of Loretto, and other famous buildings of Italy ; nor was it only 
at Ephesus, but at every celebrated centre of Pagan worship, that the demand 
for such memorials created the supply. Demetrius found that his trade was 
beginning to be paralysed, and since the emasculate throng of sacred slaves 
and musicians dared not strike a blow for the worship which fed their lazy 
vice, he determined, as far as he could, to stop the mischief. Calling together 
a trades-union meeting of all the skilled artisans and ordinary workmen who 
were employed in this craft, 2 he made them a speech, in which he first stirred 
up their passions by warning them of the impending ruin of their interests, 3 
and then appealed to their latent fanaticism to avenge the despised greatness 
of their temple, and the waning magnificence of the goddess whom all Asia 
and the world worshipped. 4 The speech was like a spark on inflammable 
materials. Their interests were suffering, 5 and their superstition was being 
endangered ; and the rage which might have been despised if it had only 
sprung from greed, looked more respectable when it assumed the cloak of 
fanaticism. The answer to the speech of Demetrius was a unanimous shout 
of the watchword of Ephesus, " Great is Artemis of the Ephesians ! " So 
large a meeting of the workmen created much excitement. Crowds came 
flocking from every portico, and agora, and gymnasium, and street. The whole 
city was thrown into a state of riot, and a rush was made for the Jewish 
quarter and the shop of Aquila. What took place we are not exactly told, 
except that the life of the Apostle was in extremest danger. The mob was, 
however, balked of its intended prey. Paul, as in the similar peril at Thes- 
salonica, was either not in the house at the time, or had been successfully 
concealed by Priscilla and her husband, who themselves ran great risk of 
being killed in their efforts to protect him. 6 Since, however, the rioters could 

1 Called i/uwf)iSpuju.aTa vatSta, aediculae. Chrysostom says la-ws o>? Kifiupia ju.i*pa. Similar 
images and shrines are mentioned in Ar. Nub. 598; Dio. Sic. i. 15; xv. 49 ; Dio. Cass. 
xxxix. 20 ; Dion. Hal. ii. 22 ; Amm. Marcell. xxii. 13 ; Petron. 29. The custom is an 
extremely ancient one. " The tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, " 
which the Israelites took up in the wilderness, were of the same description. Little 
images of Pallas (i-oAXoSia TrepiavTofyopa) Demeter, &c, were in special request, and an 
interesting earthenware aedicula of Cybele found at Athens is engraved in Lewin, i. 414. 
Appuleius {Metam. xi. ) says that at the end of the festival small silver images of Artemis 
were placed on the temple steps for people to kiss. 

2 We learn from numerous inscriptions that guilds and trades-unions ((ruvepyaaitu, 
<ruju.j3tw(reis) were common in Ionia (see Penan, p. 355). "rexvirat, artifices nobiliores, 
ep-ydTox, operariV (Bengel). 

3 Cf . Acts xvi. 19. 

4 "Diana Ephesia, cujus nomen unicum, multiformi specie, ritu vario, nomine mul- 
tijugo, totus veneratur orbis " ( Appul. Metam. ii. ). Pliny calls the temple ' ' orbis terrarum 
miraculum" {N. H. xxxvi. 14) ; and the image and temple are found on the coins of 
many neighbouring cities. 

5 Compare the case of the Philippians (Acts xvi. 19). They were, as Calvin says, 
fighting for their "hearths" quite as much as their "altars," "ut scilicet wiMnam 
habeant bene calentem." 

c Pom. xvi. 4. 
Y 2 



372 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

not find the chief object of their search, they seized two of his companions-— 
Gains of Macedonia, 1 and the faithful Aristarchus. 2 With these two men in 
their custody, the crowd rushed wildly into the vast space of the theatre, 3 
which stood ever open, and of which the still visible ruins — " a wreck of 
immense grandeur " — show that it was one of the largest in the world, and 
could easily have accommodated 30,000 spectators. 4 Paul, wherever he lay 
hidden, was within reach of communication from the disciples. Full of 
anxiety for the unknown fate of his two companions, he eagerly desired to 
make his way into the theatre and there address the rioters. There is, 
perhaps, no courage greater than that which is required from one who, in 
imminent danger of being torn to pieces, dares to face the furious insults and 
raging passions of an exasperated crowd. But the powers and the spirit of the 
Apostle always rose to a great occasion, and though he was so sensitive that 
he could not write a severe letter without floods of tears, and so nervous that 
he could scarcely endure to be left for even a few days alone, he was quite 
capable of this act of supreme heroism. He always wished to be in the fore- 
front of battle for his Master's cause. But his friends better appreciated the 
magnitude of the danger. Gaius and Aristarchus were too subordinate to be 
made scapegoats for the vengeance of the crowd ; but they were sure that the 
mere appearance of that bent figure and worn and wasted face, which had 
become so familiar to many of the cities of Asia, would be the instant signal for 
a terrible outbreak. Their opposition was confirmed by a friendly message 
from some of the Asiarchs, 5 who rightly conjectured the chivalrous impulse 
which would lead the Apostle to confront the storm. Anxious to prevent 
bloodshed, and save the life of one whose gifts and greatness they had 
learnt to admire, and well aware of the excitability of an Ephesian mob, they 
sent Paul an express warning not to trust himself into the theatre. 

The riot, therefore, spent itself in idle noise. The workmen had, indeed, 
got hold of Gaius and Aristarchus ; but as the crowd did not require these 
poor Greeks, whose aspect did not necessarily connect them with what was 
generally regarded as a mere Jewish sect, they did not know what to do with 
them. The majority of that promiscuous assemblage, unable to make any- 
thing of the discordant shouts which were rising on every side, could only 
guess why they were there at all. There was, perhaps, a dim impression that 
some one or other was going to be thrown to the wild beasts, and doubtless 
among those varying clamours voices were not wanting like those with which 
the theatre of Smyrna rang not many years afterwards — at the martyrdom of 
Polycarp — of "Paul to the lions!" "The Christians to the lions!" 6 One 

1 Not Gaius of Derbe (xx. 4) or "mine host " (Rom. xvi. 23). 

3 Aristarchus of Thessalonicais mentioned in xx. 4 ; xxvii. 2 ; Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 24. 
• Cf. Acts xii. 21 ; Tac. H. ii. 80 ; Cic. ad Earn, viii. 2 ; Corn. Nep. Timol. iv. 2 ; 

Jos. B. J. vii. 3, \ 3. The theatre was the ordinary scene of such gatherings. 

4 Fellowes, Asia Minor, p. 274. Wood says 25,000 {Ephes. p. 08). 

6 It was the Asiarch Philip at Smyrna, who resisted the cry of the mob, !W cno^f} 
Tlo\vKdpno> kiovTa (Euseb. H. E. iv. 15). 

6 See 1 Cor. iv. 9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 32 ; Act. Mart. Polycarp. 12. The stadium where the 
Iiesthrii fought was near the theatre, and the Temple of Artemis was in full view of it. 



PAUL AT EPHESU8. 373 

thing, however, was generally known, which was, that the people whose pro- 
ceedings were the cause for the tumult were of Jewish extraction, and a 
Greek mob was never behindhand in expressing its detestation for the 
Jewish race. The Jews, on the other hand, felt it hard that they, who had 
long been living side by side with the Ephesians in the amicable relations of 
commerce, should share the unpopularity of a sect which they hated quite as 
much as the Greeks could do. They were anxious to explain to the Greeks 
and Romans a lesson which they could not get them to learn — namely, that 
the Jews were not Christians, though the Christians might be Jews. Accord- 
ingly they urged Alexander to speak for them, and explain how matters really 
stood. This man was perhaps the coppersmith who, afterwards also, did 
Paul much evil, and who would be likely to gain the hearing of Demetrius 
and his workmen from similarity of trade. This attempt to shift the odium 
on the shoulders of the Christians entirely failed. Alexander succeeded in 
struggling somewhere to the front, and stood before the mob with outstretched 
hand in the attempt to win an audience for his oration. But no sooner had 
the mob recognised the well-known traits of Jewish physiognomy than they 
vented their hate in a shout of " Great is Artemis * of the Ephesians!" which 
was caught up from lip to lip until it was reverberated on every side by the 
rocks of Prion and Coressus, and drowned all others in its one familiar and 
unanimous roar. 

For two hours, as though they had been howling dervishes, did this mongrel 
Greek crowd continue incessantly their senseless yell. 2 By that time they 
were sufficiently exhausted to render it possible to get a hearing. Hitherto 
the authorities, afraid that these proceedings might end in awakening Roman 
jealousy to a serious curtailment of their privileges, had vainly endeavoured to 
stem the torrent of excitement ; but now, availing himself of a momentary 
lull, the Recorder of the city — either the mock officer of that name, who was 
chosen by the Senate and people for the Artemisia, or more probably the 
permanent city official — succeeded in restoring order. 3 It may have been all 

It is, however, very unlikely that St. Paul actually fought with wild beasts. The ex- 
pression was recognised as a metaphorical one (2 Tim. iv. 17), airb Svpias ju.e'xpt Pwjuijs 
07)pio|aaxa> (Ignat. Rom. c. 5) ; otots exploit fiaxo^eOa (Appian, Bell. Civ. p. 273). A legend 
naturally attached itself to the expression (Niceph, H. E. ii. 25). The pseudo-Heraclitus 
(Ep. vii.), writing about this time, says of the Ephesians, l£ avepunuv 6r)pia yeyovore?. 
Moreover, St. Paul uses the expression in a letter written before this wild scene at Ephesus 
had taken place. 

1 1 preserve the Greek name because their Asian idol, who was really Cybele, had still 
less to do with Diana than with Artemis. 

2 They probably were so far corrupted by the contact with Oriental worship as to 
regard their " vain repetitions in the light of a religious function " (see 1 Kings xviii. 26 ; 
Matt. vi. 7). Moreover, they distinctly believed that the glory, happiness, and perpetuity 
of Epnesus was connected with the maintenance of a splendid ritual. On the discovered 
inscription of the decree which dedicated the entire month of May to the Artemisian 

PanegUlls, are these concluding Words : — ovtw -yap eirl to d/ueivov T77S 6pr\<TK.elas yivofj-ivrji; r) jrdA.1? 
rifj.lv ev8o£oTepa re koX kv^aifxtov els rbv iravra 8ia.ju.evei xpovov (Boeckh, 2,954). It is probable that 

St. Paul may have read this very inscription, which seems to be of the age of Tiberius. 

3 The Proconsul of Asia was practically autocratic, being only restrained by the dread 
of being ultimately brought to law. Subject to his authority the chief towns of Asia 
were autonomous, managing their domestic affairs by the decisions of a Boule and 



374 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAITL. 

the more easy for him, because one who was capable of making so admirably 
skilful and sensible a speech could hardly fail to have won a permanent 
respect, which enhanced the dignity of his position. " Ephesians ! " he ex- 
claimed, " what human being is there who is unaware that the city of the 
Ephesians is a sacristan 1 of the great Artemis, and the Heaven-fallen ? 
Since, then, this is quite indisputable, your duty is to maintain your usual 
calm, and not to act in the precipitate way in which you have acted, 2 by 
dragging here these men, who are neither temple-robbers, 3 nor blasphemers 
of your goddess. 4 If Demetrius and his fellow-artisans have any complaint 
to lodge against any one, the sessions are going on, 5 and there are proconsuls ; 6 
let them settle the matter between them at law. But if you are making any 
further inquisition about any other matter, it shall be disposed of in the 
regular meeting of the Assembly. 7 For, indeed, this business renders us liable 
to a charge of sedition, since we shall be entirely unable to give any reasonable 
account of this mass meeting." 

The effect of this speech was instantaneous. 

"He called 

Across the tumult, and the tumult fell." 

The sensible appeal of the " vir pietate gravis " made the crowd repent of 
their unreasoning uproar, and afraid of its possible consequences, as the 
Recorder alternately flattered, intimidated, argued, and soothed. It reminded 

Ekklesia. The Eecorcler acted as Speaker, and held a very important position. The 
historic accuracy of St. Luke cannot be more strikingly illustrated than it is by one of 
the Ephesian inscriptions in Boeckh, No. 2,960, which records how the " Avgustus-loving" 
(4>iAoa-e'!3acrTo?) senate of the Ephesians, and its temple-adorning (veuKopos) Demos conse- 
crated a building in the Froconsulship (en-i av6vnaTov) of Peducaeus Priscinus, and by the 
decree of Tiberius Claudius Italicus, the "Recorder" (-ypaju^aTev?) of the Demos. 

i vemKopov, "temple-sweeper." It was an honorary title granted by the Emperor to 
various cities in Asia, and often recorded on coins. 

2 Acts xix. 36, KaTe<TTakfj.cvov<; vnapxeiv ko.1 jurjSei' 7rpoireTe's irotelv. Cicero (pro FldCCO, vii., 

viii.) gives a striking picture of the rash and unjust legislation of Asiatic cities, "quum in 
theatro imperiti homines rerum omnium rudes ignarique considerant " (cf. Tac. H. ii. 80). 

3 Wood, p. 14. This, strange to say, was a common charge against Jews (see on 
Rom. ii. 22). 

4 Another striking indication that St. Paul's method as a missionary was not to shock 
the prejudices of idolaters. Chrysostom most unjustly accuses the Recorder of here 
making a false and claptrap statement. 

5 (ryopcuoi ayovTac, " Conventus peraguntur "—not as in E. V., "the law is open." Every 
province was divided into districts (Sioi/^o-eis, conventus), which met at some assize town. 
"Ephesum vero, alteram lumen Asise. remotiores conveniunt " (Plin. H. JV., v. 31). 

6 There was under ordinary circumstances only one Proconsul in any province. The 
plural maybe generic, or may mean the Proconsul and his assessors [consiliarii), as ^yejutwe? 
means ' ' the Procurator or his assessors " in Jos. B. J. ii. 16, 1. But Basnage has 
ingeniously conjectured that the allusion may be to the joint authority of the Imperial 
Procurators, the knight P. Celer, and the freedman Helius. In the fij-st year of Nero, 
A.D. 54, they had, at the instigation of Agrippina, poisoned Junius Silanus, Proconsul 
of Asia, whose gentle nature did not preserve him from the peril of his royal blood (Tac. 
Ann. xiii. 1). As P. Celer at any rate did not return to Rome till the year A.D. 57, 
it is conjectured that he and Helius may have been allowed to be Vice-Proconsuls till 
tin's period by way of rewarding them for their crimes (Lewin, Fasti Sacri, 1806, 1838 ; 
Biflcoe on the Acts, pp, 282 — 285). 

7 There were three regular meetings of the Assembly {ewofj.oi ckkMjo-ku) every monti 
(and see Wood, p. 50). 



PAUL AT EPHESUS. 375 

them very forcibly that, since Asia was a senatorial, not an imperial province, 
and was therefore governed by a Proconsul with a few officials, not by a 
Propraetor with a legion, they were responsible for good order, and would 
most certainly be held accountable for any breach of the peace. A day of 
disorder might forfeit the privileges of years. The Recorder's speech, it has 
been said, is the model of a popular harangue. Such excitement on the part 
of the Ephesians was undignified, as the grandeur of their worship was unim- 
peached ; it was unjustifiable, as they could prove nothing against the men ; 
it was unnecessary, as other means of redress were open ; and, finally, if 
neither pride nor justice availed anything, fear of the Roman power 1 should 
restrain them. They felt thoroughly ashamed, and the Recorder was now 
able to dismiss them from the theatre. 

It is not, however, likely that the danger to St. Paul's person ceased, in a 
month of which he had spoiled the festivity, and in a city which was thronged, 
as this was, with aggrieved interests and outraged superstitions. Whether 
he was thrown into prison, or what were the dangers to which he alludes, or 
in what way God delivered him "from so great a death," 2 we cannot tell. At 
any rate, it became impossible for him to carry out his design of staying at 
Ephesus till Pentecost. 3 All that we are further told is that, when the hubbub 
had ceased, he called the disciples together, and, after comforting them, 4 bade 
the Church farewell — certainly for many years, perhaps for ever. 5 Ho set 
out, whether by sea or by land we do not know, on his way to Macedonia. From 
Silas he had finally parted at Jerusalem. Timothy, Titus, Luke, Erastus, were 
all elsewhere ; but Gaius and Aristarchus, saved from their perilous position 
in the theatre, were still with them, and he was now joined by the two 
Ephesians, Tychicus and Trophimus, who remained faithful to him till the 
very close of his career. 

The Church which he had founded became the eminent Christian metro- 
polis of a line of Bishops, and there, four centuries afterwards, was held the 
great (Ecumenical Council which deposed Nestorius, the heretical Patriarch 
of Constantinople. 6 But " its candlestick " has been for centuries " removed out 
of his place ; " 7 the squalid Mohammedan village which is nearest to its site 
does not count one Christian in its insignificant population ; 8 its temple is a 

1 Hackett, p. 246. There was nothing on which the Komans looked with such jealousy 
as a tumultuous meeting, " Qui coetum et concentum fecerit capitate sit" (Sen. Controv. 
iii. 8). The hint would not be likely to be lost on Demetrius. 

2 2. Cor. i. 10. 

3 The period of his stay at Ephesus was rpieriW oAtjv (Acts xx. 31). The ruin called 
" the prison of St. Paul" may point to a true tradition that he was for a time confined, 
and those who see in Rom. xvi. 3 —20, the fragment of a letter to Ephesus, suppose that 
his imprisonment was shared by his kinsmen Andronicus and Junias, who were " of note 
among the Apostles," and earlier converts than himself. 

4 Acts XX. 1, n-apa/caAecras (A, B, D, E). 

5 It was only the elders whom he saw at Miletus. 

« A.D. 431. 7 Eev. ii. 5. 

8 V. supra p. 359. See, for the present condition of Ephesus, Arundell, Seven Churches 
of Asia, p. 27 ; Fellowes, Asia Minor, p. 274 ; Falkener, Ephesus and the Temple of 
Diana ; and especially Mr. J. T. Wood's Discoveries at Ephesus. The site of the temple 
has first been established with certainty by Mr. "Wood's excavations. 



376 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

mass of shapeless ruins ; its harbour is a reedy pool ; the bittern booms amid 
its pestilent and stagnant marshes ; and malaria and oblivion reign supreme 
over the place where the wealth of ancient civilisation gathered around the 
scenes of its grossest superstitions and its most degraded sins. " A noisy 
flight of crows," says a modern traveller, " seemed to insult its silence ; we 
heard the partridge call in the area of the theatre and the Stadium." * 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 

" Hopes have precarious life ; 

They are oft blighted, withered, snapt sheer off J — 

But faithfulness can feed on suffering, 

And knows no disappointment." — Spanish Gipsy. 

No one can realise the trials and anxieties which beset the life of the great 
Apostle during his stay at Ephesus, without bearing in mind how grave were 
the causes of concern from which he was suffering, in consequence of the 
aberrations of other converts. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was 
written during the latter part of his three years' residence at the Ionian 
metropolis ; 2 and it reveals to us a state of things which must have rent his 
heart in twain. Any one who has been privileged to feel a deep personal 
responsibility for some great and beloved institution, will best appreciate how 
wave after wave of affliction must have swept across his sea of troubles as he 
heard from time to time those dark rumours from Galatia and Corinth, which 
showed how densely the tares of the enemy had sprung up amid the good 
wheat which he had sown. 

Apollos, on his return to Ephesus, must have told him some very un- 
favourable particulars. St. Paul had now been absent from the Corinthians 
for nearly three years, and they may well have longed — as we see that they did 
long — for his presence with an earnestness which even made them unjust 
towards him. The little band of converts — mostly of low position, and some 
of them of despicable antecedents — not a few of them slaves, and some of 
them slaves of the most degraded rank — were left in the midst of a heathen- 
dom which presented itself at Corinth under the gayest and most alluring 
aspects. It is not in a day that the habits of a life can be thrown aside. Even 
those among them whose conversion was most sincere had yet a terrible battle 
to fight against two temptations : the temptation to dishonesty, which had 
mingled with their means of gaining a livelihood ; and the temptation to sen- 
suality, which was interwoven with the very fibres of their being. "With 
Christianity awoke conscience. Sins to which they had once lightly yielded 

1 See Chandler, pp. 109—137. a Probably about April, A.p. 87. 



CONDITION OP THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 377 

as matters of perfect indifference, now required an intense effort to resist and 
overcome, and every failure, so far from being at the worst a venial weakness, 
involved the agonies of remorse and shame. And when they remembered the 
superficially brighter and easier lives which they had spent while they were 
yet pagans ; 1 when they daily witnessed how much sin there might be with so 
little apparent sorrow ; when they felt the burdens of their life doubled, and 
those earthly pleasures which they had once regarded as its only alleviations 
rendered impossible or wrong — while as yet they were unable to realise the 
exquisite consolation of Christian joy and Christian hope — they were tempted 
either to relapse altogether, or to listen with avidity to any teacher whose 
doctrines, if logically developed, might help to relax the stringency of their 
sacred obligations. While Paul was with them they were comparatively safe. 
The noble tyranny of his personal influence acted on thorn like a spell ; and 
with his presence to elevate, his words to inspire, his example to encourage 
them, they felt it more easy to fling away all that was lower and viler, because 
they could realise their right to what was higher and holier. But when he 
had been so long away — when they were daily living in the great wicked 
streets, among the cunning, crowded merchants, in sight and hearing of 
everything which could quench spiritual aspirations and kindle carnal desires ; 
when the gay, common life went on around them, and the chariot- wheels of the 
Lord were still afar — it was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision began to 
fade. The lustral water of Baptism had been sprinkled on their foreheads ; 
they fed on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ ; but, alas ! Corinth 
was not heaven, and the prose of daily life followed on the poetry of their 
first enthusiasm, and it was difficult to realise that, for them, those living 
streets might be daily brightened with manna dews. Their condition was like 
the pause and sigh of Lot's wife, as, amid the sulphurous storm, she gazed 
back on the voluptuous ease of the City of the Plain. Might they no longer 
taste of the plentiful Syssitia on some festive day ? Might they not walk at 
twilight in the laughing bridal procession, and listen to the mirthful jest ? 
Might they not watch the Hieroduli dance at some lovely festival in the Tem- 
ples of Acrocorinth ? Was all life to be hedged in for them with thorny 
scruples ? "Were they to gaze henceforth in dreaming phantasy, not upon 
bright faces of youthful deities, garlanded with rose and hyacinth, but on the 
marred visage of One who was crowned with thorns ? Oh, it was hard to 
choose the kingdom of God ; hard to remember that now they were delivered 
out of the land of Egypt ; hard for their enervation to breathe the eager and 
difficult air of the pure wilderness. It was hard to give up the coarse and 
near for the immaterial and the far ; hard not to lust after the reeking flesh- 
pots, and not to loathe the light angel food ; hard to give up the purple wine 
in the brimming goblet for the cold water from the spiritual rock ; hard to 

* *' In the young pagan world 

Men deified the beautiful, the glad, 

The strong, the boastful, and it came to nought ; 

We have raised pain and sorrow into heaven " (Athelwold). 



378 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUJL. 

curb and crucify passions which once they had consecrated under guise of 
religion ; hard not to think all these temptations irresistible, and to see the 
way of escape which God had appointed them for each ; hard to be bidden to 
rejoice, and not to be suffered even to murmur at all these hardnesses of life. 
And the voice which had taught them the things of God had now for so long 
been silent ; for three years they had not seen the hand which pointed them to 
Heaven. It was with some of them as with Israel, when Moses was on Sinai: 
they sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Many, very many — 
some in shame and secrecy, others openly justifying their relapse by the devil- 
doctrines of perverted truth — had plunged once more into the impurity, the 
drunkenness, and the selfishness, as though they had never heard the heavenly 
calling, or tasted the eternal gift. 

So much even Apollos must Lave told the Apostle ; and when he had 
occasion, in a letter now lost 1 — probably because it was merely a brief and 
businesslike memorandum — to write and inform them of his intended, but 
subsequently abandoned, plan of paying them a double visit, and to bid them 
contribute to the collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, he had, in a 
message which required subsequent explanation, briefly but emphatically 
bidden them not to keep company with fornicators. 2 

And now a letter had come from Corinth. So far from dwelling on the 
ruinous disorders into which many members of the Church had fallen, it was 
entirely self-complacent in tone ; and yet it proved the existence of much 
doctrinal perplexity, and, in asking advice about a number of practical 
subjects, had touched upon questions which betrayed some of the moral 
and intellectual errors which the Church, in writing the letter, had so dis- 
ingenuously concealed. 3 

1. After greeting him, and answering him, in words which he quotes, that 
" they remembered him in all things, and kept the ordinances as he delivered 
them," 4 they had asked him a whole series of questions about celibacy and 
marriage, which had evidently been warmly discussed in the Church, and 
decided in very different senses. Was married life in itself wrong, or if not 
wrong, yet undesirable ? or, if not even undesirable, still a lower and less 
worthy condition than celibacy ? When persons were already married, was it 
their duty, or, at any rate, would it be saintlier to live together as though they 
were unmarried ? Might widows and widowers marry a second time ? Were 
mixed marriages between Christians and heathens to be tolerated, or ought 
a Christian husband to repudiate a heathen wife, and a Christian wife to leave 
a heathen husband ? and ought fathers to seek marriages for their daughters, 
or let them grow up as virgins ? 

2. Again, what were they to do about meats offered to idols ? They had 

1 The spurious letter of the Corinthians to St. Paul, and his answer, preserved in 
Armenian, are perfectly valueless. 

2 See 1 Cor. x. 1—14. 

8 The interchange of such letters (rm}M) on disputed points of doctrine between th« 
■ynagoc^iefl was common. 
* 1 Cor. xi. 2. 



CONDITION OP THE CHUECH AT CORINTH. 379 

prefaced their inquiry on this subject with the conceited remark that " they 
all had knowledge," 1 and had perhaps indicated their own opinion by the 
argument that an idol was nothing in the world, and that all things were 
lawful to their Christian freedom. Still, they wished to know whether they 
might ever attend any of the idol festivals ? The question was an important 
one for the poor, to whom a visceratio 2 was no small help and indulgence. 
Was it lawful to buy meat in the open market, which, without their knowing 
it, might have been offered to idols ? Might they go as guests to their heathen 
friends and relations, and run the risk of partaking of that which had been 
part of a sacrifice ? 3 

3. Then, too, a dispute had risen among them about the rule to be observed 
in assemblies. Was it the duty of men to cover their heads ? Might women 
appear with their heads uncovered ? And might they speak and teach in public ? 

4. They had difficulties, also, about spiritual gifts. Which was the more 
important, speaking with tongues or preaching ? WTien two or three began 
at the same time to preach or speak with tongues, what were they to do ? 

5. Further, some among them had been perplexed by great doubts about 
the Resurrection. There were even some who maintained that by the Resur- 
rection was meant something purely spiritual, and that it was past already. 
This view had arisen from the immense material difficulties which surrounded 
the whole subject of a resurrection of the body. Would Paul give them his 
solution of some of their difficulties ? 

6. He had asked them to make a collection for the poor in Judaea : the} 
would be glad to hear something more about this. What plans would he 
recommend to them ? 

7. Lastly, they were very anxious to receive Ap olios once more among 
them. They had enjoyed his eloquence, and profited by his knowledge. 
Would Paul try to induce him to come, as well as pay them his own promised 
visit? 

Such, we gather from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, were the in- 
quiries of a letter which had been brought to the Apostle at Ephesus by 
Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus. It was inevitable that St. Paul should 
talk to these worthy slaves about the Church of which they were the delegates. 
There was quite enough in the letter itself to create a certain misgiving in 

1 1 Cor. viii. 1. 

2 Public feasts at funerals or idol festivals, &c, Cic. Off. ii. 16 ; Liv. viii. 32, &c. 
They played a large part in the joy and plenty of ancient life. Arist. JStk. viii. 9, 5 ; 
Thuc. ii. 38. 

3 The Jews had strong feelings on this subject (cf. Num. xxv. 2 ; Ps. cvi. 28 ; Tob. i. 
10 — 14) ; but it is monstrous to say that St. Paul here teaches the violation of such 
scruples, or that he is referred to in Rev. ii. 14. On the contrary, he says, " Even if 
you as Gentiles think nothing of it, still do not do it, for the sake of others ; only the 
concession to the weak need not become a tormenting scrupulosity." It is doubtful 
whether even St. Peter and St. John would not have gone quite as far as this. So strict 
were Judaic notions on the subject that, in the case of wine, for instance, not only did 
a cask of it become undrinkable to a Jew if a single heathen libation had been poured 
from it, but " even a touch with the presumed intention of pouring away a little to the 
gods is enough to render it unlawful." This is called the law of -py 



380 THE LIFE AND WOfiK OP ST. PAUL. 

his mind, and some of its queries were sufficient to betray an excited state of 
opinion. But when he came to talk with these visitants from Chloe's house- 
hold, and they told him the simple truth, he stood aghast with horror, and 
was at the same time overwhelmed with grief. Reluctantly, bit by bit, in 
answer to his questionings, they revealed a state of things which added dark- 
ness to the night of his distress. 

8. First of all, he learnt from them that the Church which he had founded 
was split up into deplorable factions. 

It was the result of visits from various teachers who had followed in the 
wake of Paul, and built upon his foundations very dubious materials by way 
of superstructure. " Many teachers, much strife," had been one of the wise 
and pregnant sayings of the great Hillel, and it had been fully exemplified 
at Corinth, where, in the impatient expression of St. Paul, they had had " ten 
thousand pedagogues." The great end of edification had been lost sight of in 
the violences of faction, and all deep spirituality had been evaporated in dis- 
putatious talk. He heard sad rumours of " strifes, heartburnings, rages, 
dissensions, backbitings, whisperings, inflations, disorderliness." x 

i. It became clear that even the visit and teaching of Apollos had done 
harm — harm which he certainly had not intended to do, and which, as a loyal 
friend and follower of Paul, he was the first to regret. Paul's own preaching 
to these Corinthians had been designedly simple, dealing with the great broad 
fact of a Redeemer crucified for sin, and couched in language which made no 
pretence to oratorical ornament. But Apollos, who had followed him, though 
an able man, was an inexperienced Christian, and not only by the natural charm 
of his impassioned oratory, but also by the way in which he had entered into 
the subtle refinements so familiar to the Alexandrian intellect, had uninten- 
tionally led them first of all to despise the unsophisticated simplicity of St. 
Paul's teaching, and next to give the rein to all the sceptical fancies with 
which their faith was overlaid. Both the manner and the matter of the fervid 
convert had so delighted them that, with entire opposition to his own wishes, 
they had elevated him into the head of a party, and had perverted his views 
into dangerous extravagances. These Apollonians were so puffed up with 
the conceit of knowledge, so filled with the importance of their own in- 
tellectual emancipation, that they had also begun to claim a fatal moral liberty. 
They had distracted the Sunday gatherings with the egotisms of rival oratory ; 
had shown a contemptuous disregard for the scruples of weaker brethren ; 
had encouraged women to harangue in the public assemblies as the equals of 
men ; were guilty of conduct which laid them open to the charge of the 
grossest inconsistency ; and even threw the cloak of sophistical excuse over 
one crime so heinous that the very heathen were ready to cry shame on the 
offender. In the accounts brought to him of this Apollos-party, St. Paul 
could not but see the most extravagant exaggeration of his own doctrines— 
the half -truths, which are ever the most dangerous of errors. If it was pos. 

1 2 Cor. xii. 20, 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 381 

sible to wrest the truths which he himself had taught into the heretical notions 
which were afterwards promulgated by Marcion, his keen eye could detect in 
the perversions of the Alexandrian eloquence of A polios the deadly germs of 
what would afterwards develop into Antinomian Gnosticism. 

ii. But Apollos was not the only teacher who had visited Corinth. Some 
Judaic Christians had come, who had been as acceptable to the Jewish mem- 
bers of the Church as A polios was to the Greeks. 1 Armed with commendatory 
letters from some of the twelve at Jerusalem, they claimed the authority of 
Peter, or, as they preferred to call him, of Kephas. They did not, indeed, teach 
the necessity of circumcision, as others of their party did in Galatia. There 
the local circumstances would give some chance of success to teaching which 
in Corinth would have been rejected with contempt ; and perhaps these parti- 
cular emissaries felt at least some respect for the compact at Jerusalem. But 
yet their influence had been very disastrous, and had caused the emergence of 
a Petrine party in the Church. This party — the ecclesiastical ancestors of 
those who subsequently vented their hatred of Paul in the Pseudo- Clemen- 
tines — openly and secretly disclaimed his authority, and insinuated disparage- 
ment of his doctrines. Kephas, they said, was the real head of the Apostles, 
and therefore of the Christians. Into his hands had Christ entrusted the keys 
of the kingdom ; on the rock of his confession was the Church of the Messiah 
to be built. Paul was a presumptuous interloper, whose conduct to Kephas 
at Antioch had been most unbecoming. For who was Paul ? not an Apostle 
at all, but an unauthorised innovator. He had been a persecuting Sanhedrist, 
and he was an apostate Jew. What had he been at Corinth ? A preaching 
tent-maker, nothing more. Kephas, and other Apostles, and the brethren of 
the Lord, when they travelled about, were accompanied by their wives or by 
ministering women, and claimed the honour and support to which they were 
entitled. Why had not Paul done the same ? Obviously because he felt the 
insecurity of his own position. And as for his coming again, a weak, vacillat- 
ing, unaccredited pretender, such as he was, would take care not to come 
again. And these preachings of his were heretical, especially in their pro- 
nounced indifference to the Levitic law. Was he not breaking down that 
hedge about the law, the thickening of which had been the life-long task of 
centuries of eminent Rabbis ? Yery different had been the scene after 
Peter's preaching at Pentecost ! It was the speaking with tongues — not mere 
dubious doctrinal exhortation — which was the true sign of spirituality. We 
are more than sure that the strong, and tender, and noble nature of St. Peter 
would as little have sanctioned this subterranean counter- working against the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, as Apollos discountenanced the impious audacities 
which sheltered themselves under his name. 

1 The circumstances of Corinth were very similar when Clement wrote them his first 
Epistle. He had still to complain of that " strange and alien, and, for the elect of God, 
detestable and unholy spirit of faction, which a few rash and self-willed persons 
(irpoo-wTra) kindled to such a pitch of dementation, that their holy and famous reputation, 
«o worthy of all men's love, was greatly blasphemed " {Ep. ad. Cor. L). 



382 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

iii. And then had come another set of Judaisers — one man in particular — 
to whom the name of even Kephas was unsatisfactory. He apparently was — 
or, what is a very different thing, he professed to be — an adherent of James, 1 
and to him even Peter was not altogether sound. He called himself a 
follower of Christ, and disdained any other name. Perhaps he was one of 
the Desposyni. At any rate, he prided himself on having seen Christ, and 
known Christ in the flesh. Now the Lord Jesus had not married, and James, 
the Bishop of Jerusalem, was unmarried ; and this teacher evidently shared 
the Essene abhorrence of marriage. He it was who had started all the 
subtle refinements of questions respecting celibacy and the married life. He 
it was who gathered around him a few Jews of Ebionite proclivities, who 
degraded into a party watchword even the sacred name of Christ. 2 

9. Thus, as St. Paul now learnt fully for the first time, the Church of Corinth 
was a scene of quarrels, disputes, partisanships, which, in rending asunder 
its unity, ruined its strength. On all these subjects the Corinthians, in their 
self-satisfied letter, had maintained a prudent but hardly creditable silence. 
Nor was this all that they had concealed. They had asked questions about 
spiritual gifts ; but it was left for the household of Chloe to break to St. 
Paul the disquieting news that the assemblies of the Church had degenerated 
into scenes so noisy, so wild, so disorderly, that there were times when any 
heathen who dropped in could only say that they were all mad. Sometimes 
half a dozen enthusiasts were on their legs at once, all pouring forth wild 
series of sounds which no human being present could understand, except that 
sometimes, amid these unseemly — and might they not at times, with some of 
these Syrian emissaries, be these half- simulated — ecstasies, there were heard 
words that made the blood run cold with shuddering horror. 3 At other 
times, two or three preachers would interrupt each other in the attempt to 
gain the ear of the congregation all at the same moment. Women rose to 
give their opinions, and that without a veil on their heads, as though they 
were not ashamed to be mistaken for the Hetairse, who alone assumed such an 
unblushing privilege. So far from being a scene of peace, the Sunday ser- 
vices had become stormy, heated, egotistic, meaningless, unprofitable. 

10. And there was worse behind. It might at least have been supposed 
that the Agapse would bear some faint traditional resemblance to their name, 
and be means of reunion and blessedness worthy of their connexion with the 
Eucharistic feast ! Far from it ! The deadly leaven of selfishness— display- 

i We cannot for a moment believe that Peter and James really approved of the 
methods of these men, because to do so would have been a flagrant breach of their own 
compact (Gal. ii. 9). But it is matter of daily experience that the rank and file of 
parties are infinitely less wise and noble than their leaders. 

2 About the Christ party there have been three main views :— (1) That they were 
adherents of James (Storr, &c. ) ; (2) that they were neutrals, who held aloof from all parties 
(Eichhorn, &c.) ; (3) that they were a very slight modification of the Peter-party (Baur, 
PavZ. i. 272—292). It is remarkable that to this day there is in England and America 
a sect, which, professing to disdain human authority, usurps the exclusive name of 
" Christians" (see Schaff. Apost. Ch. i. 339). 

a 1 Cor. xii. 3 (cf. 1 John ii. 22 ; iv. 1 — 3) ; 'AvdOtixa 'lTjaow. 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 883 

ing itself in its two forms of sensuality and pride — had insinua ted itself even 
into these once simple and charitable gatherings. The kiss of peace could 
hardly be other than a hypocritical form between brethren, who at the very 
moment might be impleading one another at law before the tribunal of a 
heathen Praetor about some matter of common honesty. The rich brought 
their luxurious provisions, and greedily devoured them, without waiting for 
any one ; while the poor, hungry-eyed Lazaruses — half-starved slaves, who 
had no contributions of their own to bring — watched them with hate and 
envy as they sat famishing and unrelieved by their full-fed brethren. Greedi- 
ness and egotism had thus thrust themselves into the most sacred unions , 
and the besetting Corinthian sin of intoxication had been so little restrained 
that men had been seen to stretch drunken hands to the very chalice of the 
Lord! 

11. Last and worst, not only had uncleanness found its open defenders, so 
that Christians were not ashamed to be seen sitting at meat amid the lasci- 
vious surroundings of heathen temples, but one prominent member of the 
Church was living in notorious crime with his own stepmother during the 
lifetime of his father ; and, though the very Pagans execrated this atrocity, 
yet he had not been expelled from the Christian communion, not even made 
to do penance in it, but had found brethren ready, not merely to palliate his 
offence, but actually to plume themselves upon leaving it unpunished. This 
man seems to have been a person of distinction and influence, whom it was 
advantageous to a Church largely composed of slaves and women to count 
among them. Doubtless this had facilitated his condonation, which may have 
been founded on some antinonian plea of Christian liberty; or on some Rabbinic 
notion that old ties were rendered non-existent by the new conditions of a 
proselyte; or by peculiarities of circumstance unknown to us. But though 
this person was the most notorious, he was by no means the only offender, and 
there were Corinthian Christians — even many of them — who were impeni- 
tently guilty of uncleanness, fornication, and lasciviousness. 1 In none of 
his writings are the Apostle's warnings against this sin — the besetting sin of 
Corinth — more numerous, more solemn, or more emphatic. 2 

Truly, as he heard this catalogue of iniquities — while he listened to the dark 
tale of the shipwreck of all his fond hopes which he had learnt to entertain 
during the missionary labour of eighteen months — the heart of St. Paul must 
have sunk within him. He might well have folded his hands in utter despair. 
He might well have pronounced his life and his preaching a melancholy 
failure. He might well have fled like Elijah into utter solitude, and prayed, 
" Now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers." 
But it was not thus that the news affected this indomitable man. His heart, 
indeed, throbbed with anguish, his eyes were streaming with tears, as, having 
heard to the bitter end all that the slaves of Chloe had to tell him, he pro- 
ceeded to make his plans; First, of course, his intended brief immediate 

1 2 Cor. xii 2L 3 1 Cor. v. 11 ; vi. 15—18 ; x.8; xv. 33, 34. 



384 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

visit to Oorinth must be given up. Neither lie nor they were yet in a mood 
in which their meeting could be otherwise than infinitely painful. He must 
at once despatch Titus to Corinth to inform them of his change of plan, to 
arrange about the collection, and to do what little he could, before rejoining 
him at Troas. He must also despatch a messenger to Timothy to tell him not to 
proceed to Corinth at present. And then he might have written an apocalyptic 
letter, full of burning denunciation and fulminated anathemas ; he might have 
blighted these conceited, and lascivious, and quarrelsome disgracers of the name 
of Christian with withering invectives, androlledover their trembling consciences 
thunders as loud as those of Sinai. Not such, however, was the tone he adopted, 
or the spirit in which he wrote. In deep agitation, which he yet managed 
almost entirely to suppress, summoning all the courage of his nature, forgetting 
all the dangers and trials which surrounded him at Ephesus, asking God for the 
wisdom and guidance which he so sorely needed, crushing down deep within 
him all personal indignations, every possible feeling of resentment or egotism 
at the humiliations to which he had personally been subjected, he called 
Sosthenes to his side, and flinging his whole heart into the task immediately 
before him, began to dictate to him one of the most astonishing and eloquent 
of all his letters, the first extant Epistle to the Corinthians. Yaried as are 
the topics with which it deals, profound as were the difficulties which had 
been suggested to him, novel as were the questions which he had to face, 
alienated as were many of the converts to whom he had to appeal, we see at 
once that the Epistle was no laborious or long-polished composition. En- 
lightened by the Spirit of God, St. Paul was in possession of that insight 
which sees at once into the heart of every moral difficulty. He was as capable 
of dealing with Greek culture and Greek sensuality as with Judaic narrow- 
ness and Judaic Pharisaism. He shows himself as great a master when he 
is applying the principles of Christianity to the concrete and complicated 
realities of life, as when he is moving in the sphere of dogmatic theology. 
The phase of Jewish opposition with which he has here to deal has been modified 
by contact with Hellenism, but it still rests on grounds of externalism, and 
must be equally met by spiritual truths. Problems however dark, details 
however intricate, become lucid and orderly at once in the light of external 
distinctions. In teaching his converts St. Paul had no need to burn the mid- 
night oil in long studies. Even his most elaborate Epistles were in reality 
not elaborate. They leapt like vivid sparks from a heart in which the fire 
of love to God burnt until death with an ever brighter and brighter flame. 

1. His very greeting shows the fulness of his heart. As his authority had been 
impugned, he calls himself " an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God," and 
addresses them as a Church, as sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be saints, 
uniting with them in the prayer for grace and peace all who, whatever their differ- 
ing shades of opinion or their place of abode, call upon the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, both theirs and ours. 1 Thus, in his very address to them, he strikes the 

1 "Est enim haec periculo9a tentatio nullum Ecclcsiam putare ubi non appareat perfects 
purita* " (Calvin). The absence of fixed ecclesiastical organisation is clear, as he addresses the 



CONDITION OP THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 335 

key-note of his own claim to authority, and of the unity and holiness which they so 
deeply needed. " Observe, too," says St. Chrysostom, " how he ever nails them 
down to the name of Christ, not mentioning any man — either Apostle or teacher — 
but continually mentioning Him for whom they yearn, as men preparing to awaken 
those who are drowsy after a debauch. For nowhere in any other Epistle is the 
name of Christ so continuously introduced ; here, however, it is introduced frequently, 
and by means of it he weaves together almost his whole exordium." 1 

2. Although he has united Sosthenes 2 with him in the superscription, he 
continues at once in the first person to tell them that he thanks God always for the 
grace given them in Christ Jesus, for the eloquence and knowledge with which 
they were enriched in Him, so that in waiting for the Apocalypse of Christ, they 
were behindhand in no spiritual gift ; and as the testimony of Christ was confirmed 
among them, so should Christ confirm them to be blameless unto the end, since God 
was faithful, who had called them unto the communion of His Son Jesus Christ our 
Lord.* 

3. That communion leads him at once to one of the subjects of which his heart 
is full. He has heard on indisputable authority, and not from one person only, of 
schisms and strifes among them, and he implores them by the name of Christ to 
strive after greater unity in thought and action. 4 They were saying, " I am of 
Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Kephas, and I of Christ." What ! has Christ been 
parcelled into fragments ? 5 Some of them called themselves his party ; but had he 
been crucified for them ? had they been baptised into his name ? It may be that 
Apollos, fresh from his discipleship to John's baptism, had dwelt very prominently 
on the importance of that initial rite ; but so liable were men to attach importance 
to the mere human minister, that Paul, like his Master, had purposely abstained 
from administering it, and except Crispus and G-aius — and, as he afterwards recalls, 
Stephanas and his household- -he cannot remember that he has baptised any of them. 
Christ had sent him not to baptise, but to preach ; and that not in wisdom of utter- 
ance, that Christ's cross might not be rendered void. The mention of preaching 
brings him to the aberrations of the Apollonian party. They had attached immense 
importance to eloquence, logic, something which they called and exalted as wisdom. 
He shows them that they were on a wholly mistaken track. Such human wisdom, 
such ear-flattering eloquence, such superficial and plausible enticements, he had 
deliberately rejected. Of human wisdom he thought little. It lay under the ban 
of revelation. 6 It had not led the world to the knowledge of God. It had not 
saved the world from the crucifixion of Christ. And, therefore, he had not preached 
to them about the Logos, or about .ZEons, or in Philonian allegories, or with philo- 
sophical refinements. He had offered neither a sign to the Jews, nor wisdom to the 
Greeks. What he had to preach was regarded by the world as abject foolishness — 
it was the Cross — it was the doctrine of a crucified Messiah, which was to the Jews 
revolting ; of a crucified Saviour, which was to the Greeks ridiculous ; but it pleased 

entire community, and holds no " bishops " responsible for the disorders, and for carrying out the 
excommuni cation. 

1 1 Cor. i. 1—3. The name of Christ occurs no less than nine times in the first nine verses. 

2 Whether the Sosthenes of Acts xviii. 17, who may have been subsequently converted (Wetst. 
ii. 576), or an unknown brother, we do not know. He may have been one of the bearers of the 
Corinthian letter to Ephesus ; " one of the seventy, and afterwards Bishop of Colophon " (Euseb. 

3 i. 4 — 9. Observe the perfect sincerity of the Apostle. He desires, as always, to thank God 
on behalf of his converts ; here, however, he has no moral praise to imply. The Corinthians have 
received rich spiritual blessings and endowments, but he cannot speak of them as he does of the 
Thessalonians or Philippians. 

4 Ver. 10, vot teal . . . yvtojuTj, " intus in credendis, et sententia prolata in agendis " (Bengel). 

5 It is deeply instructive to observe that St. Paul here refuses to enter into the differences of 
view from which the parties sprang. He does not care to decide which section of wrangling 
" theologians " or " churchmen " is right and which is wrong. He denounces the spirit of party as 
a Bin and a shame where unity between Christians is the first of duties and the greatest of 



6 i. 20, rov <rv&Twrii« k. t. K.. but in Isa. xcriii. 18 (cf. Ps. xlviii. 12), " where is he who tmnteth 
HuUnurst" 

I 



386 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

God to save believers by the foolishness (in the world's view) of the thing preached, 1 
and it was to those who were in the way of salvation the wisdom and the power of 
G-od. They were not the wise, and the mighty, and the noble of the world, but, as 
a rule, the foolish, and the weak, and the despised. 2 It was not with the world's 
power, but with its impotences ; not with its strength, but with its feebleness ; not 
with its knowledge, but with its ignorance ; not with its rank, but its ignobleness ; 
not with kings and philosophers, but with slaves and women, that its divine forces 
were allied ; and with them did G-od so purpose to reveal His power that no glory 
could accrue to man, save from the utter abasement of human glory. That was 
why Paul had come to them, not with rhetoric, but with the simple doctrine of 
Christ crucified ; 3 not with oratorio dignity, but in weakness, fear, and trembling ; 
not with winning elocution, but with spiritual demonstration and spiritual power- 
so that man might be utterly lost in God, and they might feel the origin of their 
faith to be not human but divine. 4 

4. Yet they must not be misled by his impassioned paradox into the notion that 
the matter and method of his teaching was really folly. On the contrary, it was 
wisdom of the deepest and loftiest kind — only it was a wisdom of God hidden from 
the wise of the world ; a wisdom of insight into things which eye hath not seen nor 
ear heard, and which had never set foot on human heart, 5 but which were revealed 
to him by that Spirit which alone searcheth the depths of God, 6 and which he had 
taught in words not learnt from wisdom, but from that same Spirit of God, com- 
bining spirituals with spirituals. 7 And this spiritual wisdom was, to the natural 
man, 8 folly, because it could be only discerned by a spiritual faculty of which the 
natural man was absolutely devoid. It was to him what painting is to the blind, or 
music to the deaf. 9 But the spiritual man possesses the requisite discernment, and, 
sharing the mind of Christ, is thereby elevated above the reach of merely natural 
judgment. 

5. And then, with wholesome irony, he adds that this divine condition, which 
was earthly folly, he could only teach them in its merest elements ; in its perfection 
it was only for the perfect, but they, who thought themselves so wise and learned, 
were in spiritual wisdom fleshen babes, needing milk such as he had given them, 
not meat, which they — being fleshly — were still too feeble to digest. 10 These might 
seem hard words, but while there were envy, and strife, and divisions among them, 
how could they be regarded as anything but fleshy and unspiritual? Paul and 
Apollos ! who were Paul and Apollos but mere human ministers ? Paul planting, 
Apollos watering— neither of them anything in himself, but each of them one 
in their ministry, and each responsible for his own share in it. God only gave the 
harvest. " God's fellow- workers are we; God's acre, God's building are ye." Paul, 

1 i. 21, Sta tt}s iutipLa<; tow KripvynaTos, not " the foolishness of preaching " (/crjpu^ews). In 23, 24 
"cross," " stumblingblock," "folly," " power " would be respectively seccel, miscol, mashcal, secel, 
and some see in it a sign that St. Paul had in his thoughts a Syriac paronomasia (Winer, N. T. 
Gramm., E. T., p. 658). 

2 A needful warning to " Corinthios non minus lascivia, quam opulentid, et philosophiae studio 
inaignes " (Cic. De Leg. Agr. ii. 32). 

3 All the more remarkable because "a Corinthian style" meant "a polished style" (Wetst. 
ad loc.). 

* l. 19 ; ii. 5 ; cf. Jer. ix. 23, 24 ; Isa. xxxiii. 18, is freely cited from the LXX. 

5 Possibly a vague echo of Isa. lxiv. 4 (cf. lii. 15, and lxv. 17) ; or from some lost book (Chrys. ) 
like the " Revelation of Elias," 67ri Kap&iav avifiv), ID V$ rro. Both explanations are possible, for 
the lost book may have echoed Isaiah. A modern theory regards the words as liturgical. 

6 Ver. 10. The attempt to make Rev. ii. 24 an ironical reference to this is most baseless. 

7 Ver. 13, 7rveu/u.aTt»cois nveufiaTLKa <rvyKpivopTes, others render it " explaining spiritual things to 
spiritual men " (Gen. xl. 8 ; Dan. v. 12 ; LXX.) or " in spiritual words." 

8 Ver. 14, *pvx>.icb<;, " homines solius animae et carnis " (Tert. Dejajun. 17). 

9 ii. 6 — 16. He refutes the Alexandrian teaching by accepting its very terms and principle — 
" mystery," " initiated," " spiritual man," &c, but showing that it is an eternal universal reality, 
not some apprehension of particular men (see Maurice, Unity, p. 408). 

10 iii. 2, <rapKLvol; 4, crap/ci/co??. A severe blow at Alexandrian conceit. He has to treat them 
not as adepts but as novices, not as hierophants but as uninitiated, not as " theologians," but as 
catechumens, for the very reason that they thought so much of themselves (cf. the exactly analogous 
language of our Lord in John ix. 41). 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT COKINTH. 387 

as a wise master-builder, lias laid the foundation ; others were building on it all 
Borts of superstructures. But the foundation was and could be only one — namely, 
Christ — and the gold, silver, precious marbles, logs, hay, stubble, built on it should 
be made manifest in its true quality in God's ever-revealing fire, 1 and if worthless, 
should be destroyed, however sincere the builder might be. If his superstructure 
was sound, he would be rewarded ; if perishable, it would be burnt in the consuming 
flame, and he should suffer loss, though he himself, since he had built on the true 
foundation, would be saved as by fire. 2 Did they not know then that they were a 
temple, a holy temple for the spirit of God ? If any man destroy God's temple, God 
aha]} destroy him. And human wisdom might destroy it, for before God human 
wisdom was folly. The mere human wisdom of this or that favourite teacher has 
nothing to do with the real building. If a man wanted Divine wisdom, let rn'n) 
gain it by the humble paths of what was regarded as human folly. How unworthy, 
then, to be boasting about mere human teachers — how unworthy was it of their own 
immense privilege and hope — when all things were theirs — Paul, Apollos, Kephas, 
the universe, life, death, the immediate present, the far future — all theirs, and they 
Christ's, and Christ God's. Their party leaders were but poor weak creatures at 
the best, of whom was required one thing only — faithfulness. As for himself he 
regarded it as a matter utterly trivial whether he were judged by their tentative 
opinions or by man's insignificant feeble transient day; 3 nay, he even judged not 
himself. He was conscious indeed of no sin as regards his ministry ; 4 but even on 
that he did not rely as his justification, depending only on the judgment of the Lord 
" So then be not ye judging anything before the due time until the Lord come, who 
shall both illuminate the crypts of darkness and reveal the counsels of the heart." 
Then, and not till then, shall the praise which he deserves, and no other praisej 
accrue to each from God. 5 

6. He had, with generous delicacy, designedly put into prominence his own 
name and that of Apollos (instead of those of Kephas or the Jerusalem emissary) as 
unwilling leaders of factions which they utterly deprecated, that the Corinthians 
might learn in their case not to estimate them above the warrant of their actual 
words, 6 and might see that he was actuated by no mere jealousy of others, when he 
denounced their inflated exasperation amongst themselves in the rival display of 
what after all, even when they existed, where not intrinsic merits, but gifts of God. 7 
And what swelling self-appreciation they showed in all this party spirit ! For 
them the hunger, and the poverty, and the struggle, are all over. What plentitude 
and satiety of satisfaction you have gained ; how rich you are ; what thrones you 
sit on ; and all without us. Ah, would it were really so, that we might at least 
share your royal elevation ! For the position of us po»r Apostles is very different. 
" God, I think, displayed us last as condemned criminals, 3 a theatric spectacle to the 
universe, both angels and men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in 
Christ ; we weak, but ye strong ; ye glorious, but we dishonoured. Up to this very 

1 iii. 13, airoKaA.v7TTeTai. By calling this a praesens futurascens, and not recognising the normal, 
unceasing operation of the moral laws of God, commentators have missed a great truth (cf. Matt. 
iii. 10 : Col. iii. 6 ; Eph. v. 6). 

2 St. Paul does not care to make his metaphor " run on all fours." The general application is 
sufficient for him. (See Reuss, Les Epitres, i. 169). 

3 Ver. iv. 3, avaKpi0a>. An anakrisis was an examination preliminary to trial. V e 'p«?» this 
forcible expression has "been explained as a Hebraism (Jer. xvii. 16), a Cilicism (Jer. ad Algas. 10), 
and a Latinism (diem dicere, &c, Grot.). 

* Ver. 4, ovSev . . . e/j-avTcp crwoiSa, " I am conscious of no guilt " (" Nil conscire sibi," Hor. 
Ep. i. 1, 16). " I know nothing by myself," in this sense is old English. " I am sorry that each 
fault can be proved by the queen " (Cranmer, Letter to Henry VIII.). 

5 iv. 1-4. 

6 iv. 6. The word fypovelv is omitted by the chief Uncials. I take m>? vnkp o yeypatTTai to be a 
sort of proverb, like " keep to your written evidence." Throughout this section St. Paul's mind is 
full of the word " inflation " (<f>v<TLov<r6e ; ver. 18, e<|>u<ric607)o-av ; 19, Tre$vcna>ju.eycoi> ; v. 2, 7re$vo-iw/u.6'<H ; 
viii. 1, rj yv&cns 4>v<riol ; xiii. 4, tj ayamq oi> ^>v<novraC). This is because when St. Paul comes to 
them, he is afraid of finding this vice of a conceited theology. 2 Cor. xii. 20, <£u<riw<reis. Elsewhere 
the word only occurs in Col. ii. 18. 

7 iv. 7, tis yap <re SuucpCvet ; 

* iv. 9, w« im&avaTCovf, " veluti bestiarioi" (Tert. De Pudic 14). 

z 2 



388 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

hour we both hunger and thirst, and are ill-clad, 1 and are "buffeted, and are hustled 
from place to place, and toil, working with our own hands ; being abused, we bless ; 
being persecuted, we endure ; being reviled, we entreat ; as refuse of the universe 3 
are we become, the off scouring of all things till now." These are bitter and ironical 
words of contrast between you and us, I know ; but I write not as shaming you. I 
am only warning you as my beloved children. For, after all, you are my children. 
Plenty of teachers, I know, have followed me ; but (and here comes one of his 
characteristic impetuosities of expression) even if you have a myriad pedagogues 8 
in Christ — however numerous, or stern, or authoritative — you have not many 
fathers. It was I who begot you through the Gospel in Christ Jesus, and I there- 
fore entreat you to follow my example ; and on this account I sent you my beloved 
and faithful son Timothy, to remind you of my invariable practice and teaching. 4 
Do not think, however, that I am afraid to confront in person the inflated opposition 
of some who say that I do not really mean to come myself. Come I will, and that 
soon, if the Lord will ; and will ascertain not what these inflated critics say, but 
what they are ; not their power of talk, but of action. " But what will ye ? Am I 
to come to you with a rod, or in love and the spirit of gentleness ? " 5 

7. One thing at least needs the rod. A case of incest — of a son taking his 
father's wife — so gross, that it does not exist even among the heathen, 6 is absolutely 
notorious among you, and instead of expelling the offender with mourning and 
shame, you — oh ! strange mystery of the invariable connexion between sensuality 
and pride — have been inflated with sophistical excuses about the matter. 7 " I, at 
any rate, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as though 
actually present the man who acted thus in this thing, in the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ — you being assembled together, and my spirit which is present with 
. you, though my body is absent — with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to hand 
over such a man to Satan, for destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved 
in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ." 8 If any passage of the letter was written 
with sobs, which are echoed in his very words, as Sosthenes wrote them down from 
his lips, it is this. He summons up the scene and sentence of excommunication. 
He is absent, yet he is there ; and there, with the power of Christ, he pronounces 
the awful sentence which hands over the offender to Satan in terrible mercy, that by 
destruction of his flesh he may be saved in the spirit. And then he adds, " The 
subject of your self-glorification is hideous. 9 Know ye not that a little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump ? Purge out then at once the old leaven, that ye may be 
a new lump, as ye are (ideally) unleavened. 10 For indeed our Passover is slain u — 

i Cf. 2 Cor. xl 27. 

2 irepLK.aOa.pfj.aTa, purgamenta, "things vile, and worthless, and to be flung away," not " piaeulaT 
offerings," ■nepi^rqfia. The Scholiast on Ar. Plut. 456, says, that in famines and plagues it was an 
ancient Greek and Eoman custom to wipe off guilt by throwing wretches into the sea, with the 
words "Become our peripsema." The reference here is probably less specific, but cf. Prov. xxi. 18 ; 
1DT3 (LXX.), Tob. v. 18. eyw nepifand crov became (from this view) a common Christian expression 
(Wordsworth, ad loc). 

3 iv. 15, iratSaytoyovs. 

* St. Paul had already sent him, before the necessity had arisen for the more immediate despatch 
of Titus ; but he seems to have countermanded the order, uncertain, however, whether the messen- 
ger would reach him in time, and rather expecting that Timothy would arrive among them beforv 
himself (" if Timotheus come," xvL 10). In any case the Corinthians would have heard thai 
Timothy had been sent to come to them through Macedonia, and Paul's enemies drew very 
unfavourable inferences from this. 

5 iv. 6—21. 

6 The oi/ofiaCerot, "is named," of our text is spurious, being omitted in n> A, B, C, D, E, F, G. 
As to the fact illustrated by the almost local tragedy of Hippolytus, see Cic. pro Cluent. 5, " O mulieris 
scelus incredLbile et praeter hanc unam in omni vita inauditum" (Wetst. ad loc). 

7 This might seem inconceivable ; but v. supra, p. 383. 

8 It was the last awful, reluctant declaration, "that a man who has wilfully chosen an evil 
master, shall feel the bondage that he may loathe it, and so turn to his true Lord" (Maurice, Unity, 
p. 414). On the comparative leniency of excommunication see Hooker, Eccl. Pol. iii. 1—13. 

9 v. 6, ov KaXbv (litotes), to Kav\f))xa v/auJv (not KavxTjcis). 

10 St. Paul was writing near the time of the Passover ; but the allusions are spiritual. 

11 v. 7, erv07), "Blain" (Matt. xxii. 4 ; Acts x. 13). The "for ua," vnia u.£>v is a doctrinal gloat 
not found in A, B, C, D, E, F, G. 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 389 

Christ. Let us, then, keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither -with leaven 
of vice and wickedness, but with unleavenedness of sincerity and truth." l 

And here he pauses to explain a clause in his last Epistle which had excited 
surprise. In it he had forbidden them to associate with fornicators. This had led 
them to ask the astonished question 2 whether it was really their duty to go out of 
the world altogether ? His meaning was, as he now tells them, that if any Christian 
were notoriously guilty, either of fornication or any other deadly sin, 3 with such 
they were not to associate, — not even to sit at table with them. They really need 
not have mistaken his meaning on this point. What had he, what had they, to do 
with judging the outer world ? This passage reads like a marginal addition, and he 
adds the brief, uncompromising order, ' ' Put away at once that wicked man from 
among yourselves." 4 

8. The allusion to judging naturally leads him to another point. Dare they, the 
destined judges of the world and of angels, go to law about mere earthly trifles, and 
that before the heathen? Why did they not rather set up the very humblest 
members of the Church to act as judges in such matters ? Shame on them ! Sc 
wise and yet no one of them wise enough to be umpire in mere trade disputes T 
Better by far have no quarrels among themselves, but suffer wrong and loss ; but. 
alas ! instead of this some of them inflicted wrong and loss, and that on their own 
brethren. Then follows a stern warning — the unj ust should not inherit the kingdom 
of God — " Be not deceived" — the formula by which he always introduces his most 
solemn passages — neither sensual sinners in all their hideous varieties, nor thieves, 
nor over-reachers, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the 
kingdom of God. "And these abject things some of you were; 5 but ye washed 
yourselves, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus, and the Spirit of our God." It is evident that some of them were liable to be 
deceived ; that they liked to be deceived on this point, and they seem to have boldly 
said that the Christian is free, that " all things are lawful" to him because he is no 
longer under the law, but under grace. " All things are lawful to me." Yes, says 
St. Paul, but all things are not expedient. " All things are lawful to me." Yes, but 
I will not become the slave of the fatal tyranny of anything. The case of meats, 
which perhaps they adduced to show that they might do as they liked, irrespective 
of the Mosaic law, was not a case in point. They were aSidcpopa — matters of indif- 
ference about which each man might do as he liked ; they, and the belly which 
assimilated them, were transient things, destined to be done away with. Not so the 
body ; that was not created for fornication, but for the Lord, and as God had raised 
Christ so should He raise the bodies of Christ's saints. And then — thus casually as 
it were in this mere passing reference— he lays down for all time the eternal princi- 
ples which underlie the sacred duty of chastity. He tells them that their bodies, 
their members, are not their own, but Christ's ; — that the union with Christ is 
destroyed by unions of uncleanness ; — that sensuality is a sin against a man's own 
body ; that a Christian's body is not his own, but a temple of the indwelling Spirit, 
and that he is not his own, but bought with a price. " Therefore," he says, feeling 
that he had now laid down truths which should be impregnable against all scepticism, 
" glorify God in your body." 6 

9. This paragraph, touching as it has done on the three topics of chastity, meats 
offered to idols, and the resurrection, introduces very naturally his answers to their 
inquiries on these subjects, and nobly wise they are in their charity, their wisdom, 
their large-heartedness. He is not speaking of marriage in the abstract, but of 

1 V. 1 — 9. 2 V. 10, €7rel b<f>eCkeTe a pa, k. t. A.. 

s Ver. 11, " or an idolater." Evidently as in x. 7 ; CoL iii. 5 ; otherwise how could he be a 
Christian? Unless he is thinking of some hybrid Christian of the type of Constantine, who "bowed 
In the house of Rimmon." 

4 v. 9 — 13, 'E^dpare. The zeal (omitted in n, A, B, C, F, G) is spurious, and spoils the character- 
istic abruptness. 

* vi. 11, Tawa rive? Tire. 

6 vi. 1 — 20. The words which follow in our version, /cow iv t<3 itvevu.a.TL vaStv, an va ecnrov %*ov, 
are omitted in «, A, B, C, D, E, F, G-. ' 



390 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

marriage regarded with reference to the near advent of Christ, and relating to the 
circumstances and conditions of the most corrupt city of ancient Greece. The 
Corinthian letter seems to have heen written by those members of the Church who, 
partly it may be in indignant revolt against the views of the small faction which 
had adopted Antinomian opinions, seem to have regarded celibacy as the only perfect 
form of life. In the abstract, somewhat hesitatingly, and with the confession that 
here he is not sure of his ground, and is therefore offering no authoritative decision, 
St. Paul on the whole agrees with them. 1 " He quotes, with something of approval, 
their dictum that the maiden life is the best, 2 and utters the wish that all had the 
same spiritual grace 3 — the charisma of continence — as he himself. But since this 
was not the case, as a permitted remedy against the universal prevalence of un- 
chastity, he recommended (but not by way of distinct injunction) that Christians 
should live together, and with no long ascetic separations, in the married state. 4 As 
regards widowers 5 and widows their celibacy for the rest of their lives would be an 
honourable state, but immediate marriage would be better than long- continued 
desires. 6 Divorce had been discouraged by Christ himself, and on that analogy he 
pronounced against any voluntary dissolution of unions already existing between 
Pagans and Christians, since the children of such unions were holy, and therefore 
the unions holy, and since the believing wife or husband might win to the faith 
the unbelieving partner. The general rule which he wished all Christians to 
observe was that they should abide in the state in which they were called, 
whether circumcised or un circumcised, since " circumcision is nothing, and 
uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping of the commandments of God." 7 Even 
if a Christian were a slave and might obtain his freedom, it would be better 
for him to brook slavery, 8 seeing that earthly relations were utterly insignificant 

1 " If we compare the letter of Gregory the Great to Augustine (in Bede), in answer to inquiries 
not altogether dissimilar, respecting the Anglo-Saxon converts, we see at once how immeasurably 
more decisive and minute the Pope is than the Apostle" (Maurice, Unity, p. 423). The chapter is 
the best manual for the ductor dubitantium, because it teaches him " that he must not give himself 
airs of certainty on points where certainty is not to be had " (id. 429). See Kuenen, Profeten, ii. 67 
sq., and Lord Lyttelton in Contemp. Rev. xxi. p. 917. 

2 vii. 1, Kakbv av9pom<>y yvvaiicbs jurj a.TTTe<r6ai. St. Jerome's characteristic comment is that " if it 
is good for a man not to touch a woman, it must be bad to do so, and therefore marriage is, to say 
the least, inferior to celibacy." St. Paul's own distinct permission, and in some cases injunction, to 
marry, might have shown him how false and dangerous are the results which spring from the undue 
pressure of incidental words (Eph. v. 24 ; 1 Tim. ii. 15, &c.) St. Paul does not say "good" (ayadbv), 
but "fair" (which he afterwards limits by the present need, ver. 26), as we might say, " there is in 
holy celibacy a certain moral beauty." Hence Jerome's " Suspecta est raihi bonitas rei quam mag- 
nitudo alterius mali malum cogit esse inferius" (adv. Jovin. i. 9) is a mistake. Celibacy is kol\6v, 
but there are some for whom marriage is even KaAAiov. See for the use of k<xA.6? Matt, xviii. 8, xxvi. 
24 ; 1 Tim. i 8. It is curious to see the ascetic tendency at work in vii. 3 (6<£eiAo/ueV»ji/ euvotav, and 
5, Trj vrja-reCa. kcu, and (rxoAacnjre and cruvepxyarOe for rjre). The true readings are found in J$, A, B, C, 
D, F„ thoug'h not followed in our version. 

3 vii. 7, 0e'Aw, but in later years his deliberate decision (/3ou'Aoj«.at) was that younger widows 
should marry (1 Tim. v. 14). 

* vii. 1—7. 

5 tocs ayafiov;, v. supra, i. pp. 79—82. 

6 Ver. 9, yafxrjcraL (aor.), r) 7rvpoOcr0ai (pres.). 

7 1 Cor. vii. 18, 19. The jutj eTr«nrd<r6u> refers to a method of obliterating the sign of the covenant 
adopted by apostate Jews in times of persecution (1 Mace. i. 15 ; Jos. Antt. xii. 5, § 1), and which a 
Christian might be tempted to adopt to save him from that ridicule which the manners of ancient 
life brought upon Jews (Mart. xvii. 29). The Rabbis decided that one who had done this must be 
re-circumcised. R. Jehudah denied this, because of the danger ; but the wise men replied that it 
had been frequently done with no injurious results in the days of Bar-Coziba (Yebhamdth, f. 72, 1 ; 
Buxtorf, Lex. Chald., s. v. "i^q, meshooldm = reoutiti). 

8 1 Cor. vii. 21, aW el kcu. fivvacrai eAeuflepos yevicrOai, jaaAAov xp^) cra t- I have taken SovAeia as 
the word to be understood with Chrysostom, Theodoret, Luther, Bengel, De Wette, Meyer, &c. ; cf. 
1 Tim. vi. 2. I take this view — i. Because the whole argument turns on the desirability of staying 
in the present condition, whatever it is, with a view to the nearness of the day of the Lord. ii. 
Because this was the view arrived at also by the lofty Stoic moralists who, like Epictetus, knew that 
even a slave could live a noble life (Epictet. Dissert, iii. 26 ; Ench. x., xxxii.). Earthly conditions 
were but a xpnw* '/xwracruoi/ ; cf. Col. iii. 22. iii. Because St. Paul may have been thinking at the 
moment of the Christian slaves of Christian masters who would be treated as brothers, iv. Because 
XPTJ<r0Gu, rather implies the continuance of an existing than the acceptance of a new condition. 
Otherwise we can hardly imagine his giving such advice, since "a man is to abide in his calling if rt 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 391 

when regarded from the spiritual standpoint. 1 As to virgins he could only 
give his opinion that, considering the present distress, and the nearness of the end, 
and the affliction which marriage at such a period brought inevitably in its train, it 
was better for them not to marry. Marriage, indeed, he told them distinctly, was 
no sin, but he wished to spare them the tribulation it involved ; he did not wish 
them, now that the time was contracted, 2 and the fleeting show of the world was 
passing away, to bear the distracting burden of transient earthly and human cares, 
or to use the world to the full, 3 but to let their sole care be fixed on God. 4 If then 
a father determined not to give his maiden daughter in marriage, he did well : but 
if a lover sought her hand, and circumstances pointed that way, he was not doing 
wrong in letting them marry. 5 "Widows might re-marry if they liked, but in ac- 
cordance with the principles which he had been laying down, he thought they would 
be happier if they did not. It was but his wish and advice ; he asserted no Divine 
authority for it ; yet in giving it he thought that he too had — as other teachers had 
claimed to have — the spirit of God. 6 

10. As to the pressing question — a question which bore on their daily life 7 — about 
meats offered to idols, he quotes, but only by way of refutation, their self-satisfied 
remark that they " all had knowledge" — knowledge at the best was a much smaller 
thing than charity, and the very claim to possess it was a proof of spiritual pride 
and ignorance. If they knew that an idol was nothing in the world, and their 
conscience as to this matter was quite clear and strong, it was no sin for them 
personally to eat of these sacrifices ; but if others, whose consciences were weak, 
saw them feasting in idol temples, and were led by this ostentatious display of 
Absence of scruple 8 to do by way of imitation what they themselves thought wrong, 
then this knowledge and liberty of theirs became a stumbling-block, an edification 
of ruin, 9 a source of death to the conscience of a brother ; and since thus to smite 
the sick conscience of a brother was a sin against Christ, he for one would never 
touch flesh again while the world lasted rather than be guilty of putting a fatal 
difficulty in a brother's path. 10 

be not hurtful to faith and morals" (Aug. ad Gal. ii. 11); but that could hardly be said of slavery. 
"Impudicitia . . . in servo necessitas" (Sen. Controv. iv. f Praef.). " Enfants, ils grandissaient en 
d&sordre ; vieillards, ils mouraient souvent dans la misere " (Wallon, De I'Esclavage, i. 332). 

' tii 10 — 24. Verses 17 — 24 are a little digression on the general principle that it is best to 
remain, ontentedly in our present lot. In ver. 23 he says, with a fine play on words, " You are slaves 
In one sense : do not become so in another." 

2 Ver. 29, «r. >t 7TaAju.e'vos. 

8 Ver. 31, KaTaXfiii,u«v<> ; cf. ix. 12. 18. /nepiju-i/a, evndpeSpov, airepL<rird<TTtD? ', cf. Luke X. 41. 

* Alone of nations the J3ws implied the sanctity of marriage by every name that they gave it. 
Kiddushin from kadosh, "to sanctify ;" mekadesh, " a bridegroom," &c. The phrase Hare ath mekoo- 
desheth li, " Behold thou art sanctified for me," is still addressed by the bridegroom to the bride 
(Rabbinowicz, Legislat. Criminelle du Talmud, p. 227). 

5 vii. 25. On the rights of Jewish fathers over their unmarried daughters see Ketubhoth, f. 46, 2. 
They were so absolute that he might even sell his daughter (Kiddushin, 3b; Ketubhoth, 46 b). When 
however she reached the " flower of her age," she might refuse any husband given her before she 
was really nubile. Her refusal was technically called midn, p'O (Yebhamoth, 107 b). She might even 
be married while yet a ketanal — i.e., not yet twelve. When she reached that age she was called 
naarah (rrwa). and six months later was held to have reached her full maturity, and become a bag- 
roth, nv^a- See the Talmudic authorities in Rabbinowicz, Trad, des Traites Synhedrin, &c, Legis- 
lation Criminelle du Talmud, p. 214 ; Weill, La Femme Juive, pp. 11 — 14. On the care for widows, 
id. p. 72. 

6 vii. 1 — 40. 

7 To this day the Jewish slaughterer, who must pass a course of study, practically decides what 
is clean (tahor) and unclean (tdme). When he has discovered that an animal has no legal blemish he 
attache;* to it a leaden seal with the word " lawfuli" (kdshdr) on it ; (Disraeli, Genius of Judaism, 156 ; 
Diet. Bill. s. v. Pharisees ; McCaul, Old Paths, 380—386, 396—402 ; v. supra, p. 245). 

* Vor. 10. Such feasts were often in temples : — 

" Hoc Mis curia templum, 
Hae sacris sedes epulis ; hie anete caeso 
Perpetuis soliti Patres considere mensis." (j&n. vii. 174.) 

Cf. Hdt. i. 31 ; Judg. ix. 27 ; 2 Kings xix. 37. 

9 Tert. De Praescr. Haer. 8. 

10 viii. 1—13. Here, as usual, St. Paul shows himself transcend ently superior to the Rabbis. 
In Abhoda Zara, f. 8, 1, R. Ishmael lays down the rule that if Israelites "outside the land" are 



892 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

11. And at this point begins a remarkable digression, "which, though a digression, 
iudirectly supported the position which some of his adversaries had impugned, and 
though personal in its details, is, in Paul's invariable manner, made subservient to 
eternal truths. They might object that by what he had said he was curtailing theii 
liberty, and making the conscience of the weak a fetter upon the intelligence of the 
strong. Well, without putting their objection in so many words, he would show 
them that he practised what he taught. He, too, was free, and an Apostle, their 
Apostle at any rate, and had every right to do as the other Apostles did— the 
Dosposyni, and Keph'as himself — in expecting Churches to support them and their 
wives. 1 That right he even defends at some length, both by earthly analogies of 
the soldier, husbandman, and shepherd, 2 and by a happy Rabbinic midrash on the 
non-muzzling of the ox that treadeth out the corn ; 3 and by the ordinary rules of 
gratitude for benefits received; 4 and by the ordinance of the Jewish Temple, 5 and 
the rule of Christ ; 6 yet plain as the right was, and strenuously as he maintained it, 
he had never availed himself of it, and, whatever his enemies might say, he never 
would. He must preach the Gospel ; he could not help himself ; his one reward 
would be the power to boast that he had not claimed his rights to the full, but had 
made the Gospel free, and so removed a possible source of hindrance. Free, then, 
as he was, he had made himself a slave (as in one small particular he was asking 
them to do) for the sake of others ; a slave to all, that he might gain the more ; 
putting himself in their place, meeting their sympathies, and even their prejudices, 
half way ; becoming a Jew to the Jews, a legalist to legalists, without law to those 
without law (never, however, forgetting his real allegiance to the law of Christ), 7 
weak to the weak, all things to all men in order by all means to save some. And if 
he thus denied himself, should not they also deny themselves ? 8 In their Isthmian 
games each strove to gain the crown, and what toil and temperance they endured to 
win that fading wreath of pine ! Paul did the same. He ran straight to the goal. 
He aimed straight blows, and not in feint, at the enemy ; 9 nay, he even blackened 
his body with blows, and led it about as a slave, 10 lest in any way after acting as 
herald to others he himself should be rejected from the lists. 11 

If he had to strive so hard, could they afford to take things so easily ? The 
Israelites had not found it so in the wilderness ; they, too, were in a sense baptised 
unto Moses in the cloudy pillar and the Red Sea waves ; 12 they, too, in a sense par- 
took of the Eucharist in eating the heavenly manna, and drinking of the symbolic 
following rock ; 13 yet how many 14 of them fell because of gluttony, and idolatry, and 

asked to a Gentile funeral they " eat of the sacrifices of the dead," even if they take with them their 
own food and are waited on by their own servants. In confirmation of which hard and bigoted de- 
cision he refers to Ex. xxxiv. 15, from which he inferred that the acceptance of the invitation was 
equivalent to eating the sacrifice. R. Joehanan the Choronite would not eat moist olives, even in a 
time of famine, if handled by an am haarets, because they might have absorbed water, and so 
become unclean (Yebhamoth, f. 15, 2). 

1 I have here endeavoured to make clear the by no means obvious connexion of thought which 
runs through these chapters. Possibly there may have been some accidental transposition. Those 
who consider 2 Cor. vi. 14 — vii. 1, to be misplaced, find an apt space for it here. 

2 ix. 7. 8 ix. 8—10. * 11, 12. s i 3# e 14. 

7 He describes the concessions (<rvy»caTa/3a.o-is) of love. " Paulus non fuit anomus, nedum 
antinomus" (Bengel). "The Lawless" is the name by which he is covertly calumniated in the 
spurious letter of Peter to James (Clementines, ch. ii.). 

8 In these paragraphs exhortations to the general duty of self-deuial are closely mingled with 
the arguments in favour of the particular self-denial— concession to the weak — which he is urging 
throughout this section. " In the one party faith was not strong enough to beget a liberalising 
knowledge, not strong enough in the other to produce a brotherly love" (Kling). 

9 His was no sham fight (cr/cto^.a^t'a) ; he struck anything rather than the air (ws ovk aepa Septav). 
The E.V. renders as though it were ovx w? aepa Se'paw. Cf. JEn. v. 446, and Wetst. ad loc. 

10 vnomid^u) ; lit., " blacken with blows under the eyes, as in a fight." " Lividum facio corpui 
meum et in servitutem redigo" (Iren. iv. 7). 

11 ix. 1—27 ; Kr)pv£a<;, the Christian herald of the laws of the contest, is also a candidate in it. 

12 Fiducia verbi Mosis commiserant se aquis (Melancthon). 

u x. 4— xi. 1. The division of chapters here stops a verse too short. On St. Paul's spiritualisa- 
tion and practical application of Old Testament history, see supra, i. pp. 47—58. For other instances 
see v. 7 ; Gal. iv. 22 ; Heb. vii. &c). 

M x. 8. '* Twenty-three thousand." Perhaps a cr^d^a nvtip.ovi.Kbv for 24,000 (Num. «v. 9). 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 393 

lust, and rebellion, and murmuring, and were awful warnings against overweening 
self-confidence ! Yes, the path of duty was difficult, but not impossible, and no 
temptation was beyond human power to resist, because with the temptation God 
provided also the escape. Let them beware, then, of all this scornful indifference 
about idolatry. As the Eucharist united them in closest communion with Christ, 
and with one another, so that by all partaking of the one bread they became one 
body and one bread, so the partaking of Gentile sacrifices was a communion with 
demons. 1 The idol was nothing, as they had urged, but it represented an evil spirit; 2 
and fellowship with demons was a frightful admixture with their fellowship in 
Christ, a dangerous trifling with their allegiance to God. He repeats once more 
that what is lawful is not always either expedient or edifying. Let sympathy, not 
selfishness, be their guiding principle. Over-scrupulosity was not required of them. 
They might buy in the market, they might eat, at the private tables of the heathen, 
what they would, and ask no questions ; but if their attention was prominently drawn 
to the fact that any dish was part of an idol- offering, then— though they might urge 
that "the earth was the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," and that it was hard for 
them to be judged, or their liberty abridged in a purely indifferent act, which they 
might even perform in a religious spirit — still let them imitate Paul's own example, 
which he had just fully explained to them, which was, indeed, Christ's example, and 
consisted in being absolutely unselfish, and giving no wilful offence either to Jews 
or Gentiles, or the Church of God. 

In this noble section of the Epistle, so remarkable for its tender consideration 
and its robust good sense, it is quite clear that the whole sympathies of St. Paul are 
theoretically with the strong, though he seems to feel a sort of practical leaning to 
the ascetic side. He does not, indeed, approve, under any circumstances, of an 
ostentatious, defiant, insulting liberalism. To a certain extent the prejudices — even 
the absurd and bigoted prejudices — of the weak ought to be respected, and it was 
selfish and wrong needlessly to wound them. It was above all .wrong to lead them 
by example to do violence to their own conscientious scruples. But when these 
scruples, and this bigotry of the weak, became in their turn aggressive, then St. 
Paul quite sees that they must be discouraged and suppressed, lest weakness should 
lay down the law for strength. To tolerate the weak was one thing ; to let them 
tyrannise was quite another. Their ignorance was not to be a limit to real know- 
ledge ; their purblind gaze was not to bar up the horizon against true insight ; their 
slavish superstition was not to fetter the freedom of Christ. In matters where a 
little considerateness and self-denial would save offence, there the strong should give 
up, and do less than they might ; but in matters which affected every day of every 
year, like the purchase of meat in the open market, or the acceptance of ordinary 
invitations, then the weak must not attempt to be obtrusive or to domineer. Some, 
doubtless, would use hard words about these concessions. They might charge St. 
Paul, as they had charged St. Peter, with violating the awful and fiery law. They 
might call him "the lawless one," or any other ugly nick-name they liked; he was 
not a man to be "feared with bugs," or to give up a clear and certain principle to 
avoid an impertinent and senseless clamour. Had he been charged with controver- 

1 Cf. 2 Cor. vi. 14 sq. Evil spirits occupied a large part of the thoughts and teaching of Jewish 
Rabbis ; e.g., Lilith, Adam's first wife, was by him the mother of all demons (Psaehim, f. 112, 2). As 
the Lord's Supper puts the Christian in mystical union with Christ, so partaking of idol feasts puts 
the partaker into symbolic allegiance to devils. Pfleiderer compares the Greek legend that by eating 
a fruit of the nether world a man is given over to it (Paulinism, i. 239). 

2 The heathen gods as idols were eZSoAa, Elilim, supposititious, unreal, imaginary ; but in 
another aspect they were demons. The Rabbis, in the same way, regard idols from two points of 
view— viz., as dead material things, and as demons. " Callest thou an idol a dog ? " said "aphiloso- 
pher " to Rabban Gamaliel. " An idol is really something." " What is it?" asked Gamaliel. "There 
was once a conflagration in our town," said the philosopher, " and the temple of the idol remained 
intact when every house was burnt down." At this remark the Rabban is silent (Ablioda Zara, f. 54, 
2). Almost in the very words of St. Paul, Zonan once said to R. Akibha, " Both thou and I know 
that an idol hath nothing in it ;" but he proceeds to ask how it is that miracles of healing are un- 
doubtedly wrought at idol shrines ? Akibha makes the healing a mere accidental coincidence with 
the time when the chastisements would naturally have been withdrawn (Abhoda Zara, f 65, 1). 



394 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

ting the wise and generous but local and temporary agreement which has been 
exalted into "the decree of the Council of Jerusalem," he would have quietly 
answered that that was but a recommendation addressed to a few predominantly 
Jewish Churches ; that it did not profess to have any universal or permanent 
authority ; and that he was now arguing the case on its own merits, and laying 
down principles applicable to every Church in which, as at Corinth, the Gentiles 
formed the most numerous element. 

12. A minor point next claimed his attention. Some men, it appears, had sat 
with covered heads at their assemblies, and some women with uncovered heads, and 
they had asked his opinion on the matter. Thanking them for their kind expres- 
sions of respect for his rules and wishes, he at once decides the question on the 
teghest principles. As to men it might well have seemed perplexing, since the 
Jewish and the Eoman custom was to pray with covered, and the Greek custom to 
to pray with uncovered, heads. St. Paul decides for the Greek custom. Christ is 
the head of the man, and man might therefore stand with unveiled head before God, 
and if he veiled his head he did it needless dishonour, because he abnegated the high 
glory which had been bestowed on him by Christ's incarnation. Not so with the 
woman. The head of the woman is the man, and therefore in holy worship, in the 
presence of the Lord of her lord, she ought to appear with veiled head. 1 Nature 
itself taught that this was the right decision, giving to the woman her veil of hair, 
and teaching the instinctive lesson that a shorn head was a disgrace to a woman, as 
long hair, the sign of effeminacy, was a disgrace to a man. The unveiled head of 
the man was also the sign of his primeval superiority, and the woman having been 
the first to sin, and being liable to be seduced to sin, ought to wear " power on her 
head because of the angels." 2 Man and woman were indeed one in Christ, but for 
that very reason these distinctions of apparel should be observed. At any rate, 
St. Paul did not mean to enter into any dispute on the subject. If nature did 
not teach them that he had decided rightly, he could only refer them to the 
authority of custom, and that ought to be decisive, except to those who loved 
contentiousness. 3 

13. Then follows a stern rebuke — all the sterner for the self-restraint of its twice- 
repeated " I praise you not" — for the shameful selfishness and disorder which they 
had allowed to creep into the love-feasts which accompanied the Supper of the Lord 
— especially the gluttony, drunkenness, and ostentation of the wealthier members of 
the community, and the contemptuous indiiference which they displayed to the needs 
and sensibilities of their poorer neighbours. The simple narrative of the institution 
and objects of the Supper of the Lord, which he had received from the Lord and 
delivered unto them, and the solemn warning of the danger which attended its 
profanation, and which was already exhibited in the sickness, feebleness, and deaths 
of many among them, is meant to serve as a remedy against their gross disorders. 
He tells them that the absence of a discrimination (SiaKpuris) in their own hearts had 
rendered necessary a judgment (tcpi^a) which was mercifully meant as a training 

1 For exousian, see Stanley, Corinth, ad loc. The attempts to read exiousa, &c, are absurd. Tht 
word may be a mere colloquialism, and if so we may go far astray in trying to discover the explana- 
tion of it. If St. Paul invented it, it may be a Hebraism, or be meant to imply her own true power, 
which rests in accepting the sign of her husband's power over her. Chardin says that in Persia a 
veil is the sign that married women " are under subjection." Compare Milton's — 

"She as a veil down to the slender waist 
Her unadorned golilen tresses wore 
As the vine waves Its tendrils, which implied. 
Subjection, but required with gentle sway, 
And by her yielded, by him best received." 

See Tert. De Vd. Virg. 7, 17 ; and in illustration of Chrysostom's view there alluded to, see Tob. Jdi, 
12 ; Ps. cxxxviii. 1 (LXX.); Eph. iii. 10. 

2 For the explanation of this allusion v. Infra, Excursus IV. 

3 xi. 1—17. The last phrase— interesting as showing St. Paul's dislike to needless and disturb- 
ing innovations — is like the Rabbinic phrase, r< Our Halacha ia otherwise ;" your custom is a Thekanah, 
or novelty, a cnn (Bubliu Mctxia, f. 112). 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 395 

(■waiievSfieda) to save them from final condemnation (woTa/cpt/ta). 1 All minor matters 
about which they may have asked him, though they kept back the confession of this 
their shame, are left by the Apostle to be regulated by himself personally on his 
arrival. 3 

14. The next three chapters — of which the thirteenth, containing the description, 
of charity, is the most glorious gem, even in the writings of St. Paul — are occupied 
with the answer to their inquiries about spiritual gifts. Amid the wild disorders 
which we have been witnessing we are hardly surprised to find that the Glossolalia 
had been terribly abused. Some, we gather — either because they had given the reins 
to the most uncontrollable excitement, and were therefore the impotent victims of 
any blasphemous thought which happened for the moment to sweep across the 
troubled horizon of their souls ; or from some darkening philosophical confusion, 
which endeavoured to distinguish between the Logos and Him that was crucified, 
between the Man Jesus and the Lord Christ ; or perhaps again from some yet un- 
solved Jewish difficulty about the verse " Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree ;" 3 — 
amid their unintelligible utterances, had been heard to exclaim, Anathema Iesous, 
" Jesus is accursed ;'' and, having as yet very vague notions as to the true nature of 
the "gift of tongues," the Corinthians had asked Paul in great perplexity what they 
were to think of this ? His direct answer is emphatic. When they were the igno- 
rant worshippers of dumb idols they may have been accustomed to the false inspira- 
tion of the Pythia, or the Sibyl — the possessing mastery by a spiritual influence 
which expressed itself in the broken utterance, and streaming hair, and foaming lip, 
and which they might take to be the spirit of Python, or Trophonius, or Dis. But 
now he lays down the great principles of that " discernment of spirits," which 
should enable them to distinguish the rapt utterance of divine emotion from the 
mechanical and self -induced frenzy of feminine feebleness or hypocritical supersti- 
tion. Whatever might be the external phenomena, the utterances of the Spirit were 
one in import. No man truly inspired by Him could say, "Anathema is Jesus;" 4 or 
uninspired by Him could say from the heart, " Jesus is the Lord." The charismata, 
or gifts, were different ; the "adniinistrations'' of them, or channels of their working, 
were different ; the operations, energies, or effects of them were different ; but the 
source of them was One — one Holy Ghost, from whom they are all derived ; one 
Lord, by whom all true ministries of them are authorised ; one God, who worketh 
all their issues in all who possess them. 5 And this diverse manifestation of one 
Spirit, whether practical wisdom or scientific knowledge ; whether the heroism of 
faith with its resultant gifts of healing, or energies of power, or impassioned utter- 
ance, or the ability to distinguish between true and false spiritual manifestations ; 
or, again, kinds of tongues, or the interpretation of tongues, 6 were all subordinated 
to one sole end — edification. And, therefore, to indulge in any conflict between gifts, 
any rivalry in their display, was to rend asunder the unity which reigned supreme 
through this rich multiplicity ; to throw doubt on the unity of their origin, to ruin 
the unity of their action. The gifts, whether healings, helps, governments, or 
tongues, occurred separately in different individuals ; but each of these — whether 

1 These distinctions, so essential to the right understanding of the passage, are hopelessly 
obliterated in the E.V., which also swerves from its usual rectitude by rendering ij "and" instead 
of " or " in ver. 27, that it might not seem to sanction " communion in one kind " The " unworthily " 
in ver. 29 is perhaps a gloss, though a correct one. The /cA.toju.evoi', " broken," of ver. 24 seems to have 
been tampered with from dogmatic reasons. It is omitted in x, A, B, C, and D reads flpiwro/xevor, 
perhaps because of John xix. 36. 

a xi. 17—34. s Deut. xxL 23. 

4 Perhaps a gross and fearful abuse of the principle involved in 2 Cor. v. 16, as though people of 
spiritual intuitions were emancipated from the mere acknowledgment of Jesus. One could easily 
expect this from what we know of the " everlasting Gospel " in the thirteenth century, and of similar 
movements in different times of the Church (Maurice, Unity, 445). How startling to these illuminati 
to be told that the MgJiest operation of the Spirit was to acknowledge Jesus ! 

* James i. 17. 

6 xii. 8 — 10. I have indicated, without dwelling on, the possible classification hinted at by the 
rrepw (9, 10), as contrasted with the o> fiev and aAAw. "Knowledge (yuwtris) as distinguiraed from 
"wisdom," deals with "mysteries" (xiii. 2; xv. 51 ;'viiL passim). 



896 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Apostle, or prophet, or teacher — was but a baptised member of the one body of 
Christ ; and by a fresh application of the old classic fable of Menenius Agrippa, he 
once more illustrates the fatal results which must ever spring from any strife 
between the body and its members. 1 Let them covet the better gifts — and tongues, 
in which th*/ gloried most, he has studiously set last— and yet he is now about to 
point out to them a path more transcendent than any gifts. And then, rising on the 
wings of inspired utterance, he pours forth, as from the sunlit mountain heights, 
his glorious hymn to Christian love. "Without it a man may speak with human, 
aye, and even angelic tongues, and yet have become but as booming gong or clang- 
ing cymbal. 8 Without it, whatever be his unction, or insight, or knowledge, or 
mountain-moving faith, a man is nothing. Without it he may dole away all his 
possessions, and give his body to be burned, yet is profited nothing. Then follows 
that description of love, which should be written in letters of gold on every 
Christian's heart — its patience, its kindliness; its freedom from envy, vaunting self- 
assertion, 3 inflated arrogance, vulgar indecorum ; its superiority to self-seeking ; its 
calm control of temper ; its oblivion of wrong ; 4 its absence of joy at the wrongs of 
others ; its sympathy with the truth ; its gracious tolerance ; its trustfulness ; its 
hope ; its endurance. 5 Preaching, and tongues, and knowledge, are but partial, and 
shall be done away when the perfect has come ; but love is a flower whose petals 
never fall off. 6 Those are but as the lispings, and emotions, and reasonings of a 
child ; but this belongs to the perfect manhood, when we shall see GTod, not as in the 
dim reflection of a mirror, but face to face, and know him, not in part, but fully, 
even as now we are fully known. Faith, and hope, and love, are all three, not 
transient gifts, but abiding graces ; but the greatest of these — the greatest because 
it is the root of the other two ; the greatest because they are for ourselves, but love 
is for others ; the greatest because neither in faith nor in hope is the entire and 
present fruition of heaven, but only in the transcendent and illimitable blessedness 
of "faith working by love;" the greatest because faith and hope are human, but 
love is essentially divine— the greatest of these is love. 7 

16. On such a basis, so divine, so permanent, it was easy to build the decision 
about the inter-relation of spiritual gifts ; easy to see that preaching was superior 
to glossolaly ; because the one was an introspective and mostly unintelligible exercise, 
the other a source of general advantage. The speaker with tongues, unless he could 
also interpret, or unless another could interpret for him his inarticulate ecstacies, 
did but utter indistinct sounds, like the uncertain blaring of a trumpet or the con- 
fused discordances of a harp or flute. Apart from interpretation " tongues" were a 
mere talking into air. They were as valueless, as completely without significance, 
as the jargon of a barbarian. Since they were so proud of these displays, let them 
pray for ability to interpret their rhapsodies. The prayer, the song of the spirit, 
should be accompanied by the assent of the understanding, otherwise the "tongue" 
was useless to any ordinary worshipper, nor could they claim a share in what was 
said by adding their Amen 8 to the voice of Eucharist. Paul, too — and he thanked 

1 xii. 1 — 31. See a noble passage in Maurice, Unity, 469, sq., contrasting this conception with 
the artificial view of society in Hobbes' Leviathan. The absolute unity of Jews and Gentiles (ver. 13) 
exhibited in baptism and the Lord's Supper,— whence it residted that the Jews would henceforth be 
but " a dwindling majority in the Messianic kingdom,"— was, with the Cross, the chief stumbling- 
block to the Jews. 

2 "Ephyreia aera" (Virg. Georg. ii. 264); Corinthian brass (Plin. H. N. 34, 2, 3). 

3 Ver. 4, ov nepnepeveTai. Pcrperus, " a braggart." "Heavens ! how I showed off (eveiTepirepeva-dfirfv) 
before my new auditor, Pompeius ! " (Cic. ad Att. i. 14). 

* xiii. 5, " does not reckon the wrong." The opposite of " all his faults observed, set in a note- 
book." 

s Ver. 7, o-reyei means "bears," "endures." Its classic meaning is "holds water;" and this is 
ilso true of love with its gracious reticences and suppressions, ovSeu fiavavcrov ev 07017177 (Clem. Rom.). 

6 Ver. 8, ovSenore eKirCnTet. So we may understand the metaphor, as in James i. 11, e£e7retr« 
(Isa. xxviii. 4) ; others prefer the classic sense, "is never hissed off the stage ;" has its part to play 
on the st.ige of eternity. 

i xii. 31— xiii. 18. 

8 xiv. 16, ttw sepet to 'hukv. "He who says Amen is greater than he who blesses" (BeraclidtK 
vili.8). 



CONDITION OP THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 397 

God that he "was capable of this deep spiritual emotion — was more liable to the im- 
pulse of glossolaly than any of them; 1 yet so little did he value it — we may even 
say so completely did he disparage it as a part of public worship— that after telling 
them that he had rather speak five intelligible words to teach others than ten 
thousand words in " a tongue," 2 he bids them not to be little children in intelligence, 
but to be babes in vice, and quotes to them, in accordance with that style of adapta- 
tion with which his Jewish converts would have been familiar, a passage of Isaiah, 3 
in which Jehovah threatens the drunken priests of Jerusalem that since they would 
not listen to the simple preaching of the prophet, he would teach them — and that, 
too, ineffectually — by conquerors who spoke a tongue which they did not understand. 
From this he argues that "tongues" are not meant for the Church at all, but are a 
sign to unbelievers; and that, if exercised in the promiscuous way which was coming 
into vogue at Corinth, would only awaken, even in unbelievers, the contemptuous 
remark that they were a set of insane fanatics, whereas the effect of preaching might 
be intense conviction, prostrate worship, and an acknowledgment of the presence of 
God among them. 4 

16. The disorders, then, in the Corinthian Church had sprung from the selfish 
struggle of each to show off his own special gift, whether tongue, or psalm, or teach- 
ing, or revelation. If they would bear in mind that edification was the object of 
worship, such scenes would not occur. Only a few at a time, therefore, were to 
speak with tongues, and only in case some one could interpret, otherwise they were 
to suppress the impulse. Nor were two people ever to be preaching at the same time. 
If the rivalry of unmeaning sounds among the glossolalists had been fostered by 
some Syrian enthusiast, the less intolerable but still highly objectionable disorder of 
rival preachers absorbed in the "egotism of oratory" was an abuse introduced by 
the admirers of Apollos. In order to remedy this, he lays down the rule that if one 
preacher was speaking, and another felt irresistibly impelled to say something, the 
first was to cease. It was idle to plead that they could not control themselves. The 
spirits which inspire the true prophet are under the prophet's due control, and God 
is the author, not of confusion but of peace. Women were not to speak in church 
at all ; and if they wanted any explanations they must ask their husbands at home. 
This was the rule of all Churches, and who were they that they should alter these 
wise and good regulations ? Were they the earliest Church ? Were they the only 
Church ? A true preacher, a man truly spiritual, would at once recognise that these 
were the commands of the Lord ; and to invincible bigotry and obstinate ignorance 
Paul has no more to say. The special conclusion is that preaching is to be encou- 
raged, and glossolaly not forbidden, provided that it did not interfere with the general 
rule that everything is to be done in decency and order. It is, however, extremely 
probable that the almost contemptuous language of the Apostle towards " the 
tongues" — a manifestation at first both sacred and impressive, but liable to easy 
simulation and grave abuse, and no longer adapted to serve any useful function — 
tended to suppress the display of emotion which he thus disparaged. Certain it is 
that from this time forward we hear little or nothing of " the gift of tongues." It 
—or something which on a lower level closely resembled it — has re-appeared again 
and again it different places and epochs in the history of the Christian Church. It 
seems, indeed, to be a natural consequence of fresh and overpowering religious 
emotion. But it can be so easily imitated by the symptoms of hysteria, and it leads 
to consequences so disorderly and deplorable, that except as a rare and isolated 
phenomenon it has been generally discountenanced by that sense of the necessity 

1 Why does he thank God for a gift which he is rating so low as an element of worship ? Because 
the highest value of it was subjective. He who was capable of it was, at any rate, not dead ; his 
heart was not petrified ; he was not past feeling , he could feel the direct influence of the Spirit of 
God upon Ms spirit. 

2 "Rather half of ten of the edifying sort than a thousand times ten of the other" (Besser). 

8 xiv. 21, ev t» vojutw. So Pa. lxxxii. 6 is quoted as "the Law" in John x. 34. On this passage 
▼. eupra, p. 30. 
* xiv. 1—26. 



898 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

for decency and order which the Apostle here lays down, and which has been 
thoroughly recognised by the calm wisdom of the Christian Church. The control 
and suppression of the impassioned emotion which expressed itself in glossolaly is 
practically its extinction, though this in no way involves the necessary extinction of 
the inspiring convictions from which it sprang. 1 

17. Then follows the immortal chapter in which he confirms their faith in the 
resurrection, and removes their difficulties respecting it. If they would not nullify 
their acceptance of the Gospel in which they stood, and by which they were saved, 
they must hold fast the truths which he again declares to them, that Christ died for 
our sins, was buried, and had been raised the third day. He enumerates His appear- 
ances to Kephas, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred at once of whom the 
majority were yet living, to James, to all the Apostles ; last, as though to the abor- 
tive-born, even to himself. 2 " For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not 
adequate to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. Yet by 
the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me has not proved in vain, 
but more abundantly than all of them I laboured — yet not I, but the grace of God 
which was with me; whether, then, it be I or they, so we preach, and so ye 
believed." 3 

If, then, Christ had risen, whence came the monstrous doctrine of some of them 
that there was no resurrection of the dead ? The two truths stood or fell together. 
If Christ had not risen, their faith was after all a chimera, their sins were unf orgiven, 
their dead had perished ; and if their hope in Christ only was a hope undestined to 
fruition, they were the most pitiable of men. But since Christ had risen, we also 
shall rise, and as all men share the death brought in by Adam, so all shall be quick- 
ened unto life in Christ. 4 But each in his own rank. The firstfruits Christ ; then 
His redeemed at His appearing, when even death, the last enemy, shall be reduced 
to impotence ; then the end, when Christ shall give up His mediatorial kingdom, 
and God shall be all in all. And if there were no resurrection, what became of their 
practice of getting themselves baptised for the dead? 5 And why did the Apostles 
brave the hourly peril of death ? By his boast of them in Christ he asseverates 
that his life is a daily dying. And if, humanly speaking, he fought beasts at 
Ephesus, 6 what would be the gain to him if the dead rise not ? The Epicureans 
would then have some excuse for their base sad maxim, " Let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die." Was it intercourse with the heathen that produced their 
dangerous unbelief ? Oh, let them not be deceived ! let them beware of this 
dangerous leaven ! " Base associations destroy excellent characters." Let them 
awake at once to righteousness out of their drunken dream of disbelief, and break off 
the sinful habits which it engendered ! Its very existence among them was an 
ignorance of God, for which they ought to blush. 7 

i xiv. 26—40. 

2 xv. 8, tcS €KTpu>fxa.TL (cf. Num. xii. 12, LXX. ; see also Ps. lviii. 8). 

» xv. 1—12 (cf. Epict. Diss. iii. 1, 36). 

* "Even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Here is one of the antinomies which St. Paul 
leaves side by side. On the one hand, "life in Christ" is co-extensive with " death in Adam ; " on 
the other, only those who are " in Christ" shall be made alive. Life here can hardly mean less than 
salvation. But it is asserted of all universally, and Adam and Christ are contrasted as death and 
life. Certainly in this and other places the Apostle's language suggests the natural conclusion that 
"the principle which has come to actuality in Christ is of sufficient energy to quicken all men for the 
resurrection to the blessed life " (Baur, Paul. ii. 219). But if we desire to arrive at a rigid eschato- 
logical doctrine we must compare one passage with another. See Excursus II., " Antinomies in St. 
Paul's Writings." 

5 Perhaps this is only a passing argumentum ad Jiominem ; if so it shows St. Paul's large tolerance 
that he does not here pause to rebuke so superstitious a practice. It needs no proof that " baptism 
for the dead" means " baptism for the dead," and not the meanings which commentators put into it, 
who go to Scripture to support tradition, not to seek for truth. 

e Of course metaphorically, or he would have mentioned it in 2 Cor. xi. His three points in 29 
—34 are— if there be no resurrection (1) why do some of you get yourselves baptised to benefit your 
relatives who have died unbaptised?— (2) Why do we live in such self-sacrifice? (3) What possibility 
would there be of resisting Epicurean views of life among men in general? 

7 xv. 12—35. 



CONDITION OF THE CHURCH AT CORINTH. 399 

And as for material difficulties, Paul does not merely fling them asid<i with a 
"Senseless one ! " but says that the body dies as the seed dies, and our resurrection 
bodies shall differ as the grain differs with the nature of the sown see i, or as one 
star differs from another in glory. The corruption, the indignity, the strengthless- 
ness of the mortal body, into which at birth the soul is sown, shall be replaced by 
the incorruption, glory, power of the risen body. The spiritual shall follow the 
natural ; the heavenly image of Christ's quickening spirit replace the earthly image 
of Adam, the mere living soul. 1 Thus in a few simple words does St. Paul sweep 
av ay the errors of Christians about the physical identity of the resurrection-body 
with the actual corpse, which have given rise to so many scornful materialist objec- 
tions. St. Paul does not say with Prudentius — 

M Me nee dente, nee ungue 
Fraudatum redimet patefacti fossa sepulcri;" 

but that " flesh and blood" cannot enter into the kingdom of God ; that at Christ's 
coming the body of the living Christian will pass by transition, that of the dead 
Christian by resurrection, into a heavenly, spiritual, and glorious body. 2 

The body, then, was not the same, but a spiritual body ; so that all coarse 
material difficulties were idle and beside the point. In one moment, whether quick 
or dead, at the sounding of the last trumpet, we should be changed from the 
corruptible to incorruption, from the mortal to immortality. " Then shall be 
fulfilled the promise that is written, Death is swallowed up into victory. Where, 
death, is thy sting ? where, death, thy victory ? 3 The sting of death is sin, the 
power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who is giving us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my brethren beloved, prove yourselves steadfast, 
immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord always, knowing that your toil is 
not fruitless in the Lord." 4 

So ends this glorious chapter — the hope of millions of the living, the consolation 
for the loss of millions of the dead. And if, as we have seen, Paul was the most 
tried, in this life the most to be pitied of men, yet what a glorious privilege to him 
in his trouble, what a glorious reward to him for all his labours and sufferings, that 
he should have been so gifted and enlightened by the Holy Spirit as to be enabled 
thus, incidentally as it were, to pour forth words which rise to a region far above 
all difficulties and objections, and which teach us to recognise in death, not the 
curse, but the coronation, not the defeat, but the victory, not the venomous serpent, 

1 xv. 35 — 50. In this chapter there is the nearest approach to natwral (as apart from architectural 
and agonistic) metaphors. Dean Howson (Charact. of St. P. 6) points out that there is more imagery 
from natural phenomena in the single Epistle of St. James than in all St. Paul's Epistles put 
together. 

2 Ver. 52. " The dead shall be raised, we (the living) shall be changed." Into the question of 
the intermediate state St. Paul, expecting a near coming of Christ, scarcely enters. Death was 
KotMacr0at, resurrection was <rvv8o£a.<rQriva<.. Did he hold that there was an intermediate provisional 
building of God's which awaited us in heaven after the stripping off of our earthly tent ? The nearest 
allusion to the question may be found in 2 Cor. v. ; 1— 4 (Pfieiderer, i. 261). 

3 6a.va.Ts (not afirj), « A, B, C, D, E, P, G. 

4 xv. 50—58. " It is very evident that the Apostle here regards the whole history of the world 
and men as the scene of the conflict of two principles, one of which has sway at first, but is then 
attacked and conquered, and finally destroyed by the other. The first of these principles is death ; 
the history of the world begins with this, and comes to a close when death, and with death the 
dualism of which history is the development, has entirely disappeared from it" (Baur, Paul. ii. 225). 
In this chapter the only resurrection definitely spoken of is a resurrection "in Christ." On the final 
destiny of those who are now perishing (anoWv ixevoi.) St. Paul never touches with any definiteness. 
But he speaks of the final conquest of death, the last enemy — where " death " seems to be used in its 
deeper spiritual and scriptural sense ; he says (Rom. viii. 19—23) that "the whole creation (Tracra tj 
ktio-is) shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of 
God ; " he contrasts the universality of man's disobedience with the universality of God's mercy ; he 
says where sin abounded there grace did much more abound (Rom. v. 20) ; he speaks of God's will to 
bestow universal favour commensurate with universal sin (Rom. xi. 32) ; he dwells on the solution of 
dualism in unity and the tending of all things into God (ei? omtov to. Travra, Rom. xi. 30—36) ; his 
whole splendid philosophy of history consists in showing (Rom. Gal. passim) that each lower and 
sadder stage and moment of manV condition is a necessary means of achieving the higher ; and he 
says that God, at last, " shall be all in all." Whatever antinomies may be left unsolved, let Christiana 
duly weigh these truths. 



400 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

t>ut the veiled angel, not the worst enemy, but the greatest birthright of mankind. 
Not by denunciation of unorthodoxy, not by impatient crushing of discussion, not by 
the stunning blows of indignant authority, does he meet an unbelief even so strange, 
and so closely affecting the very fundamental truths of Christianity, as a denial of 
the resurrection ; but by personal appeals, by helpful analogies, by calm and lofty 
reasoning, by fervent exhortations, by the glowing eloquence of inspired convictions. 
Anathema would have been worse than useless ; at excommunication he does not 
oo much as hint ; but the refutation of perilous error by the presentation of ennobling 
truth has won, in the confirmation of the faith, in the brightening of the hope of 
centuries, its high and permanent reward. 

Let us also observe that St. Paul's inspired conviction of the Eesurrection rests, 
like all his theology, on the thought that the life of the Christian is a life "in Christ." 
On Plato's fancies about our reminiscence of a previous state of being he does not 
touch ; but for the unfulfilled ideas on which Plato builds he offers the fulfilled ideal 
of Christ. He founds no arguments, as Kant does, on the failure of mankind to 
obey the " categorical imperative" of duty ; but he points to the Sinless Man. He 
does not follow the ancients in dwelling on false analogies like the butterfly ; nor is 
he misled like his very ablest contemporaries and successors by the then prevalent 
fable of the Phoenix. He does not argue from the law of continuity, or the inde- 
structibility of atoms, or the permanence of force, or the general belief of mankind. 
But his main thought, his main argument is — Ye are Christ's, and Christ is risen ; 
if ye died with him to sin, ye shall also live with him to righteousness here, and 
therefore to glory hereafter. The life ye now live is lived in the faith of the Son of 
God, and being eternal in its very nature, contains in itself the pledge of its own 
inextinguishable vitality. He teaches us alike in the phenomena of human sin and 
of human sanctity to see the truth of the Resurrection. For the forgiveness of sin 
Christ died ; for the reward and the hope and the support of holiness he lives at the 
right hand of God. He does not so much argue in favour of the Resurrection as 
represent it, and make us feel its force. The Christian's resurrection from the death 
of sin to the life of righteousness transcends and involves the lesser miracle of his 
resurrection from the sleep of death to the life of heaven. 

18. The Epistle closes with practical directions and salutations. He establishes 
a weekly offertory, as he had done in Galatia, for the saints at Jerusalem. He tells 
them that he will either — should it be worth while— take it himself to Jerusalem, 
or entrust it with commendatory letters from them, to any delegates whom they 
might approve. He announces without comment his altered intention of not taking 
them en route as he went to Macedonia, as well as on his return, and so giving them 
a double visit, but tells them that he should come to them by way of Macedonia, and 
probably spend the winter with them, that they might help him on his further 
journey ; and that he means to remain in Ephesus till Pentecost, because a great 
ioor is open to him, and there are many adversaries. 

Timothy will perhaps come to them. If so they are not to despise his youth, or 
alarm his timidity by opposition, but to aid his holy work, and to help him peacefully 
on his way to the Apostle with those who accompanied him. They had asked that 
Apollos might visit them. St. Paul had done his best to second their wiuhes, but 
Apollos — though holding out hopes of a future visit — declined to come at present, 
actuated in all probability by a generous feeling that, under present circumstances, 
his visit would do more harm than good. 1 

Then a brief vivid exhortation. " Watch ! stand in the faith ! be men ! be 
strong ! let all your affairs be in love." 

Then a few words of kindly eulogy of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus — of 
whom Stephanas had been the earliest Achaian convert — who devoted themselves to 
ministry to the saints, and by their visit had consoled Aim for his absence from them, 
and them by eliciting this Epistle. He urges them to pay due regard and deference 
to all such true labourers. It is not impossible that these few words may have beer 

1 xvi. 12, 0t\7jfia does not mean " Apollos' will," but (probably) "God's wUL H 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE COKINTHIANS. 401 

added by an afterthought, lest the Corinthians should suppose that it was from these 
— especially if they were of Chloe's household — that St. Paul had heard, such dis- 
tressing accounts of the Church, and so should he inclined to receive them badly on 
their return. Then the final autograph salutation : — 

"The salutation of me, Paul, with my own ha*nd ; " but before he can pen the 
final benediction, there is one more outburst of strong and indignant feeling. " If 
any one loveth not the Lord, let him be Anathema ; 1 Maranatha, the Lord is near. 
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." That would have been the 
natural ending, but he had had so much to reprobate, so many severe things to say, 
that to show how unabated, in spite of all, was his affection for them, he makes the 
unusual addition, " My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen." 2 So ends the 
longest and, in some respects, the grandest and most characteristic of his Epistles. 
He had suppressed indeed all signs of the deep emotion with which it had. been 
written ; but when it was despatched he dreaded the results it might produce — 
dreaded whether he should have said too much ; dreaded the possible alienation, by 
any over- severity, of those whom he had only desired to win. His own soul was all 
quivering with its half -stifled thunder, and he was afraid lest the flash which he had 
sent forth should scathe too deeply the souls at which it had been hurled. He would 
even have given much to recall it, 3 and awaited with trembling anxiety the earliest 
tidings of the manner in which it would be received. But God overruled all for 
good ; and, indeed, the very writings which spring most naturally and spontaneously 
from a noble and sincere emotion, are often those that produce the deepest impres- 
sion upon the world, and are less likely to be resented — at any rate, are more likely 
to be useful — than the tutored and polished utterances which are carefully tamed 
down into the limits of correct conventionality. Not only the Church of Corinth, 
but the whole world, has gained from the intensity of the Apostle's feelings, and the 
impetuous spontaneity of the language in which they were expressed. 



CHAPTER XXXm. 

8BCOFD EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 

"There are three crowns: the crown of the Law, the crown of the Priesthood, and 
the crown of Royalty : but the crown of a good name mounts above them all." — Pirke 
AbMth, iv. 19. 

When St. Paul left Ephesus he went straight to Troas, with the same high 
motive by which he was always actuated — that of preaching the Gospel of 
Christ. 4 He had visited the town before, but his stay there had been 
shortened by the imploring vision of the man of Macedon, which had decided 
his great intention to carry the Gospel into Europe. But though his preach- 

* I cannot pretend to understand what St. Paul exactly meant by this. Commentators call it an 
""imprecation ;" but such an " imprecation" does not seem to me like St. Paul. Anathema is the 
Hebrew cherem of Lev. xxvii. 29 ; Num. xxi. 2, 3 (Hormah) ; Josh. vi. 17. But the later Jews used 
it for " exoommunication," whether of the temporary sort (nidui) or the severe. The severest form 
was called Shematfia. The Fathers mostly take it to mean " excommunication" here, and in Gal. i. 
8, 9, and some see in Maranatha an allusion to Shem atha (the name cometh). But probably these 
are after-thoughts. It is a sudden expression of deep feeling ; and that it is less terrible than it 
sounds we may hope from 1 Cor. v. 5 ; 1 Tim. L 20, where the object is amendment, not wrath. For 
"anathematise" see Matt. xxvi. 74 ; Acts xxiii. 12. 

3 The subscription is, as usual, spurious. It arose from a mistaken inference from xvi. 5. The 
letter itself shows that it was written in Ephesus (xvi. 8), and though Stephanas, Fortunatus, and 
Ichaiacus may have been its bearers, Timotheus could not have been. 

a 2 Cor. vii. 8. * 2 Cor. ii. 12, 13. 

▲ A 



402 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

ing was now successful, and " a door was opened for him in the Lord," 1 he 
could not stay there from extreme anxiety. " He had no rest for his spmt, 
because he found not Titus his brother." Titus had been told to rejoin him 
at Troas ; but perhaps the precipitation of St. Paul's departure from Ephesus 
had brought him to that town earlier than Titus had expected, and, in the 
uncertain navigation of those days, delays may easily have occurred. At any 
rate, he did not come, and Paul grew more and more uneasy, until in that 
intolerable oppression of spirit he felt that he could no longer continue his 
work, and left Troas for Macedonia. There, at last, he met Titus, who 
relieved his painful tension of mind by intelligence from Corinth, which, 
although chequered, was yet on the main point favourable. From Titus he 
learnt that his change of plan about the visit had given ground for un- 
favourable criticism, 2 and that many injurious remarks on his character and 
mode of action had been industriously disseminated, especially by one Jewish 
teacher. 3 Still, the effect of the first Epistle had been satisfactory. It had 
caused grief, but the grief had been salutary, and had issued in an outburst of 
yearning affection, lamentation, and zeal. 4 Titus himself had been received 
cordially, yet with fear and trembling. 5 The offender denounced in his letter 
had been promptly and even severely dealt with, 6 and all that St. Paul had 
said to Titus in praise of the Church had been justified by what he saw. 7 
Accordingly, he again sent Titus to them, 8 to finish the good work which he 
had begun, and with him he sent the tried and faithful brother " whose praise 
is in the Gospel through all the Churches ; " 9 and this time Titus was not 
only ready but even anxious to go. 10 

In what town of Macedonia St. Paul had met with Titus, and also with 
Timothy, we do not know. Great uncertainty hangs over the details of their 
movements, and indeed all the events of this part of the journey are left in 
obscurity : we can only conjecture that during it St. Paul had even travelled 
as far as Ulyricum. 11 At some point in the journey, but probably not at 
Philippi, as the subscription to the Epistle says — because, as is evident from 
the Epistle itself, he had visited most of the Churches of Macedonia, 12 — he 
wrote his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. From it we learn that, whatever 
may have been in this region the special nature of his affliction — whether 
grievous sickness, or external persecutions, or inward anxieties, or apparently 
all of these combined — his stay in Macedonia had suffered from the same 
overwhelming distress which had marked the close of his residence in Ephesus, 

1 The use of this expression by St. Luke is one of the many interesting traces '»f hja 
personal intercourse with St. Paul. (See 1 Cor. xvi 9.) 

2 2 Cor. i. 17. 6 fi- 5—10. 
a iii. 1 ; v. 11 ; vii. 2, 3 ; x. 10 ; xi. 18—20. 7 vii. 14. 

* vii. 6—11. 8 v iii- 6- 

* vii. 13, 15. 9 viii. 18, 23. 

10 viii. 17. That there was a slight unwillingness the first time seems to be shown by 
the way in which St. Paul felt himself obliged to encourage him in his mission. 

>» Rom. xv. 19. 

12 2 Cor. viii. 1 ; ix. 2. Philippi, on the other hand, would be the first city which ha 
would reach. 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 403 

and which had driven him out of Troas. 1 The Churches were themselves in a 
6tate of affliction, which Paul had naturally to share, 2 and he describes his 
condition as one of mental and physical prostration : " Our flesh had no rest, 
but we are troubled on every side ; from without fightings, from within 
fears." 3 And this helps to explain to us the actual phenomena of the letter 
written amid such circumstances. If Hope is the key-note of the Epistle to 
the Thessalonians, Joy of that to the Philippians, Faith of that to the 
Romans, and Heavenly Things of that to the Ephesians, Affliction is 
the one predominent word in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 4 The 
Epistles to the Thessalonians contain his views on the Second Advent ; the 
Epistle to the Galatians is his trumpet-note of indignant defiance to retro- 
grading Judaisers ; the Epistle to the Romans is the systematic and, so to 
speak, scientific statement of his views on what may be called, in modern 
language, the scheme of salvation ; the Epistle to the Philippians is his out- 
pouring of tender and gladdened affection to his most beloved converts ; the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians shows us how he applied the principles of 
Christianity to daily life in dealing with the flagrant aberrations of a most 
unsatisfactory Church ; his Second Epistle to the Corinthians opens a window 
into the very emotions of his heart, and is the agitated self-defence of a 
wounded and loving spirit to ungrateful and erring, yet not wholly lost or 
wholly incorrigible souls." 5 

And this self-defence was not unnecessary. In this Epistle we find St. 
Paul for the first time openly confronting the Judaising reaction which 
assumed such formidable dimensions, and threatened to obliterate every 
distinctive feature of the Gospel which he preached. It is clear that in some 
of the Churches which he had founded there sprang up a Judaic party, whose 
hands were strengthened by commendatory letters from Jerusalem, and who 
not only combated his opinions, but also grossly abused his character and 
motives. By dim allusions and oblique intimations we trace their insidious 
action, and in this Epistle we find ourselves face to face with them and their 
unscrupulous opposition. It differs greatly from the one that preceded it. 
St. Paul is no longer combating the folly of fancied wisdom, or the abuse of 
«rue liberty. He is no longer occupied with the rectification of practical dis- 
orders and theoretical heresies. He is contrasting his own claims with those 
of his opponents, and maintaining an authority which had been most rudely 
and openly impugned. 

It is not impossible that the attack had been suggested by St. Paul's 

1 viii. 2. 2 iv. 8—12. 3 vii. 5. 

4 flxtyi S> OKifaiuu (2 Cor. i. 4, 6, 8 ; ii. 4 ; iv. 8 ; viii. 13). 

* " The Apostle pours out his heart to them, and beseeches them, in return, not for 
a cold, dry, critical appreciation of his eloquence, or a comparison of his with other 
doctrines, but the sympathy of churchmen, if not the affection of children " Parts of 
the Epistle, taken alone, might seem to be " almost painfully personal," and we "might 
have thought that the man had got the better of the ambassador. But when we learn 
how essentially the man and the ambassador are inseparable, then the 'folly,' the 
boasting, the shame, are not mere revelations of character, but revelations of the close 
bonds by which one man is related to another " (Maurice, Unity, 488). 
A A 2 



404 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

sentence on the incestuous offender. 1 His case seems to have originated a 
quarrel among the Corinthian Christians, of whom some sided with him and 
some with his father. It is clear upon the face of things that we do not know 
all the circumstances of the case, since it is all but inconceivable that, had 
there been no extenuating fact, he should have found defenders for a crime 
which excited the horror of the very heathen. Even those who placed 
sensuality on the same level as eating meats offered to idols, and therefore 
regarded it as a matter of indifference — whose view St. Paul so nobly refutes 
in his first Epistle — could not have sided with this person if there were no 
palliating element in his offence. And, indeed, if this had not been the case, 
he would scarcely have ventured to continue in Church membership, and to 
be, with his injured father, a frequenter of their love-feasts and partaker in 
their sacraments. It may be quite true, and indeed the allusions to him in the 
Second Epistle show, that he was weak rather than wicked. But even this 
would have been no protection to him in a wrong on which Gallio himself 
would have passed a sentence of death or banishment, and which the Mosaic 
law had punished with excision from the congregation.' 2 There must there- 
fore have been something which could be urged against the heinousness of his 
transgression, and St. Paul had distinctly to tell the Corinthians that there 
was no personal feeling mixed up with his decision. 3 His words had evidently 
implied that the Church was to be assembled, and there, with his spirit 
present with them, to hand him over to Satan, so that judgment might come 
on his body for the salvation of his soul. That is what he practically tells the 
Church to do. Did they do it ? It seems to be at least doubtful. That they 
withdrew from his communion is certain ; and the very threat of excommuni- 
cation which hung over him — accompanied, as he and the Church thought 
that it would be, with supernatural judgments — was sufficient to plunge him 
into the depths of misery and penitence. Sickness and death were at this 
time very prevalent among the Corinthian converts, and St. Paul told them 
that this was a direct punishment of their profanation of the Lord's Supper. 
It is clear that the offender was not contumacious, and in his Second Epistle 
St. Paul openly forgives him, and remits his sentence, apparently on the 
ground that the Corinthians had already done so. In fact, since the desired 
end of the man's repentance, and the purging of the Church from all com- 
plicity with or immoral acquiescence in his crime had been attained without 
resorting to extreme measures, St. Paul even exhorts the Corinthians to 
console and forgive the man, and, in fact, restore him to full Church mem- 
bership. Still, it does seem as if they had not exactly followed the Apostle's 

1 The theory that the offender of the second Epistle is an entirely diffeient person, 
alluded to in some lost intermediate letter, seems to me untenable, in spite of the con- 
sensus of eminent critics (De Wette, Bleek, Credner, Olshausen, Neander, Ewald, &c. ), 
who, in some form or other, adopt such a hypothesis. I see nothing inconsistent with 
the older view either in the tone of 1 Cor., or the effect it produced, or in St. Paul's 
excitement, or in the movements of Titus, or in the language about the offence. But I 
have not space to enter more fully into the controversy. 

• Lav. xvii. 8 ; xx 11 ; Deut. xxvii. 20. » 2 Cor. vii. 11, 12. 



8EC0ND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 405 

advice, and as if the party opposed to him had, so to speak, turned upon him 
and repudiated his authority. They said that he had not come, and he would 
not come. It was all very well to write stem and threatening letters, but it 
was not by letters, but by the exercise of miraculous power, that Kephas had 
avenged the wrongs of the Church and of the Spirit on Ananias and Sap- 
phira, and on Simon Magus. Paul could not do this. How could it be 
expected of a man so mean of aspect, so vacillating in purpose, so inefficient 
in speech ? It was not Paul who had been chosen as the twelfth Apostle, nor 
was he an Apostle at all. As the abuses among his followers showed that 
his teaching was dangerous, so his inability to rectify them was a proof that 
his authority was a delusion. The very fact that he had claimed no support 
from his converts only marked how insecure he felt his position to be. What 
the Church really wanted was the old stringency of the Mosaic Law; 
some one from Jerusalem ; some true Apostle, with his wife, who would rule 
them with a real supremacy, or at least some emissary from James and the 
brethren of the Lord, to preach " another Gospel," more accordant with the 
will of Jesus Himself. 1 Paul, they implied, had never known Jesus, and 
misrepresented Him altogether ; 2 for He had said that no jot or tittle of the 
law should pass, and that the children's bread should not be cast to dogs. 
Paul preached himself, 3 and indeed seemed to be hardly responsible for what 
he did preach. He was half demented ; and yet there was some method in 
his madness, which showed itself partly in self-importance and partly in 
avarice, both of which were very injurious to the interests of his followers. 4 
What, for instance, could be more guileful and crafty than his entire conduct 
about this collection which he was so suspiciously eager to set on foot ? 5 He 
had ordered them to get up a subscription in his first letter; 6 had, in 
answer to their inquiries, 7 directed that it should be gathered, as in the Gala- 
tian Churches, by a weekly offertory, and had, since this, sent Titus to 
stimulate zeal in the matter. Now certainly a better emissary could not 
possibly have been chosen, for Titus was himself a Greek, and therefore well 
fitted to manage matters among Greeks ; and yet had visited Jerusalem, so 
that he could speak from ocular testimony of the distress which was prevalent 
among the poorer brethren ; and had further been present at the great meet- 
ing in Jerusalem at which Paul and Barnabas had received the special request 
to be mindful of the poor. Yet even this admirably judicious appointment, 
and the transparent independence and delicacy of mind which had made Paul 
— with an insight into their character which, as events showed, was but too 
prescient — entirely to refuse all support from them, was unable to protect 
him from the coarse insinuation that this was only a cunning device to hide 
his real intentions, and give him a securer grasp over their money. Such 

> See Hausrath, p. 420. * 2 Cor. xi 4. 3 2 Cor. xii. 5. 

V. 13, elre yap ££e<TTr)ixev' XL. 1, Sxpekov ^i>etxeer0e /u.ov fUKpSv Tt rrjs a^poovvrfi' 16, fitj ns fi« 
S6£t} a^pova eivai (cf. XU- 6). 

' 5 xii. 16, virdpxoiv navovpyos 56\a> v^as !A.a/3w. Evidently the quotation of a slander,, 
which he proceeds to refute. 

6 The one no longer extant. 7 X Cor. xvi. 



406 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

were the base and miserable innuendoes against which even a Paul had 
deliberately to defend himself ! Slander, like some vile adder, has rustled in 
the dry leaves of fallen and withered hearts since the world began. Even 
the good are not always wholly free from it, and the early Christian Church, 
so far from being the pure ideal bride of the Lord Jesus which we often 
imagine her to be, was (as is proved by all the Epistles) in man} respects as 
little and in some respects even less pure than ours. The chnsom-robe of 
baptism was not preserved immaculate either in that or in any other age. 
The Church to which St. Paul was writing was, we must remember, a com- 
munity of men and women of whom the majority had been familiar from the 
cradle with the meanness and the vice of the poorest ranks of heathenism in 
the corruptest city of heathendom. Their ignorance and weakness, their past 
training and their present poverty, made them naturally suspicious ; and 
though Ave cannot doubt that they were morally the best of the class to which 
they belonged, though there may have been among them many a voiceless 
Epictetus — a slave, but dear to the immortals — and though their very re- 
ception of Christianity proved an aspiring heart, a tender conscience, an 
enduring spirit, yet many of them had not got beyond the inveteracy of life- 
long habits, and it was easy for any pagan or Judaic sophister to lime their 
" wild hearts and feeble wings." But God's mercy overrules evil for good, 
and we owe to the worthless malice of obscure Judaic calumniators the lessons 
which we may learn from most of St. Paul's Epistles. 1 A trivial characteristic 
will often show better than anything else the general drift of any work, and 
as we have already pointed out the prominence in this Epistle of the thought 
of "tribulation," so we may now notice that, though "boasting" was of all 
things the most alien to St. Paul's genuine modesty, the most repugnant to 
his sensitive humility, yet the boasts of his unscrupulous opponents so com- 
pletely drove him into the attitude of self-defence, that the word " boasting " 
occurs no less than twenty-nine times in these few chapters, while it is only 
found twenty-six times in all the rest of St. Paul's writings. 2 

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and those to the Galatians and 
Romans, represent the three chief phases of his controversy with Judaism. 
In the Epistle to the Galatians he overthrew for ever the repellent demand 
that the Gentiles should be circumcised ; in the Epistle to the Romans he 
established for ever the thesis that Jews and Gentiles were equally guilty, and 
could be justified only by faith, and not by works. In both these Epistles he 
establishes, from different points of view, the secondary and purely dis- 
ciplinary functions of the law as a preparatory stage for the dispensation of 
free grace. In both Epistles he shows conclusively that instead of the false 

1 The authenticity of the letter has never been questioned. The three main divisions 
are: i. — vii. Hortatory and retrospective, with an under-current of apology, viii., ix. 
Directions about the contribution, x. — xiii. Defence of his Apostolic position. The 
more minute analysis will be seen as we proceed. But it is the least systematic, as the 
First is the most systematic of all his writings. 

2 Especially in 2 Cor. x., xi., xii. This finds its illustration is the prominence pf 
"inflation " in 1 Cor. passim ; but only elsewhere in Col. ji. 18, 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 407 

assertion that " it is in vain to be a Christian without being a Jew," should be 
substituted the very opposite statement, that it is in vain to be a Christian if, 
as a Christian, one relies on being a Jew as well. But, however irresistible 
his arguments might be, they would be useless if the Judaists succeeded in 
impugning his Apostolic authority, and proving that he had no right to be 
regarded as a teacher. The defence of his claims was, therefore, very far 
from being a mere personal matter ; it involved nothing less than a defence of 
the truth of his Gospel. Yet this defence against an attack so deeply wound- 
ing, and so injurious to his cause, was a matter of insuperable difficulty. His 
opponents could produce their " commendatory letters," and, at least, claimed 
to possess the delegated authority of the Apostles who had lived with Jesus 
(2 Cor. iii. 1 — 18). This was a thing which Paul could not and would not do. 
He had not derived his authority from the Twelve. His intercourse with 
them had been but slight. His Apostolate was conferred on him, not 
mediately by them, but immediately by Christ. He had, indeed, " seen the 
Lord" (1 Cor. ix. 1), but on this he would not dwell, partly because his direct 
intercourse with Christ had been incomparably smaller than that of a Peter 
or a James ; and partly because he clearly saw, and wished his converts to see, 
that spiritual union was a thing far closer and more important than personal 
companionship. To two things only could he appeal : to the visions and 
revelations which he had received from the Lord, above all, his miraculous 
conversion ; and to the success, the activity, the spiritual power, which set a 
seal of supernatural approval to his unparalleled ministry. 1 But the first of 
these claims was deliberately set aside as subjective, both in his own lifetime 
and a century afterwards. 2 The difficulty of convincing his opponents on this 
subject reflects itself in his passion, a passion which rose in part because it 
forced upon him the odious semblance of self-assertion. His sole irresistible 
weapon was "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." 

1 will now proceed to give an outline of this remarkable letter, which, 
from the extreme tension of mind with which it was written, and the constant 
struggle between the emotions of thankfulness and indignation, 3 is more 
difficult in its expressions and in its causal connections than any other. The 
labouring style, — the interchange of bitter irony with pathetic sincerity, — the 
manner in which word after word — now " tribulation," now "consolation," 
now " boasting," now " weakness," — now " simplicity," now " manifestation," 
takes possession of the Apostle's mind— serve only to throw into relief the 

» 2 Cor. ii. 14 ; iii. 2 ; x. 20— 23 ; 1 Cor. ix 1 ; xv. 10, &c. 

2 Pr. Clement. Hom. XVii. 13, seq. 7nos 8e <rot tcaX Tvunev<To\i.<iv avro . . . ; flri»s 8e <roi icai 
u><f>9r) birore avroO tol evavria 177 SiSacrxaXtix ^poveis ; 

3 But, as Dean Stanley observes (Cor., p. 348), " the thankfulness of the first part is 
darkened by the indignation of the third, and even the directions about the business of 
the contribution are coloured by the reflections both of his joy and of his grief. And in 
all those portions, though in themselves strictly personal, the Apostle is borne away into 
the higher region in which he habitually lived, so that this Epistle becomes the most 
striking instance of what is the case more or less with all his writings, a new philosophy 
of life poured forth not through systematic treatises, but through occasional bursts ©f 
human feeling." 



408 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST PAUL. 

frequent bursts of impassioned eloquence. The depth of tenderness which ia 
here revealed towards all who were noble and true, may serve as a measure 
for the insolence and wrong which provoked in the concluding chapters so 
stern an indignation. Of all the Epistles it is the one which enables us to 
look deepest into the Apostle's heart. 

Another characteristic of the letter has been observed by the quick insight 
of Bengel. " The whole letter," he says, " reminds us of an itinerary, but 
interwoven with the noblest precepts." " The very stages of his journey are 
impressed upon it," says Dean Stanley, "the troubles at Bphesus, the anxiety 
of Troas, the consolations of Macedonia, the prospect of moving to Corinth." 1 

After the greeting, in which he associates Timothy — who was probably his 
amanuensis — with himself, and with brief emphasis styles himself an 
" Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God," he begins the usual expression 
of thankfulness, in which the words " tribulation " and " consolation " are 
inextricably intertwined, and in which he claims for the Corinthians a union 
with him in both. 

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
mercies, and God of all consolation, who consoleth us in all our tribulation, that we 
may be able to console those in all tribulation, by the consolation wherewith 
we are ourselves consoled by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound towards 
us, so by Christ aboundeth also our consolation. But whether we are troubled, it 
is for your consolation and salvation which worketh in the endurance of the same 
sufferings which we also suffer, and our hope is sure on your behalf ; 2 or whether 
we are consoled, it is for your consolation and salvation, knowing that as ye are 
partakers of the sufferings, so also of the consolation." 3 

He then alludes to the fearful tribulation, excessive and beyond his strength, 
whether caused by outward enemies or by sickness, through which he has just 
passed in Asia, which has brought him to the verge of despair and of the grave, in 
order that he may trust solely in Him who raiseth the dead. " Who from such a 
death rescued us, and will rescue, on whom we have hoped that even yet will He 
rescue." And as it was the supplication of many which had won for him this great 
charism, he asks that their thanksgivings may be added to those of many, and that 
their prayers may still be continued in his behalf. 4 

For however vile might be the insinuations against him, he is proudly conscious 
of the simplicity 5 and sincerity of his relations to all men, and especially to them, 
" not in carnal wisdom, but in the grace of God." Some had suspected him of 
writing private letters and secret messages, of intriguing in fact with individual 
members of his congregation ; but he tells them that he wrote nothing except what 
they are now reading, and fully recognise, as he hopes they will continue to 
recognise, and even more fully than heretofore, even as some of them 6 already 
recognised, that they and he are a mutual subject of boasting in the day of the 
Lord. This was the reason why he had originally intended to pay them two visits 
instead of one. Had he then been guilty of the levity, the fickleness, the caprice 

1 The thread of the Epistle is historical, but it is interwoven with digressions. The broken 
threads of narrative will be found in i. 8, 15 ; ii. 1, 12, 13 ; vii. 5 ; viii. 1 ; ix. 2 ; xiii. 1. 

2 Verse 6. This is the position of these words in most uncials. 
8 "Communio sanctorum," Phil. ii. 26 (Bengel). 

4 i. 1 — 11 ; L 8. wore efja.iropr)6r)va.i, though generally he was airopovixevos ovk ei-arropovixevos, 
tv. 8. an6KpLfj.a tow 6o.va.rov to the question, " How will it all end ? " the only answer seemed to be 
" Death." Kaff inepPokriv, iv. 17 ; Rom. vii. 13 ; 1 Cor. xii. 31 ; Gal. i. 13. 

s i. 12. aTrXorijs, in answer to the charge of duplicity, is a characteristic word of this Epistl* 
(Tiii. 2 ; ix. 11, 13 ; xi. 8); but here, *> A, B, C, K, read a-yionjr*, 

• (. 14, anb fxepovf. 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 409 

with which ..e had been charged in changing his plan? Did the "Yes, yes " oi 
his purposes mean much the same thing as " No, no," like the mere shifting feeble- 
ness of an aimless man ? 1 Well, if they chose to say this of him as a man, at any 
rate, there was one emphatic " Yes," one unalterable fixity and affirmation about 
him, and that was his preaching of Christ. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, preached 
by him and Silvanus and Timotheus, had proved Himself to be not "Yes "and 
"No; "but in Him was God's infinite "Yes," aud therefore also the Christian's 
everlasting Amen to all God's promises. 2 He who confirmed all of them alike into 
the Anointed (eis xP l(TTOV )i an( i anointed them (x/n<ras), was God, who also set His 
seal on them, and gave them in their hearts the earnest of His Spirit. 3 He called 
God to witness upon his own soul that it was with a desire to spare them that he 
no longer came 4 to Corinth. And then, conscious that jealous eyes would dwell on 
every phrase of his letter, and if possible twist its meaning against him, he tells 
them that by using the expression " sparing them," he does not imply any claim to 
lord it over their faith, for faith is free and by it they stand; but that he is speaking 
as a fellow-worker of their joy, and therefore he had decided that his second visit to 
them should not be in grief. 5 "Was it natural that he should like to grieve those 
who caused him joy, or be grieved by those from whom he ought to receive joy ? 
His joy, he felt sure, was theirs also, and therefore he had written to them instead 
of coming ; and that previous letter — sad as were its contents — had not been written 
to grieve them, but had been written in much tribulation and compression of heart 
and many tears, that they might recognise how more abundantly he loved them. 
Grief, indeed, there had been, and it had fallen on him, but it had not come on him 
only, but partly on them, and he did not wish to press heavily on them all. 6 And 
the sinner who had caused that common grief had been sufficiently censured by the 
reprobation of the majority of them ; 7 so that now, on the contrary, they should 
forgive and comfort him, that a person such as he was — guilty, disgraced, but now 
sincerely penitent — may not be swallowed up bj r his excessive grief. Let them 
now assure him of their love. The object of the former letter had been fulfilled 
in testing their obedience. If they forgave (as they had partially done already, in 
not strictly carrying out his decision), so did he; "and what I have forgiven, if 

1 I have never been even approximately satisfied with any explanation of this passage. 
St. Chrysostom makes it mean, " Did I show levity, or do I plan alter the flesh that the yea with 
me i%ust be always yea, and the nay always nay, as it is with a man of the world who makes his 
plans independently of God's over-ruling of them ? " As there are no emphatic affirmations in the 
case, Matt. v. 37, James v. 12, throw no light on the passage, unless some such words had been 
quoted against him in the perverted sense that when once you have said a thing you must at all 
costs do it, however completely circumstances have changed. 

2 Compare the 'Ajar/v a/uV (" Verily, verily ") of which the Gospels are so full. I read Sib koX Si 
avTov, with n, A, B, C, D, F, G. 

3 appajSwv, earnest-money, part-payment, npoKarafioXr) ; an ancient Qi3YP> Gen. xxxviii. 17, 18 ; 
arrhabo— Plaut. End. Prol. 46) and modern word (Pr. arrhes) made current by Semitic commerce. 
(Cf. airapxt), Rom. viii. 23.) 

4 i. 23. Here, and as, I believe, in ii, 1 and xiii. 1, he speaks of his intended visit as a real 
one. The E. V. mistakes oukcti, "no longer," for outtw, "not yet; "but the expression really 
illustrates the much-disputed verses to which I have referred, and inclines me to the opinion that 
St. Paul had not visited Corinth more than once when this letter was written. But the question is 
one of very small importance, though so much has been written on it. 

5 Lit., " not again to come to you in grief," as he would be doing if he had visited them once in 
grief, and were then obliged to come a second time in the same spirit. No doubt the words literally 
imply that he had already once visited them in grief, and that expression would hardly be correct 
for his first visit ; but he merely uses it in his vivid way as though his intended visit— which, had he 
carried it out, would have been in grief— had been a real visit. The iraA.iv is even omitted in D, E, 
F, G. Theodoret, who ought to know what Greek means, takes trakiv i\9elv merely in the sense of 
" re-visit," separating it from ev kvirr) altogether. 

_ 6 This is another of those ambiguous expressions— due to the emotion of the writer and the 
delicacy of the subjects of which he is treating, and his desire to be kind and just though there was 
so much to blame— about which it is impossible to feel any certainty of the exact explanation. I 
have partly followed the view of St. Chrysostom. 

7 Some had evidently been recalcitrant. In ii. 6 the word for " punishment is en-m/xia, not 
<c6A.a<ris or n/u-wpia ; but the general meaning is that of punishment (Wisd. iii. 10*. Philo, wept a0A*>» 
ecu mrtTimwv, " on rewards and punishments." 



410 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

I have forgiven anything, 1 is for your sakes, in the presence 2 of Christ, that w$ 
may not be over-reached by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his devices." 3 

Well, he did not come to them, and he did write, and what was the consequence P 
His anxiety to know the effect produced by his letter and change of plan was so 
intense, that it almost killed him. Successful as was the opening which he found 
for the Gospel of Christ at Troas, he abandoned his work there, because he could 
not endure the disappointment and anguish of heart which the non-arrival of Titus 
caused him. He therefore went to Macedonia. There at last he met Titus, but he 
omits to say so in his eagerness to thank God, Avho thus drags him in triumph in 
the service of Christ. Everywhere the incense of that triumph was burnt; to 
some it was a sweet savour that told of life, to others a sign of imminent death. 
St. Paul is so possessed by the metaphor that he does not even pause to disentangle 
it. He is at once the conquered enemy dragged in triumph, and the incense burned 
in sign of the victor's glory. The burning incense is a sign to some of life ever- 
renewed in fresh exultation ; to others of defeat ever deepening into death. To him- 
self, at once the captive and the sharer in the triumph, it is a sign of death, and of 
daily death, and yet the pledge of a life beyond life itself. 4 And who is sufficient 
for such ministry? For he is not like the majority 5 — the hucksters, the adultera- 
ters, the fraudulent retailers of the Word of God, — but as of sincerity, but as of God 
— in the presence of God he speaks in union with Christ. 6 

Is this self-commendation to them ? Does he need letters of introduction to 
them? 7 And here, again, follows one of the strangely mingled yet powerful meta- 
phors so peculiar to the greatest and most sensitive imaginations. " Ye are our 
Epistle," says St. Paul, " written on our hearts, recognised and read by all men, 
being manifestly an Epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but 
with the spirit of the living God ; not on stonen tablets, but on fleshen tablets — 
hearts." 8 He does not need a commendatory letter to them; they are themselves 
his commendatory letter to all men; it is a letter of Christ, of which he is only the 
writer and carrier ; 9 and it is not engraved on granite like the Laws of Moses, but 
on their hearts. Thus they are at once the commendatory letter written on 
Paul's heart, and they have a letter of Christ written on their own hearts by the 
Spirit, and of that letter Paul has been the human agent. 10 

It was a bold expression, but one which sprang from a confidence which Christ 
inspired, and had reference to a work for God. That work was the ministry of the 
New Covenant — not of the slaying letter but of the vivifying spirit, 11 for which 

1 ii. 10. The best reading seems to be o K^xapio-^ai, ei ti xexapto-jaat, «, A, B, C, P, G. 
Evidently we are here in the dark about many circumstances ; but we infer that St. Paul's sentence 
of excommunication, as ordered in his former letter, had not been carried out, partly because some 
opposed it, but also in part because the man repented in consequence of his exclusion from the 
communion of the majority of the Church. St. Paul might have been angry that his plain order 
had been disobeyed by the Church as such ; but, on the contrary, he is satisfied with their partial 
obedience, and withdraws his order, which timely repentance had rendered needless. 

2 Cf. Prov. viii. 30, LXX. 

3 i. 12— ii. 11. 

* On this metaphor, v. infra, Excursus III. The last great triumph at Rome had been that ol 
Claudius, when Caradoc was among the captives. 

5 ii. 17. oi 7roAA.oi is a strong expression, but oi Aowrol, "the rest," the reading of D, E, F, G, 
J, is still more impassioned. It is possible that this may have been softened into the other reading, 
just as oi 71-oAA.o! has been softened into 77-0AA01. We must remember how many and diverse were 
the elements of error at Corinth— conceit, faction, Pharisaism, licence, self-assertion; and St. Paul 
(Rom. v.) seems to use oi 71-oA.A.ol peculiarly. 

ii. 12—17 (cf. Isa. i. 22, LXX.). 

7 iii. 1. It is astonishing to find Ebionite hatred still burning against St. Paul in the second 
century, and covertly slandering him because he had no iirta-Tokal (tvo-to-twoX from James. All who 
came without such letters were to be regarded as false prophets, false apostles, &c. (Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 
13 ; Gal. ii. 12.) (Ps. Clem. Recogn. iv. 34 ; Horn. xi. 35.) 

8 Read KapSiai?, n, A, B, C, D, E, G. For the metaphor compare Prov. iii. 3 ; vii. 8 ; Ezek. 
XL 19 ; Ex. xviii. 18. 

9 Compare the identification of the seed sown and the hearts that receive it in Mark iv. 16. 
w iii. 1—3. 

11 iii. 0, airoKTeipei ; Rom. iv. 16; vil. 6, 7, 10, 11 ; Gal. iii. 10; John vi. 63. £wo? nu f Rom. vl 
4, 11 ; viii. 2, 10 ; (Jul. v. 2L 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 411 

Gud gave the sufficiency. And what a glorious ministry! If the ministry of the 
Law — tending in itself to death, written in earthly letters, graven on granite slabs, 
— yet displayed itself in such glory that the children of Israel could not gaze on 
the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which was rapidly fading 
away, 1 how much more glorious was the Ministry of Life, of Eighteousness, of the 
Spirit, which by comparison outdazzles that other glory into mere darkness, 2 and is 
not transitory (5th Sofas) but permanent (iv 8^77). It was the sense of being 
entrusted with that ministry which gave him confidence. Moses used to put a veil 
over his face that the children of Israel might not see the evanescence of the transient ; 
and the veil which he wore on his bright countenance when he spoke to them reminds 
him of the veil which they yet wore on their hardened understandings when his 
Law was read to them, which should only begin to be removed the moment they 
turned from Moses to Christ, 3 from the letter to the spirit, from slavery to freedom. 
But he and all the ministers of Christ gazed with no veil upon their faces upon His 
glory reflected in the mirror of His Gospel ; and in their turn seeing that image as 
in a mirror, 4 caught that ever-brightening glory as from the Lord, the Spirit. 
How could one entrusted with such a ministry grow faint-hearted ? How could 
he — as Paul's enemies charged him with doing — descend into "the crypts of 
shame?" Utterly false 5 were such insinuations. He walked not in craftiness; 
he did not adulterate the pure Word of God ; but his commendatory letter, the 
only one he needed, was to manifest the truth to all consciences in God's sight. 
There was no veil over the truths he preached ; if veil there was, it was only in the 
darkened understandings of the perishing, so darkened into unbelief by the god of 
the present world, 6 that the brightness of the gospel of the glory of Christ could 
not illuminate them. He it is — Christ Jesus the Lord, the image of God — He it is, 
and not ourselves, whom Paul and all true Apostles preached. He had been ac- 
cused of self-seeking and self-assertion. Such sins were impossible to one who 
estimated as he did the glory of His message. All that he could preach of himself 
was that Christ was Lord, and that he was their slave for Christ's sake. For God 
had shone in the hearts of His ministers only in order that the bright knowledge 
which they had caught from gazing, with no intervening veil, on the glory of 
Christ, might glow for the illumination of the world. 7 

A glorious ministry ; but what weak ministers ! Like the torches hid in Gideon's 
pitchers, their treasure of light was in earthen vessels, 8 that the glory of their victory 
over the world and the world's idolatries might be God's, not theirs. This was why 
they were at once weak and strong — weak in themselves, strong in God — "in every- 
thing being troubled, yet not crushed ; perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, 
but not forsaken ; flung down, but not destroyed ; always carrying about in our 
body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that also the life of Jesus 
may be manifested in our body. For we, living as we are, are ever being handed 
over to death for Jesus' sake, in order that the life of Jesus also may be manifested 
in our mortal flesh. So that death is working in us — seeing that for Christ's sake 
and for your sakes we die daily — but life in you. The trials are mainly ours ; the 
blessings^ yours. Yet we know that this daily death of ours shall be followed by a 
resurrection. He who raised Christ shall also raise us from the daily death of our 

1 iiL 7. The word " till " in the E.V. of Ex. xxxiv. 83 seems to be a mistake for " when." He 
put on the veil, not to dim the splendour while he spoke, hut (so St. Paul here implies) to veil the 
evanescence when he had ended his words— Karapyoup-ai (1 Cor. i. 28 ; ii. 6 ; vi. 13 ; xiii. 8, 11 ; 
xv. 24^-twenty-two times in this group of Epistles). 

8 iii. 10, 11, ov 8e86£a<TTat to BeSo^a<Tfj.ivov ev tovtg> to> jue'pei. 

8 iii. 16, e7rt(TTpe^n7 • • • 7repiaipetTai. 

* iii. 18, Ka.T01rTp1%61j.evo1. Chrysostom, &c, make it mean "reflecting," but there seems to be 
no instance of that sense. 

5 iv. 2. Cf. 1 Cor. iv. 5. Hence the prominence of the word <f>avepdw in this Epistle (ii. 14 : 
Iii. S ; iv. 10 ; v. 10, 11 ; vii. 12 ; xi. 6). 

6 Cf. John xiv. 80 ; Eph. ii. 2. " Grandis sed horribilis descriptio Satanae " (Bengel). 

7 iii. 4— iv. 6. 

8 He was a o-kcvos «c>0y»js (Acts ix. 15), but the cr/cevos wag itself ovtookwov. " Lo vas d' elezione" 
(D*nte, Inf. ii 28). 



*12 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

afflicted lives 1 and from the death in which they end, and shall present us, with you, 
to God's glory, by the increase of grace and more abundant increase of thanksgiving. 
For this reason we do not play the coward, but even if our outward man is being 
destroyed, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For the lightness of 
our immediate affliction is working out for us, in increasing excess, an eternal weight 
of glory, since our eyes are fixed not on the visible, but on the invisible ; for the 
things visible are transient, but the things invisible are eternal. 2 The tents of our 
earthly bodies shall be done away, but then we shall have an eternal building. We 
groan, we are burdened in this tent of flesh, 3 we long to put on over it, as a robe, 
our house from heaven — if, as I assume, we shall not indeed be found bodiless 4 — that 
the mortal may be swallowed up by life. 6 And G-od, who wrought us for this end, 
has given us the earnest of His Spirit that it shall be so. Hence, since we walk by 
faith, death itself has for us lost all terrors ; it will be but an admission into the 
nearer presence of our Lord. To please Him is our sole ambition, because we shall 
each stand before His tribunal to receive the things done by the body ; — to be paid 
in kind for our good and evil, not by arbitrary infliction, but by natural result. 6 
This is our awful belief, and we strive to make it yours. 7 To G-od our sincerity is 
manifest already, and we hope that it will be to your consciences, since we tell you 
all this not by way of commending ourselves, but that you may have something of 
which to boast about us against those whose boasts are but of superficial things. They 
call us mad, 8 — well, if so, it is for God ; or if we be sober-minded, it is for you. 9 Our 
one constraining motive is Christ's love. Since He died for all, all in His death died 
to sin, and therefore the reason of His death was that we may not live to ourselves, 
but to Him who died and rose again for us. From henceforth, then, we recognise 
no relation to Him which is not purely spiritual. Your Jerusalem emissaries boast 
that they knew the living Christ ; and in consequence maintain their superiority to 
us. If we ever recognised any such claim — if we ever relied on having seen the 
living Christ — we renounce all such views from this moment. 10 'He who is in Christ 
is a new creation ; the old things are passed away ; lo ! all things have become new.' 
It is the spiritual Christ, the glorified Christ — whom God made to be sin for us— in 

i "God exhibits death in the living, life in the dying" (Alford). 

* Cf. Plat. Phciedo, 79. 

» Wisd. ix. 15, " the earthly tabernacle (yed>8es ovcrji/os) weigheth down the mind." 

* v. 3. So I understand this difficult clause. It seems to imply some condition which is not 
that of disembodied spirits, between the death of the mortal and the reception of the resurrection 
body (cf. Hdt. v. 92 ; Thuc. iii. 58). 

5 Again, notice the strange confusion of metaphors. It is only the very greatest writers who can 
venture to write thus ; only those whose thoughts are like a flame, that cracks the enclosing lamp of 
language that it may emit more heat and light. 

6 It is not easy to see the exact correlation between the judicial process of result according to 
good and evil conduct— even as regards saints — and that free absolute justification by faith in Christ, 
that complete forgiveness of sins, and tearing up of the bond which is against us, on which St. Paul 
dwells in v. 19, 21 ; Rom. iii. 25 ; CoL ii. 14. But faith is as little troubled by unsolved antinomies 
in the kingdom of grace as in that of nature (see infra, Excursus XXL) 

7 v. 11. So Chrysostom, &c, but it is one of the many verses in this Epistle about which no 
absolute certainty is attainable. It may mean ' ' knowing that the fear of God (timorem Domini, Vulg. ) 
is the principle of my own life, I try to persuade you of this truth ; that it is so God knows already. 

8 Cf. Acts xxvi. 24. 

9 " My revelations, ecstacies, glossolaly, are phases of intercourse of my soul with God ; my 
practical sense and tact are for you." 

10 2 Cor. v. 16, airb tou vvv. In Gal. i. 15, 16, St. Paul has said that "it pleased God to reveal His 
Son in him," and in his view "the entire, absolute importance of Christianity resided in the person 
of Christ God had disclosed to him as the Son of God that Jesus whom he had opposed as a false 
Messiah. But the resurrection had elevated his historic Christ far above a Jewish Messiah (1 Cor. 
xv. 8). The death of Christ had severed His connection with mere national elements, and He was 
then manifested in the universal and spiritual sphere in which all absolute importance of Judaism 
was obliterated. St. Paul here says that since he began to live for Christ, who died and rose, Jesus 
is no longer for him a Messiah after the flesh. That conception of Him is now purged of all sensuous, 
Judaic, personal limitations, and Christ becomes not only one who lived and died in Judeea, but who 
lives and reigns in the heart of every Christian on the absolute principle of the spiritual life." (Baur, 
Paul. ii. 126.1 When Paul had once shaken himself free, first from his unconverted Pharisaism, then 
from the Judaeo-Christian stage of his earlier convictions, he grasped the truth that the risen and as* 
cended Lord of all dwarfed and shamed the notion of all mere local, and family, and national reBtrio 
tions. 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 413 

whom God reconciled the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto 
them — whom we preach ; and our ministry is the Ministry of Keconciliation which 
God entrusted to us, and in virtue of which we, as ambassadors on Christ's behalf, 
entreat you to be reconciled to God. ' Him who knew not sin He made sin on our 
behalf, that we may become the righteousness of God in Him.' l As His fellow- 
workers we entreat you, then, not to render null the acceptance of His grace in this 
the day of salvation, and that this our ministry may not be blamed, we give no 
legitimate cause of offence in anything, but in everything commend ourselves 2 as 
ministers of God " in much endurance, in tribulations, in necessities, in pressure of 
circumstance, in blows, in prisons, in tumults, in toils, in spells of sleeplessness, in 
fastings, in pureness, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy 
Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God, by the arms of 
righteousness on the right and left, by glory and dishonour, by ill report and good 
report ; as deceivers and yet true, as being ignored and yet recognised, as dying and 
behold we live, as being chastened yet not being slain, as being grieved and yet re- 
joicing, as paupers yet enriching many, as having nothing yet as having all things 
in full possession." 3 

He may well appeal to this outburst of impassioned eloquence as a proof that his 
mouth is open and his heart enlarged towards them, and as the ground of entreaty 
that, instead of their narrow jealousies and suspicions, they would, as sons, love him 
with the same large-heartedness, and so repay him in kind, and separate themselves 
from their incongruous yoke-fellowship with unbelief 4 — the unnatural participations, 
symphonies, agreements of righteousness and light with lawlessness and darkness, 
of Christ with worthlessness, 5 of God's temple with idols, which forfeited the glorious 
promises of God. 6 Let them cleanse themselves from these corruptions from within 
and from without. And then, to clench all that he has said, and for the present to 
conclude the subject, he cries, 'Receive us ! we wronged nobody, ruined nobody, de- 
frauded nobody — such charges against us are simply false. I do not allude to them 
to condemn you. I have said already that you are in my heart to die together and 
live together. I speak thus boldly because of the consolation and superabundant 
joy — in the midst of all the tribulations — which came on me in Macedonia with over- 
whelming intensity — without, battles ; within, fears. But God, who consoleth the 
humble,' consoled us by the coming of Titus, and the good news about your reception 
of my letter, and the yearning for me, and the lamentation, and the zeal which it 
awoke on my behalf. At one time I regretted that I had written it, but, though it 
pained you, I regret it no longer, because the pain was a holy and a healing pain, 
which awoke earnestness in you — self-defence and indignation against wrong, and a 
fear and yearning towards me, and zeal for God, and punishment of the offender. 
It was not to take either one side or the other in the quarrel that I wrote to you, but 
that your allegiance and love to me might be manifested to yourselves 8 before God. 
I did not care for those people — their offence and quarrel. I cared only for you. 
And you stood the test. You justified all that I had boasted to Titus about you, 
and the respect and submission with which you received him have inspired me with 

* The meaning of this verse will be brought out infra, p. 472, sq. 

* The reader will observe how much the mention of the ov<rra.Tu«u eirurToXai has dominated 
throughout this majestic self-defence. The statement of the nature and method of His ministry is 
the only commendatory letter which to them, at least, Paul will deign to use. Yet in making a self- 
defence so utterly distasteful to him, observe how noble and eternal are the thoughts on which he 
dwells, and the principles upon which he insists. 

3 iv. 7— vi. 10. 

4 An allusion to the " diverse kinds," and ox and ass ploughing together (Lev. xix. 19 ; Deut. 
xxii. 10). I am unable to see so strongly as others the digressive and parenthetic character of vi. 
14— vii. 1. 

5 vi. 15, fieXiap. Belial is not originally a proper name (Prov. vi 12, "a naughty person " it 
Adam belial) ; and this is why there was no worship of Belial 

6 These are given (vi. 18) in "a mosaic of citations " from 2 Sam. vii 14, 8 ; Is. xliii. 6 (Plumptre) ; 
perhaps, however, St. Paul had in his mind also Jer. xxxi. 3—33 ; Ezek. xxxvi 28. 

7 Cf. x. 1. He touchingly accepts the term applied to him. 

8 vii 12. The reading seems to be rqv o-ttovStjv vp-uv rqv inrep rauap npbi v/x£s. (C, E, J, K.) 



414 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

deep joy on his account, and him with a deep affection for you. I rejoice, then, 
that in everything- I am in good heart ahout you.' ] 

He proceeds to give them a proof of it. The churches of Macedonia he tells them, 
poor as they are, 2 afflicted as they are, yet with a spontaneous liberality, absolute 
self-devotion, and affectionate enthusiasm for his wishes, giving themselves first to 
God beyond his hopes, had not only subscribed largely to the collection for the saints, 
but had entreated him to take part in its management. Encouraged by this, he had 
asked Titus to finish the arrangement of this matter with the rest of his good work 
among them. As they abounded in so many gifts and graces, let them abound in 
this. He did not want to order them, he only told them what others had done, and 
asked (not on his own behalf) a proof of their love, even as Christ had set them the 
example of enriching others by His own poverty. They had begun the collection 
first, but Macedonia had finished it. They need not give more than they could 
afford, for God looked not to the gift, but to the spirit of the giver. Nor did he 
wish to pauperise them in order to set others at ease, but only to establish between 
Jewish and Gentile churches a reciprocity of aid in time of need. Titus had gladly 
accepted the commission, and with him he sent the brother, whose praise in the 
Gospel is known in all the churches, and who has been specially elected by the 
churches to this office ; since so great was Paul's determination to give not the 
slightest handle to mean insinuations, that he would have nothing to do with the 
money himself. 3 With Titus and this brother he sent a third, whose earnestness had 
been often tested in many circumstances, and who was now specially stimulated by 
his confidence in the Corinthians. If they wanted to know anything about these 
three visitors, Titus was his partner and fellow- worker towards them ; the other two 
brethren were delegates of the churches, 4 the glory of Christ. Let the Corinthians 
give a proof of their love, and a justification to all churches of his boasting about 
them. As to the general desirability of the collection he surely need say nothing. 
He had been boasting of tbeir zeal, and had told the Macedonian churches that the 
Achaians had been ready a year ago. In this there was some reason to fear that he 
had been in error, having mistaken their ready professions for actual accomplish- 
ment. He had therefore sent on these brethren, lest, if Macedonians came with him 
on his arrival, and found them unprepared, he — to say nothing of them — should be 
ashamed of a boast which would turn out to be false. He exhorts them, therefore, 
to willing liberality, trusting that God would reward them. Let them give benefi- 
cently, not grudgingly. ' ' But (notice) this — He who soweth sparingly, sparingly 
also shall reap, and he who soweth with blessings, with blessings." 5 "And God is 
able to make all grace abound towards you, that in everything, always, having all 
sufficiency, ye may abound to every good work." And this collection was not only 
for the aid of the saints, but also for the glory of God by the thanksgiving to Him, 
and prayer for them which it called forth. The recipients would glorify God for it 
as a sign of genuine religion, and would yearn towards them in love, because of the 
grace of God abounding in them. " Thanks," he says, identifying himself with the 
feelings of the grateful recipients — " thanks to God for His unspeakable gift." 6 

At this point the whole tone of the Epistle changes — changes so com- 
pletely that, in this section of it (x. i. — xiii. 10), many have not only seen an 
entirely separate letter, but have even with much plausibility identified it 

1 vi. 11— vii. 16. 

2 Dean Stanley refers to Arnold, Rom. Commonwealth, ii. 382. 

3 viii. 20 (cf. Prov. iii. 3, LXX.), aSpo-rrj?, lit. "ripeness." These hapax legomena occur freely in 
Paul's unquestioned Epistles. He readily took up new words. He may, for instance, have picked 
up the word emxoprryow (first used in ix. 10, and then in Gal. iii. b ; Col. ii. 19; Eph. iv. 16) at 
Athens. It is unknown to the LXX. of the Old Testament, and only found in Ecclus. xxv. 22. 

4 Lit. "apostles," but here in its untechnical sense of "authorised delegates." Who these two 
brethren were is quite uncertain ; — perhaps Luke and Trophimus. 

4 ix. 6, eV cvAoyiais, i.e., in u large, gracious, liberal spirit (1'rov. xi. 24 ; xxii. 9). 
« viiL 1— ix. 15. 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 415 

with that stern missive alluded to in vii. 8 — 12, which caused the Corinthians 
so much pain, and stirred them up to such vigorous exertion, which is usually- 
identified with the first extant Epistle. 1 It is difficult to accept any such 
hypothesis in the teeth of the evidence of all manuscripts ; and when we 
remember the perpetual interchange of news between different Churches, it 
is a much simpler and more natural supposition that, as the first part of the 
letter had been written while he was in anxiety about them, and the second 
after his mind had been relieved by the arrival of Titus, so this third part of 
the letter was written after the arrival of some other messenger, who bore 
the disastrous tidings that some teacher had come from Jerusalem whose 
opposition to St. Paul had been more marked and more unscrupulous than any 
with which he had yet been obliged to deal. However that may be, certain it 
is that these chapters are written in a very different mood from the former. 2 
There is in them none of the tender effusiveness and earnest praise which we 
have been hearing, but a tone of suppressed indignation, in which tenderness, 
struggling with bitter irony, in some places renders the language laboured 
and obscure, 3 like the words of one who with difficulty restrains himself from 
saying all that his emotion might suggest. Tet it is deeply interesting to 
observe that " the meekness and gentleness of Christ " reigns throughout all 
this irony, and he utters no word of malediction like those of the Psalmists. 
And there is also a tone of commanding authority, which the writer is driven 
to assume as a last resource, since all forbearance has been so grievously mis- 
understood. Some among them — one person in particular 4 — had been passing 
their censures and criticisms on St. Paul very freely, saying that his 
person was mean ; 6 that he was untutored in speech ; e that he was only 
bold in letters, and at a distance ; that he walked " according to the 
flesh ; " 7 that he was certainly a weakling, and probably a madman. 8 
They had been urging their own near connexion with Christ as a sub- 
ject of self -commendation ; 9 had been preaching another Jesus, and a 
different Gospel, and imparting a different spirit ; 10 had been boasting im- 
measurably of their superiority, though they were thrusting themselves into 

1 If such a supposition were at all probable, we should rather infer from xii. 18 that 
this section was an Epistle written after the mission of Titus and the brother alluded to 
in viii. 18. But the suggestion in the text seems to me to meet most of the difficulties. 

2 A change of tone of an analogous character — from a more distant and respectful 
to a more stem and authoritative style — is observable in Rom. xiv., xv. (v. infra, p. 450). 
So there is a wide difference between the apologetic and the aggressive part of Demos- 
thenes, De Corona (Hug.). Semler was the first to suggest that this Epistle was an 
amalgamation of three, which is also the view of Weisse. The Auto? 8e eyw navAos of x. 1 
(cf . Gal. v. 2 ; Eph. hi. 1 ; Philem. 19) at once marks the change. 

3 Theodoret says of x. 12 — 18 that St. Paul wrote it obscurely (do-o^ws) from a desire 
not to expose the offenders too plainly. 

4 X. 2, Tivas ; 7, el tis ireiroi8ev eavTa \ 10, <£>tjo"i, " Says he \ " 11, 6 toiovtos ', 12, ticr J 18, 
o eavrbv <rvvio-rwv ; XL 4, 6 ep^op-evos. 

5 X. 1, 10. 6 xi. 6> 

7 x. 2, Kara, crap/ca, i.e., with mere earthly motives ; that he was timid, complaisant, 
inconsistent, self-seeking. 

8 xi. 16, 17, 19. Compare the blunt " Thou art mad, Paul ! " of Festus. 

9 x. 7. 

*° xi. 4, dAAoi/ 'Irjcrowv . . . erepov tn-eC/ia . . . evayye'Aiov eTepov. 



416 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

6phei es of work in which they had not laboured ; * and by whispered seduc- 
tions had been beguiling the Corinthians from the simplicity of their original 
faith. 2 In contrast to the self-supporting toils and forbearance of St. Paul, 
these men and their coryphaeus had maintained their claim to Apostolic 
authority by an insolence, rapacity, and violence, 3 which made Paul ironically 
remark that his weakness in having any consideration for his converts, instead 
of lording it over them, had been a disgrace to him. And, strange to say, 
the ministry and doctrine of this person and his clique had awakened a distinct 
echo in the hearts of the unstable Corinthians. They had taken them at their 
own estimate ; had been dazzled by their outrageous pretensions ; benumbed 
by the "torpedo-touch" of their avarice; and confirmed in a bold disregard 
for the wishes and regulations of their true Teacher. 4 

It is at these intruders that St. Paul hurls his indignant, ironical, unanswerable 
apology. "Mean as he was of aspect," 5 he entreats them by the gentleness and 
mildness of Christ that when he came he might not be forced to show that if " he 
walked after the flesh," at any rate the weapons he wielded were not after the flesh, 
but strong enough to humble insolence, and punish disobedience, and rase the strong- 
holds of opposition, and take captive every thought into the obedience of Christ. 
Did they judge by outward appearance ? They should find that he was as near to 
Christ as any member of the party that used His name. They should find that his 
personal action, founded on a power of which he well might boast, but which God 
had given him for their edification, not for destruction, could be as weighty and 
powerful, as calculated to terrify them, as his letters. 6 He would not, indeed, venture 
to enter with them into the mean arena of personal comparisons/ which proved the 
unwisdom of his opponents ; nor would he imitate them in stretching his boasts to 
an illimitable extent. He would confine these boasts to the range of the measuring- 
line which God had given him, and which was quite large enough without any over- 
straining to reach to them, even as His Gospel had first reached them ; for, unlike 
his opponents, he was not exercising these boasts in spheres of labour not his own, 
but had hope that, as their faith enlarged, he would he still more highly esteemed, 
and the limit of his work extended to yet wider and untried regions. Let the boaster 
then boast in the Lord, since the test of a right to boast was not in self -commenda- 
tion, but in the commendation of the Lord. 8 

He entreats them to bear with him, just a little, in this folly — nay, he is sure they 
do so. 9 He feels for them a godly jealousy, desiring to present them as a chaste 
virgin to Christ, but fearful lest they should be seduced from their simplicity as the 
serpent beguiled Eve. It would have been easy for them (it appears) to tolerate this 
new preacher 10 if he is preaching another Jesus, a different spirit, a different gospel; 
but he professes to preach the same, and such being the case he had no more 

» x. 15. a xi. 8. » xi. 20, 21. * x. 18 ; xi. 8, 20 ; xii. 13,14. 

5 Many of these expressions, as St. Chrysostom saw, are quotations of the sneers of his oppo- 
nents — Acar eipujfeiav </>»}cri ra etcelvtav <J>0€-yy6/ut.e»/o5. For traces of similar irony, see 1 Cor. iv. 8—11 ; 
vL 3—8 ; ix. 1—16 ; xv. 6. 

e x. 1—11. This comparison of his letters and his personal conduct (ver. 10) is quoted from the 
Jerusalem emissary (<J>tj0-ii>, " he says ;" 7, rts ; 11, toiowtos). 

7 x. 12, eyicplvai rj cruyicpivai, an untranslatable paronomasia. 

s x. 12 — 18. The haunting word is, as in so many parts of the Epistle, "boast" and "commen- 
dation" (iii. 1 ; iv. 2; v. 12; x. 12, 16, 17, 18; xi. 10, 12, 18, 30; xii. 1, 6, 6, 11), with especial refer- 
ence to the commendatory letters. It was an easy thing, he hints, for these Judaisers to come 
comfortably with "letters" from Jerusalem to Corinth, and there be supported by admiring 
adherents whom his toils had converted ; a very different thing to traverse the world as a friendless 
missionary, and sow the seed of the Gospel in virgin soil. 

9 xi. 1, fiLKpov ti . . . aAAa »cai. This Epistle is characterised by haunting words, and the 
key-words of this chapter are dve'xofiai (1, 4, 19, 20) and a<j>pu>v (1, 16, 17, 19, 21 ; xii. 6, 11). Dr. 
Plomptre sees in this the echo of some taunt which Titus had reported — "His *"jlly \b becoming 
Intolerable)." 

10 xi. 4, 6 (pxo/icyuf . 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 417 

authority than Paul, who claimed that he had in no respect fallen shci't of the most 
super-apostolic Apostles.i A mere laic in eloquence he might be, but there was at 
any rate no defect in his knowledge ; and the proof of this as regards them was 
obvious in everything among all men, 2 unless, indeed, he had transgressed by humi- 
liating himself for their exaltation by preaching to them gratuitously. Other 
Churches he plundered, preaching to the Corinthian, and being paid his wages by 
others. And though he was in positive want while among them, he did not benumb 
them with his exactions, as though he were some gymnotus, but was helped by 
Macedonians, and kept and would keep himself from laying any burden whatever 
on them. That boast no one should obstruct, 3 not (God knows) because he did not 
love them, but because he would cut off the handle from those who wanted a handle, 
and that, in this topic of boasting, he and his opponents might be on equal grounds. 
The last remark is a keen sarcasm, since, if they charged Paul with taking money, 
they charged him with the very thing which he did not do, and which they did.* 
"For such," he adds with passionate severity, "are false Apostles, deceitful workers, 
transforming themselves into Apostles of Christ ; nor is this to be wondered at, for 
Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. 5 It is no great thing then, 
if also His ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end 
shall be according to their works. Again I say, Let no one think me a fool ; or, if 
you do, receive me even as you would receive a fool, that I too, as well as they, may 
boast a little." He claims nothing lofty or sacred or spiritual for this determined 
boasting. It was a folly, but not one of his own choosing. Since many adopted 
this worldly style of boasting, he would meet them with their own weapons ; and the 
Corinthians, since they were so wise, would, he was sure, gladly tolerate mere harm- 
less fools, seeing that they tolerated people much more objectionable — people who 
enslaved, devoured, 6 took them in — people who assumed the most arrogant preten- 
sions — people who smote them in the face. 7 " Of course all this is to my discredit, 
it shows how weak I was in not adopting a similar line of conduct. Yet, speaking 
in this foolish way, I possess every qualification which inspires them with this 
audacity. I, like them, am a Hebrew, an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham ; 8 I am 
not only, as they claim to be, a minister of Christ, but (I am speaking in downright 
madness) something more." And then follows the most marvellous fragment ever 
written of any biography ; a fragment beside which the most imperilled lives of the 
most suffering saints shrink into insignificance, and which shows us how fractional 
at the best is our knowledge of the details of St. Paul's life — "in toils more 
abundantly, in stripes above measure, in prisons more abundantly, in deaths oft ; of 
the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one ; thrice was I beaten with rods ; 
once was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night and day have I spent in 
the deep; 9 in journeyings often ; in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils 

1 xi. 5, rutv iwepXiav 'AnooToXov, literally " the extra-super Apostles." There is undoubtedly 
» sense of indignation in the use, twice over, of this strange colloquialism ; but it is aimed, not at the 
Twelve, with whom St. Paul's relations were always courteous and respectful, but at the extravagant 
and purely human claims (mere superiority, Kara crapKa) asserted for them by these emissaries. He 
compares himself with them in knowledge (xi. 5), in self-denial about support (xi. 6 — 21), in privileges 
of birth (22), in labours and perils (23 — 33), in the fact that his weakness resulted from pre-eminent 
revelations (xii. 1—10), and in the supernatural signs of Apostleship (xii. 11, 12). 

If </>avepoio-avres (n. B, P, G) be the right reading, it means "manifesting it (i.e., know- 



ledge) to you in everything among all.' 
3 Xi. 10. leg. (fypayrjcreTai.. 



* How long this vile calumny continued may be seen in the identification of him with Simon 
Magus in the Clementines. 

6 This incidentally alludes to a Hagadah respecting Job. i. 6, or the angel who wrestled with 
Jacob (Eisenmenger, Enid. Judenfh. i. 845). 

6 It is very probable that the Claudian famine had made many needy Jewish Christians from 
Jerusalem go the round of the Churches, demanding and receiving the Clialuka. 

? Cf. 1 Kings xxii. 24 ; Matt. v. 39 ; Luke xxii. 64 ; Acts xxiii. 2. Even teachers could act thus. 
1 Tim. iii. 3 ; Titus i. 7. 

8 We can hardly imagine that the Ebionite he that St. Paul was a Gentile, who had got himself 
circumcised in order to marry the High Priest's daughter, had as yet been invented ; yet the Tarsian 
birth and Roman franchise may have led to whispered insinuations. 

8 Ex. xv. 5 (LXX.). Theophylact makes it mean " in Bythos," a place near Lystra, after the stoning 
B B 



4-18 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

from my own race, in perils from Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the 

wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren ; in toil and weariness, 
in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often; besides the things 
additional to all these, the care which daily besets me,i my anxiety for all the 
Churches. Who is weak, and I share not his weakness ? who is made to stumble, 
and I do not burn with indignation ? If I must boast, I will boast of this, the 
weakness to which I alluded. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I am not lying. In Damascus the ethnarch 
of Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes, wishing to seize me ; 
and through a window in a large basket, I was let do^m through the wall, and 
escaped his hands." 2 

Such had been his " preparation of feebleness," without which he could neither 
have been what he was, nor have done what he did. Such is one glimpse of a life 
never since equalled in self-devotion, as it was also " previously without precedent 
in the history of the world." Here he breaks off that part of the subject. Did he 
intend similarly to detail a series of other hair-breadth escapes ? or glancing retro- 
spectively at his perils, does he end with the earliest and most ignominious ? Or 
was it never his intention to enter into such a narrative, and did he merely mention 
the instance of ignominious escape at Damascus, so revolting to the natural dignity 
of an Oriental and a Rabbi, as a climax of the disgraces he had borne ? We cannot 
tell. At that point, either because he was interrupted, or because his mood changed, 
or because it occurred to him that he had already shown his ample superiority in the 
" weakness " of voluntary humiliation to even the most " super -apostolic Apostles," 
he here stops short, and so deprives us of a tale inestimably precious, which the 
whole world might have read with breathless interest, and from which it might 
have learnt invaluable lessons. However that may be, he suddenly exclaims, " Of 
course it is not expedient for me to boast. 3 I will come to visions and revelations 
of the Lord." I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body or 
out of the body 4 I know not, God knows) snatched such an one as far as the third 
heaven. 5 And I know such a man (whether in the body or apart from the body I 
know not, God knows) that he was snatched into Paradise, and heard unspeakable 
utterances which it is not lawful for man to speak. Of such an one I will boast — 
but of myself I will not boast except in these weaknesses ; for even should I wish 
to boast I shnll not be a fool ; for I will speak the truth. But I forbear lest any 
one should estimate about me above what he sees me to be, or hears at all from me. 
And to prevent my over-exaltation by the excess of the revelation, there was given 
me a stake in the flesh, 6 a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I may not be 
over-exalted. About this I thrice besought the Lord that it (or he) may stand off 
from me. And He has said to me, ' My grace sufficeth thee ; for my power is 
perfected m weakness.' Most gladly then will I rather boast in my weaknesses that 
the power of Christ may spread a tent over me. 7 That is why I boast in weaknesses, 
insults, necessities, persecutions, distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, 
then I am mighty. I have become a fool in boasting. You compelled me. For I 
ought to be ' commended ' by you. For in no respect was I behind the ' out and 
out ' Apostles, 8 even though I am nothing. Certainly the signs of an Apostle were 

» XL 28, eiritrrcuTK («, B, D, E, F, G). 

» xL 1—33. On the escape from Damascus, v. supra, p. 128. 

8 5tj is the most forcible and natural reading, and here the MSS. variations Se (n, D) and Set 
,'B, E, F, G) are probably due to itacism or misapprehension. The 8tj implies, " You will see from 
Ihe humiliating escape to which I have just so solemnly testified that in my case boasting is not 
expedient." If the following " for" (D) be correct, it is due to counter-currents of feeling ; but it 
is omitted in A, B, G. 

* xii. 8. leg. x o, P<-s> B, D, E. The physical condition was probably identical with that to which 
Hindu psychologists give the name of Ttirga,—a, fourth state, besides those of waking, dreaming; 
an<? slumber. Th e Hindu yogis call it Vidiha sthiti, and dwell rapturously on it in their mystic 
writings and song 1. 

5 The " third 'leaven " occurs here only. For paradise, see Luke xxiii. 43. 

6 On this " stake in the flesh," v. infra, Excursus X. KoKaQCgt), lit. " should slap in the face." 

7 xii. 9, int.<TKr}vd)vr\ err' e/xe. 

• xiL 1—11. The colloquialism closely reproduces that of St. PauL 



SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 419 

wrought among you in all patience, "by signs, and portents, and powers. The single 
fact that I did not benumb you with exactions is your sole point of inferiority to 
other Churches. Forgive me this injustice ! See, a third time I am ready to come 
to you, and I will not benumb you, for I seek not yours but you. Children 
ought to treasure up for their parents, but so far from receiving from you, 
I will very gladly spend and be utterly spent for your souls, even though 
the more exceedingly I love you, the less I am loved. But stop ! though I did not 
burden you, yet ' being a cunning person I caught you by guile.' Under the pre- 
text of a collection I got money out of you by my confederates! I ask you, is that 
a fact ? Did Titus or the brother whom I have sent with him over-reach you in 
any respect ? Did not they behave exactly as I have done ? You have long been 
fancying that all this is by way of self-defence to you. 1 Do not think it! You are 
no judges of mine. My appeal is being made in the presence of God in Christ ; yet, 
beloved, it has all been for your edification. It was not said to defend myself, but 
to save us from a miserable meeting, lest we mutually find each other what we 
should not wish ; lest I find you buzzing with quarrels, party spirit, outbreaks of 
rage, self-seekings, slanders, whisperings, inflations, turbulences ; and lest, on my 
return to you, my God humble me in my relation to you, and I shall mourn over 
many of those who have sinned before and not repented for the uncleanness, forni- 
cation, and wantonness which they practised. It is the third time that I am intending 
to visit you ; 2 it will be bike the confirming evidence of two or three witnesses. I 
have forewarned, and I now warn these persons once more that, if I come, I will not 
spare. Since you want a proof that Christ speaks in me, ye shall have it. He was 
crucified in weakness; we share His death and His weakness, but we shall also share 
His life and power. Prove yourselves, test yourselves. Is Christ in you, or are you 
spurious Christians, unable to abide the test ? You will, I hope, be forced to recog- 
nise that I am not spurious; but my prayer is that you may do no evil, not that my 
genuineness may be manifested ; that you may do what is noble, even if therewith 
tee be regarded as spurious. Against the truth, against genuine faithfulness, I have 
no power, but only for it. Be true to the Gospel, and I shall be powerless; and you 
will be mighty, and I shall rejoice at the result. I ever pray for this, for you- 
perfection. That is why I write while still absent, in order that when present I 
may have no need to exercise against you with abrupt severity 3 the power which the 
Lord gave me, and gave me for building up, not for rasing to the ground." 4 

He would not end with words in which such uncompromising sternness mingled 
with his immense and self-sacrificing forbearance. He adds, therefore, in his own 
hand — " Finally, brethren, farewell ; be perfect, be comforted, be united, be at 
peace ; then shall the God of love and peace be with you. Salute one another with 
a holy kiss. All the saints salute you." And then follows the fullest of his Apos- 
tolic benedictions, " thence adopted by the Church in all ages as the final blessing 
of her services " — " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and 
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you all." 6 

1 ttoAcu (n, A, B, F, G, Vulg.). 

* xii. 14. He has "been at Corinth once ; is now going a second time (nakiv) ; and had once in- 
tended to go. This is like a thing attested by two or three witnesses, and will certainly be fulfilled. 
I agree with Baur in saying, "Let us give up the fiction of a journey for which we can find no 
reasonable grounds " (Paul. ii. 320). 

3 a;roT6Mws only in Titus i. 13, not in LXX. The metaphor is either " by way of amputation " 
or " precipitately," as in Wisd. v. 23 ; aTroTOjuia (Rom. xi. 22). 

* xii. 13— xiii. 10. 

s xiii. 11 — 13. As these are the last extant words of St. Paul to the Corinthians, it is interest- 
ing to see what was the condition of the Church when St. Clement of Rome wrote to them thirty- 
five years later. We find that they were still somewhat turbulent, somewhat disunited, somewhat 
sceptical, and St. Clement has to recall to them the examples of St. Peter and St. Paul. On the 
whole, however, we can see that the appeals and arguments of the Apostle in these two letters have 
not been in vain. About A.D 135 the Church was visited by Hegesippus (Euseb. H.E. iv. 22), who 
spoke favourably of their obedience and liberality. Their Bishop Dionysius was exercising a wide- 
spread influence. In speaking of the Resurrection, St. Clement alludes'to the Phoenix (ad Rom. i. 
24, 25), which in that age excited much interest (Tac. Ann. vi. 28 ; Plin. H. N. x. 2). Can any one 
fail to see a " grace of superin tendency " in the absence of such illustrations from the page of the 
Apostles ? 

B B 2 



420 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE SECOND VISIT TO CORINTH. 
Atfi'a/cTiKW, ave£btaKOV. — 2 TlM. ii. 24. 

St. Luke passes over with the extremest brevity the second sojourn of St. 
Paul in Macedonia. The reason for his silence may have been that the period 
was not marked by any special events sufficiently prominent to find room in 
his pages. It was no part of his plan to dwell on the sources of inward 
sorrow which weighed so heavily upon the mind of St. Paul, or to detail the 
afflictions which formed the very groundwork of his ordinary life. It was 
the experience of St. Paul, more perhaps than that of any man who has ever 
lived — even if we select those who have made their lives a sacrifice to some 
great cause of God — that life was a tissue of minor trials, diversified by greater 
and heavier ones. But St. Luke — not to speak of the special purposes which 
seem to have guided his sketch — only gives us full accounts of the events 
which he personally witnessed. 1 or of those which he regarded of capital 
importance, and about which he could obtain information which he knew to 
be trustworthy. It is one of the many indications of the scantiness of his 
biography that he does not even once mention a partner and fellow-worker 
of St. Paul so dear to him, so able, so energetic, and so deeply trusted as the 
Greek Titus, of whose activity and enthusiasm the Apostle made so much 
use in furthering the Offertory, and in the yet more delicate task of dealing 
with the Christian Corinthians at this most unsatisfactory crisis of their 
troubled history. 

St. Luke accordingly, passing over the distress of mind and the outward 
persecution which St. Paul tells us he had at this time encountered, says 
nothing about the many agitations of which we are able from the Epistles 
to supply the outline. All that he tells us is that Paul passed through these 
regions, and encouraged them with much exhortation. He does not even 
mention the interesting circumstance that having preached during his second 
journey at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Bercea, the capitals respectively of 
Macedonia Prima, Secunda, and Tertia, he now utilised the intentional post- 
ponement of his visit to Corinth by going through Macedonia Quarta as far 
as Illyricum. Whether he only went to the borders of Illyricum, or whether 
he entered it and reached as far as Dyrrachium, and even as Nicopolis, and 
whether by Illyricum is meant the Greek district or the Roman province 2 
that went by that name, we cannot tell ; but at any rate St. Paul mentions this 
country as marking the circumference of the outermost circle of those mis- 
sionary journeys of which Jerusalem was the centre. 

That the Offertory greatly occupied his time and thoughts is clear from 

1 So the Muratorian Canon: " acta aute omniu apostolorum sub uno libro scribtasunt 
lucaa uptime theofile comprindit quia sub prarsentia ejus singula gerebantur." 
2 Titus unto Dalmatia, 2 Tim. iv. 10. 



THE SECOND VISIT TO CORINTH. 421 

his own repeated allusions and the prominence which he gives to this subject 
in the Epistles to the Corinthians. It must have been one of his trials to 
be perpetually pleading for pecuniary contributions, among little bodies of 
converts of whom the majority were not only plunged in poverty, but who 
had already made the most conspicuous sacrifices on behalf of their Christian 
faith. It was clear to him that this fact would be unscrupulously used as a 
handle against him. However careful and businesslike his arrangements 
might be — however strongly he might insist on having no personal share in 
the distribution, or even the treasurership of these funds — persons would not 
be wanting to whisper the base insinuation that Paul found his own account 
in them by means of accomplices, and that even the laborious diligence with 
which he worked day and night at his trade, and failed even thus to ward off 
the pains of want, was only the cloak for a deep-laid scheme of avarice and 
self -aggrandisement. It was still worse when these charges came from the 
emissaries of the very Church for the sake of whose poor he was facing this 
disagreeable work of begging. 1 But never was there any man in this world 
— however innocent, however saintly — who has escaped malice and slander; 
indeed, the virulence of this malice and the persistency of this slander are 
often proportionate to the courage wherewith he confronts the baseness o? 
the world. St. Pau 1 did not profess to be indifferent to these stings of hatreu. 
and calumny; he made no secret of the agony which they caused him. He was, 
on the contrary, acutely sensible of their gross injustice, and of the hindrance 
which they caused to the great work of his life ; and the irony and passion 
with which, on fitting occasions, he rebuts them is a measure of the suffering 
which they caused. But, as a rule, he left them unnoticed, and forgave those 
by whom they were perpetrated : — 

" Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife 
His only answer was a blameless life ; 
And he that forged and he that flung the dart, 
Had each a brother's interest in his heart." 

For he was not the man to neglect a duty because it was disagreeable, or 
because his motives in undertaking it might be misinterpreted. And the 
motives by which he was actuated in this matter were peculiarly sacred. In 
the first place, the leading Apostles at Jerusalem had bound him by a special 
promise to take care of their poor, almost as a part of the hard-wrung compact 
by which their Church had consented to waive, in the case of Gentile converts, 
the full acceptance of legal obligations. In the second place, the need really 
existed, and was even urgent; and it was entirely in consonance with St. 
Paul's own feelings to give them practical proof of that brotherly love which 
ho regarded as the loftiest of Christian virtues. Then, further, in his early 
days, his ignorant zeal had inflicted on the Church of Jerusalem a deadly 
injury, and he would fain show the sincerity and agony of his repentance by 

1 To tnis day the Chaluka and Kadima at Jerusalem are the source of endless heart- 
burnings and jealousies, and cause no particle of gratitude, but are accepted by the Jews 
as a testimonial to the high desert of hving in the Holy City, 



422 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUli. 

doing all he could, again and again, to repair it. Lastly, he had a hope- 
sometimes strong and sometimes weak — that so striking a proof of disin- 
terested generosity on the part of the Gentile Churches which he had founded 
would surely touch the hearts of the Pharisaic section of the mother Church, 
and if it could not cement the differences between the Christians of Judaea 
and Heathendom, would at least prevent the needless widening of the rift 
which separated them. At moments of deeper discouragement, writing from 
Corinth to Rome, 1 while he recognises the ideal fitness of an effort on the 
part of Gentile Christians to show, by help in temporal matters, their sense 
of obligation for the spiritual blessings which had radiated to them from 
the Holy City, and while he looks on the contribution as a harvest gathering 
to prove to Jewish Christians the genuineness of the seed sown among the 
heathen, he yet has obvious misgivings about the spirit in which even this 
offering may be accepted, and most earnestly entreats the Romans not only 
to agonise with him in their prayers to God that he may be delivered from 
Jewish violence in Judaea, but also that the bounty of which he was the chief 
minister might be graciously received. It may be that by that time experi- 
ences of conflict with the Juidaisers in Corinth may have somewhat damped 
the fervour of his hopes ; for before his arrival there, 2 he gives expression to 
glowing anticipations that their charitable gifts would not only relieve un- 
deserved distress, but would be a proof of sincere allegiance to the Gospel of 
Christ, and would call forth deep thankfulness to God. 3 Alas ! those glowing 
anticipations were doomed — there is too much reason to fear — to utter dis- 
appointment. 

Having finished his work in the whole of Macedonia, and finding no more 
opportunity for usefulness in those parts, 4 he at last set out on his way to 
Corinth. It was probably towards the close of the year 57, but whether Paul 
travelled by sea or land, and from what point he started, we do not know. 
After his journey into Macedonia Quarta, he perhaps returned to Thessalonica, 
which was a convenient place of rendezvous for the various brethren who 
now accompanied him. The number of his associates makes it most probable 
that he chose the less expensive, though, at that late season of the year, 
more dangerous mode of transit, and took ship from Thessalonica to Cenchreae, 
The care of the money, and his own determination to have nothing to do with 
it, rendered it necessary for the treasurers appointed by the scattered com- 
munities to accompany his movements. The society of these fellow-travellers 
must have been a source of deep happiness to the over-tried and over- wearied 
Apostle, and the sympathy of such devoted friends must have fallen like dew 
upon his soul. There was the young and quiet Timothy, the beloved com- 
panion of his life ; there was Tychicus, who had been won in the school of 
Tyrannus, and remained faithful to him to the very last ; 6 there was Gaius of 
Derbe, a living memorial of the good work done in his earliest missionary 

i Rom. xv. 25—32. 2 2 Cor. viii. 24 ; ix. 12—15. 

* 2 Cor. ix. 14. 4 Rom. XV. 23, /oajKeVi. tottov ^x MV & ro ^ n\ifia(TL tomtom?. 

6 2 Tim. iv. 12. 



THE SECOND VISIT TO CORINTH. 423 

journey. Thessalonica had contributed no less than three to the little band — 
Jason, his fellow-countryman, if not his kinsman, whose house at St. Paul's 
first risk had been assaulted by a raging mob, which, failing to find his guest, 
had dragged him before the Politarehs; Aristarchus, who had shared with 
him the perils of Ephesus, as he subsequently shared his voyage and sL ipwreck; 
and Secundus, of whom no particulars are known. Besides these, Bercea had 
despatched Sopater, a Jewish convert, who is one of those who sends his 
greetings to the Roman Christians. 1 In Corinth itself he was again looking 
forward to a meeting with some of his dearest friends — with Titus, whose 
courage and good sense rendered him so invaluable ; with Luke the beloved 
physician, who was in all probability the delegate of Philippi; with Trophimus, 
an Ephesian Greek, the fatal but innocent cause of St. Paul's arrest at Jeru- 
salem, destined long afterwards to start with him on his voyage as a prisoner, 
but prevented from sharing his last sufferings by an illness with which he 
was seized at Miletus ; 2 and with the many Corinthian Christians — Justus, 
Sosthenes, Erastus, Tertius, Quartus, Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus, and 
lastly Gaius of Corinth, with whom St. Paul intended to stay, and whose oper. 
house and Christian hospitality were highly valued by the Church. 

The gathering of so many Christian hearts could not fail to be a bright 
point in the cloudy calendar of the Apostle's life. What happy evenings 
they must have enjoyed, while the toil of his hands in no way impeded the 
outpouring of his soul ! what gay and genial intercourse, such as is possible 
in its highest degree only to pure and holy souls ! what interchange of 
thoughts and hopes on the deepest of all topics ! what hours of mutual con- 
solation amid deepening troubles ; what delightful Agapse ; what blessed 
partaking of the Holy Sacrament ; what outpourings of fervent prayer ! 
For three months St. Paul stayed at Corinth, and during these three months 
he wrote, in all probability, the Epistle to the Galatians, and certainly 
the Epistle to the Romans — two of the most profound and memorable of all 
his writings. 3 And since it was but rarely that he was his own amanuensis — 

1 Eom. xvi. 21. The exact sense which St. Paul attributed to <™yyev7js is uncertain. 

2 2 Tim. iv. 20. 

8 The subtle indications that the Epistle to the Galatians was written nearly at the 
same time as the Second Epistle to the Corinthians consist of casual reflections of the 
same expression and pre-occupation with the same order of thought. The tone, feeling, 
style, and mode of argument show the greatest similarity. Compare, for instance — 



2 Corinthians. 

i. 1 ... 

xi. 4... 

v. 11 

xii. 11 

v. 15 

viii.6 

v. 21 



ATIAXS. 


2 CORINTHIANS. 


i. 1. 


xi. 2 


i. 6. 


xi. 20 


i. 10. 


xii. 20,21... 


ii. 6. 


ii. 7 


ii. 20. 


xiii. 5 


iii. 3. 


ix. 6 


iii. 13. 


v. 17 



Galatians, 
iv. 17. 
v. 15. 
v. 20, 21. 
vi. 1. 
vi. 4. 
vi.8. 
vi. 15. 



These are but specimens of coincidence in thought and expression, which might be almost 
indefinitely multiplied. To dwell on the close resemblance between Galatians and 
Eomans is needless. It was noticed a thousand years ago. The Epistle to the Galatians 
is the rough sketch, that to the Eomans the finished picture. The former is an im- 
passioned controversial personal statement of the relation of Gentile Christians mainly 
to o&e legal obligation — circumcision ; the latter is a calm, systematic, general treatise 



424 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

since it is his custom to associate one or more and sometimes the whole body 
of his fellow-travellers with himself in the superscriptions of his letters, as well 
as to send greetings from them — may we not regard it as certain that those 
letters were read aloud to the little knot of friends, and formed fruitful topics 
of long and earnest discussion ? Did even St. Paul anticipate that those few 
rolls of papyrus would be regarded to the latest ages of the world as a price- 
less treasure H 

But what was the state of things which the Apostle found when he 
stepped out of the house of Gains into the house of Justus? It was St. 
Luke's object to show the fundamental unity which existed among Christians, 
and not to dwell upon the temporary differences which unhappily divided 
them. He does not, indeed, conceal the existence of discordant elements, but 
his wish seems to have been to indicate the essential harmony which these 
discords might disturb, but not destroy. He has not, therefore, told us a 
single detail of St. Paul's encounter with the false Apostles, the deceitful 
workers who had huckstered and adulterated the Word of God, or with that 
one insolent and overbearing emissary, who with his stately presence, trained 
utterance, and immense pretensions, backed with credentials from Jerusalem 
and possibly with the prestige of a direct knowledge of Christ, had denied 
St. Paul's Apostleship, and omitted no opportunity of blackening his 
character. Did this man face St. Paul ? Did his followers abide by the 
defiance which they had expressed towards him ? Was there a crisis in which 
it was decisively tested on which side the true power lay ? Did he after all 
come with a rod, or in the spirit of meekness ? was the proof of his Apostle- 
ship given by the exercise of discipline, and the utterance of excommunica- 
tions which struck terror into flagrant apostates, or did the returning allegiance 
of the erring flock, and the increase of holiness among them, render it un- 
necessary to resort to stringent measures ? To all these questions we can 
return no certain answer. We may imagine the hush of awful expectation 
with which the little community gathered in the room of Justus would 
receive the first entrance and the first utterances of one whose love they 
had so 'terribly tried, and against whose person they had levelled such un- 
worthy sarcasms. Personal questions would, however, weigh least with him. 
They knew well that it was not for party opposition but for moral contumacy 
that his thunders would be reserved. Since many of them were heinous 
offenders, since many had not even repented after serious warnings, how must 
they have shuddered with dread, how must their guilty consciences have 
made cowards of them all, when at last, after more than three years, they 
stood face to face with one who could hand them too over to Satan with all the 
fearful consequences which that sentence entailed ! Over all these scenes 
the veil of oblivion has fallen. The one pen that might have recorded them 
has written nothing, nor do we hear a single rumour from any other source. 

on the relations of the Gospel to the Law. An instructive comparison of Gal . iii. 6— 
29 with Rom. iv., &c, will be found in Lightfoot's Galatiam, pp. 44 — 46. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 425 

But that for the time the Apostle triumphed — that whether in consequence of 
an actual exertion of power, or of a genuine repentance on the part of his 
opponents, his authority was once more firmly established — we may infer from 
his hint that until the Corinthian difliculties were removed he could take no 
other task in hand, and that in the Epistles which he wrote during these 
three months of his residence at the Achaian capital he contemplates yet 
wider missions and freely yields himself to new activities. i 

Yet, amid our ignorance of facts, we do possess the means of reading 
the inmost thoughts which were passing through the soul of St. Paul. The 
two Epistles which he despatchel during those three months were in many 
respects the most important that he ever wrote, and it inspires us with the 
highest estimate of his intellectual power to know that, within a period so 
short and so much occupied with other duties and agitations, he yet found 
time to dictate the Letter to the Galatians, which marks an epoch in the 
history of the Church, and the Letter to the Romans, which may well be 
regarded as the most important of all contributions to the system of its 
theology. 



CHAPTER XXXY. 

IMPORTANCE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 

11 In Ex. xxxii. 16, for charuth, ' graven,' read cheruth, 'freedom,' for thou wilt 
find no freeman but him who is engaged in the Thorah." — E. Meir (Perek. 2). 

" He is a freeman whom the Truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside." 

. . . . wapaiCLnpas els v6/xov riXeiov rbv T7js 4\evdeplas . . . (James i. 25) 

We have already seen that in his brief second visit to the Churches of 
Galatia, on his road to Ephesus, St. Paul seems to have missed the bright 
enthusiasm which welcomed his first preaching. His keen eye marked the 
germs of coming danger, and the warnings which he uttered weakened the 
warmth of his earlier relationship towards them. But he could hardly have 
expected the painful tidings that converts once so dear and so loving had 
relapsed from everything which was distinctive in his teaching into the 
shallowest ceremonialism of his Judaising opponents. Already, whoever 
sanctioned them, these men had spoilt his best work, and troubled his happy 
disciples at Antioch and at Corinth, and they had their eye also on Ephesus. 
Thus to intrude themselves into other men's labours — thus to let him bear the 
brunt of all dangers and labours while they tried to monopolise the result — to 
watch indifferently and unsympathetically while the sower bore forth his good 

»Eom. i. 13; xv. 24, 32. 



426 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. .PAUL. 

seed, weeping, and then securely to thrust their blunt and greedy sicMes into 
the ripening grain — to dog the footsteps of the bold, self-sacrificing missionary 
with easy, well-to-do men-pleasers, who, with no personal risk, stole in his 
absence into the folds which he had constructed, in order to worry with privy 
paws his defenceless sheep — to trouble with their petty formalisms and 
artificial orthodoxies the crystal water of Christian simplicity and Christian 
happiness — to endanger thus the whole future of Christianity by trying to 
turn it from the freedom of a universal Gospel into the bondage of a Judaic 
law — to construct a hedge which, except at the cost of a cutting in the flesh, 
should exclude the noblest of the Gentiles while it admitted the vilest of the 
Jews — all this, to the clear vision of St. Paul, seemed bad enough. But thus 
to thrust themselves among the little communities of his Galatian converts — 
to take advantage of their warm affections and weak intellects — to play on the 
vacillating frivolity of purpose which made them such easy victims, especially 
to those who offered them an external cult far more easy than spiritua' 
religion, and bearing a fascinating resemblance to their old ceremonia 1 
paganism — this to St. Paul seemed intolerably base. 

Yexed at this Galatian fickleness, and stung with righteous indignation at 
those who had taken advantage of it, he seized his pen to express in the most 
unmistakable language his opinion of the falsity and worthlessness of the 
limits into which these Christian Pharisees wished to compress the principles 
of Christianity — the worn-out and burst condition of the old bottles in which 
they strove to store the rich, fresh, fermenting wine. It was no time to 
pause for nice inquiries into motives, or careful balancing of elements, or 
vague compromise, or polished deference to real or assumed authority. It 
was true that this class of men came from Jerusalem, and that they belonged 
to the very Church of Jerusalem for whose poorer members he was making 
such large exertions. It was true that, in one flagrant instance at any rate, 
they had, or professed to have, the authority of James. Could it be that 
James, in the bigotry of lifelong habit, had so wholly failed to add under- 
standing and knowledge to his scrupulous holiness, that he was lending the 
sanction of his name to a work which St. Paul saw to be utterly ruinous to 
the wider hopes of Christianity ? If so, it could not be helped. James was 
but a man — a holy man indeed, and a man inspired with the knowledge of 
great and ennobling truths — but no more faultless or infallible than Peter or 
than Paul himself. If Peter, more than once, had memorably wavered, James 
also might waver ; and if so, James in this instance was indubitably iu the 
wrong. But St. Paul, at least, never says so ; nor does he use a word of dis- 
respect to " the Lord's brother." The Church of Jerusalem had, on a 
previous occasion, expressly repudiated others who professed to speak in their 
name ; nor is there any proof that they had ever sanctioned this sort of 
counter-mission of espionage, which was subversive of all progress, of all 
liberty, and even of all morals. For, whoever may have been these Judaic 
teachers, vanity, party spirit, sensuality, had followed in their wake. They 
must be tested by their fruits, and those fruits were bitter and poisonous. 



IMPORTANCE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 427 

Some of them, at least, were bad men, anxious to stand well with everybody, 
and to substitute an outward observance for a true religion. Greed, self-im- 
portance, externalism, were everything to them ; the Cross was nothing. If 
they had not been bad men they would not have been so grossly inconsistent 
as to manipulate and evade the Law to which they professed allegiance. 
If they had not been bad men they would not have made the free use they 
did of the vilest of controversial weapons — surreptitious sneers and personal 
slanders. Tet by such base means as these they had persistently tried to 
undermine the influence of their great opponent. They systematically dis- 
paraged his authority. He was, they said, no Apostle whatever ; he was 
certainly not one of the Twelve ; he had never seen Jesus except in a vision, 
and therefore lacked one essential of the Apostolate; all that he knew of 
Christianity he had learnt at Jerusalem, and that he had wilfully perverted ; 
his Gospel was not the real Gospel; such authority as he had was simply 
derived from the heads of the Church at Jerusalem, to whom his doctrines 
must be referred. Many of his present developments of teaching were all 
but blasphemous. They were a daring apostasy from the oral and even from 
the written Law; a revolt against the traditions of the fathers, and even 
against Moses himself. Was not his preaching a denial of all inspiration ? 
Could they not marshal against him an array of innumerable texts ? Was 
not well-nigh every line of the five books of Moses against him ? Who was 
this Paul, this renegade from the Rabbis, who, for motives best known to 
himself, had become a nominal Christian from a savage persecutor ? Who 
was he that he should set himself against the Great Lawgiver ? x If he 
argued that the Law was abrogated, how could he prove it? Christ had 
never said so. On the contrary, He had said that not a fraction of a letter of 
the Law should pass till all was fulfilled. To that the Twelve could bear 
witness. They kept the Law. They were living at peace with their Jewish 
brethren who yet did not recognise Jesus as the Messiah. Must not Paul's 
opinions be antagonistic to theirs, if he was the only Christian who could 
not show his face at Jerusalem without exciting the danger of a tumult ? 
Besides, he was really not to be trusted. He was always shifting about, now 
saying one thing and now another, with the obvious intention of pleasing men. 
What could be more inconsistent than his teaching and conduct with regard 
to circumcision ? He had told the Galatians that they need not be circum- 
cised, and yet he himself had once preached circumcision — aye, and more than 
preached it, he had practised it ! Would he answer these two significant 
questions — Who circumcised Timothy ? Who circumcised Titus ? 

St. Paul saw that it was time to speak out, and he did speak out. The 
matter at issue was one of vital importance. The very essence of the Gospel 

1 The elements of the above paragraph are drawn partly from the " Galatians," partly 
from the "Corinthians." For the Ebionite slanders against St. Paul, see Iren. Adv. 
Eaer.i. 28; Euseb. H. E. hi. 27; Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 25; Ps. Clem. Horn. ii. 17—19. 
" Totius mundi odio me oneravi,'' says Luther, " qui olim eram tutissimus. Ministerium 
Ecclesiae omnibus periculis expositum est, Diaboli insultationibus, mundi ingratitudini, 
•ectarum blasphemiis " {Colluq. i. 13), 



428 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

— the very liberty which Christ had given — the very redemption for which 
He had died — was at stake. The fate of the battle hung apparently upon his 
single arm. He alone was the Apostle of the Gentiles. To him alone had it 
been granted to see the full bearings of this question. A new faith must not 
be choked at its birth by the past prejudices of its nominal adherents. Its 
grave-clothes must not thus be made out of its swaddling-bands. The hour 
had come when concession was impossible, and there must be no facing both 
ways in the character of his conciliatoriness. Accordingly he flung all reti- 
cence and all compromise to the winds. Hot with righteous anger, he wrote 
the Epistle to the Galatians. It was his gage of battle to the incompetence 
of traditional authority — his trumpet-note of defiance to all the Pharisees of 
Christianity, and it gave no uncertain sound. 1 

Happily, he could give distinctness to his argument by bringing it to bear 
on one definite point. In recovering the lost outwork of Galatia he would 
carry the war into the camp of Jerusalem. The new teachers asserted, as at 
Antioch, the necessity of circumcision for Gentile Christians. If Paul could 
storm that bastion of Judaising Christianity, he knew that the whole citadel 
must fall. Circumcision was the very badge of Jewish nationality— the very 
nucleus of Jewish ceremonialism ; the earliest, the most peculiar, the most 
ineffaceable of Jewish rites. Adam, Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Balaam, 
had all been born circumcised. 2 So completely was it the seal of the Cove- 
nant, that it had been given not even to Moses, but to Abraham. Joseph had 
seen that it was duly performed in Egypt. Moses had insisted upon it at all 
risks in Midian. Joshua had renewed it in Canaan ; and so sacred was it 
deemed to be that the stone knives with which it had been performed were 
buried in his grave at Timnath Serah. Was there a king or prophet who had 
not been circumcised ? Had not Jesus Himself submitted to circumcision ? 
Was not Elias supposed to be always present, though unseen, to witness its 
due performance ? Was not the mechanical efPacement of it regarded as the 
most despicable of Hellenising apostasies ? It was true that in the temporary 
and local letter which the Apostles had sanctioned they had said that it was 
not indispensable for Gentile converts ; but a thing might not be indis- 
pensable, and yet might be pre-eminently desirable. Let them judge for 
themselves. Did they not hear the Law read ? Was not the Law inspired ? 
H so, how could they arbitrarily set it aside ? 3 

1 "It was necessary that the particularisms of Judaism, which opposed to the heathen 
world so repellent a demeanour and such offensive claims, should be uprooted, and the 
baselessness of its prejudices and pretensions fully exposed to the world's eye. This was 
the service which the Apostle achieved for mankind by his magnificent dialectic " (Ba.ur, 
First Three Centuries, i. 73). 

2 AbhCth of Rabbi Nathan, ch. ii. 

3 "But for circumcision, heaven and earth could not exist ; for it is said, 'Save for 
(the sign of) my covenant, I should not have made day and night the ordinances of 
heaven and earth ' " {Neda/rim, f. 32, col. 1, referring to Jerem. xxxiii. 25). The same 
remark is made about the whole Law. Rabbi (Juda Hakkadosh) says how great is 
circumcision, since it is equivalent to all the commandments of the Law, for it is said, 
" Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you, concerning all 
(Heb. above all) these words " (Ex. xxiv. %).—Nedarim t f. 32, 1. Angela so detest an 



IMPORTANCE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 429 

It was ever thus that Judaism worked, beginning with the Psalms and 
pure Monotheism, and then proceeding to the knife of circumcision, and the 
joke of the Levitic Law, in which they entangled and crushed their slaves. 1 
It was ever thus that they compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, and 
when they had got him, made him ten times more the child of Gehenna than 
themselves. There was nothing at which the Jew gloried so much as thus 
leaving his mark on the very body of the despised and hated heathen — hardly 
less despised and hated, almost even more so, if he had hoped to equal them 
and their privileges by consenting to become a Jew. It was thus that they 
had got into their net the royal family of Adiabene. Helena, the amiable 
queen who fed the paupers of Jerusalem with dried figs and grapes in the 
famine of Claudius, aud who now lies interred with some of her children in 
the Tombs of the Kings, had taken upon her the vow of the Nazarite for 
seven years. Just before the completion of the vow at Jerusalem, she had — 
was it accidentally, or by some trickery ? — touched a corpse, and therefore 
had to continue the vow for seven years more. Once more at the conclusion 
of this term she had again incurred some trivial pollution, and had again to 
renew it for yet seven years more. Ananias, a Jewish merchant, in pursuance 
of his avocations, had got access to the seraglio of King Abennerig, and there 
had made a proselyte of the queen, and, through her influence, of her two 
sons, Izates and Monobazus. But he had had the good sense and large- 
heartedness to tell them that the essence of the Law was love to God and love 
to man. He was probably a Hagadist, who valued chiefly the great broad 
truths of which the outward observances of Mosaism were but the temporary 
casket ; and he had the insight to know that for the sake of an outward rite, 
which could not affect the heart, it was not worth while to disturb a people 
and imperil a dynasty. His advice must not be confused with the cynical 
and immoral indifference which made Henri IY. observe that " Paris was well 
worth a mass." It was, on the contrary, an enlightenment which would not 
confound the shadow with the substance. 2 It was the conviction that the 
inscription on the Chel should be obliterated, and the Chel itself broken down. 3 
But on the steps of the enlightened Ananias came a narrow bigot, the Rabbi 
Eliezer of Galilee, and he employed to the facile weakness of the young 
princes the very argument which the Judaising teacher, whoever he was, 
employed to the Galatians : " My king, you are sinning against the Law, and 
therefore against God. It is not enough to read the Law ; you must do the 
Law. Read for yourself what it says about circumcision, and you will see 

uncircumcised person that, when God spoke to Abraham before circumcision, He spoke 
in Aramaic, which, it appears, the angels do not understand (Yalkuth Chadash. f. 
117, 3). 

1 See Hausrath, p. 263. 

3 Josephus had the good sense to take the same line when "two great men " came 
to him from Trachonitis ; but though for the time he succeeded in persuading the Jews 
not to force circumcision upon them, yet afterwards these fugitives were nearly massacred 
by a fanatical mob, and could only secure their lives by a hasty flight. See the very 
instructive passage in Vit. Jos. 23, 31. 

3 Eph. ii. 14. 



430 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTC.. 

how wrong you are." 1 Prince Izates was so much struck with this " uncom- 
promising orthodoxy " that he secretly withdrew into another chamber, and 
there had the rite performed by his physician. Not long after he and hi? 
brother were reading the Pentateuch, and came to the passage about circum- 
cision in Ex. xii. 48. Monobazus looked up at his brother, and said, " I am 
sorry for you, my brother," and Izates made the same remark to him. This 
led to a conversation, and the brothers confessed, first to each other, and then 
to Queen Helena, that they had both been secretly circumcised. The queen 
was naturally alarmed and anxious, and dangerous consequences ensued. But 
these were nothing to the Jewish fanatic. They would only be a fresh source 
of publicity, and therefore of glorifying in the flesh of his proselyte. Again, 
we read in the Talmud that Rabbi 2 was a great friend of "the Emperor 
Antoninus." On one occasion the Emperor asked him, " Wilt thou give me a 
piece of Leviathan in the world to come ? "— since the flesh of Leviathan and 
of the bird Barjuchneh are to be the banquet of the blessed hereafter. " Yes," 
answered Rabbi. " But why dost thou not allow me to partake of the 
Paschal Lamb?" "How can I," answered Rabbi, "when it is written that 
' no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof ' ? " Upon hearing this Antoninus 
submitted to the rite of circumcision, and embraced Judaism. The imagination 
of Rabbis and Pharisees was flattered by the thought that even emperors 
were not too great to accept their Halachoth. "What would be their feelings 
towards one who offered the utmost blessings of the Chosen People without a 
single. Judaic observance to the meanest slave ? 

Self-interest was an additional and a powerful inducement with these 
retrogressive intruders. Although Christian, they, like the Twelve, like even 
Paul himself, were still Jews. At Jerusalem they continued regularly to 
attend the services at the Temple and the gatherings of their synagogue. 
To be excommunicated from the synagogue in little Jewish communities like 
those that were congregated in Ancyra and Pessinus was a very serious 
matter indeed. It was infinitely more pleasant for them to be on good terms 
with the Jews, by making proselytes of righteousness out of St. Paul's 
converts. Thus circumcision was only the thin end of the wedge. 3 It 
obviated the painful liability to persecution. It would naturally lead to the 
adoption of all the observances, which the converts would constantly hear 
read to them in the Jewish service. But, if not, it did not much matter. It 
was not really necessary for them to keep the whole Law. A sort of decent 
external conformity was enough. So long as they made "a fair show 

1 Jos. Antt. xx. 2, § 2. This interesting royal family had a house in Jerusalem (Jos. 
B. J. v. 6, § 1 ; vi. 6, § 3). 

2 .Rabbi Juda Hakkadosh is thus called <ar ^oxw- The anecdote is from Jer. Megillah, 
cap. i. For another wild story about their intercourse, see Abhoda Zara, f. 10, 2. The 
Talmud being the most utterly unhistorical and unchronological of books, it is difficult to 
say which Emperor is the one alluded to in this and a multitude of similar fables about 
liis supposed intercourse with Rabbi. It cannot be Antoninus Pius, who never left Rome ; 
not M. Aurelius, who was unfavourable both to Jews and Christians. Possibly the worth- 
less Caracalla may be alluded to, since he once visited Palestine. Heliogabalus appears 
to be alluded to in some passages of the Talmud as " the younger Antoninus," and he, too, 
Is said to have accepted circumcision. 

» Gal. v. 3, 6, 12—14. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 43i 

in the flesh," they might in reality do pretty much as they liked. It 
was against all this hypocrisy, this retrogression, this cowardice, this 
mummery of the outward, this reliance on the mechanical, that Paul 
used words which were half battles. There should be no further doubt 
as to what he really meant and taught. He would leap ashore among his 
enemies, and burn his ships behind him. He would draw his sword against 
this false gospel, and fling away the scabbard. What Luther did when he 
nailed his Theses to the door of the Cathedral of "Wittenberg, that St. Paul 
did when he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. It was the manifesto 
of emancipation. It marked an epoch in history. It was for the early days 
of Christianity what would have been for Protestantism the Confession 
of Augsburg and the Protest of Spires combined; but it was these "expressed 
in dithyrambs, and written in jets of flame ; " and it was these largely 
intermingled with an intense personality and impassioned polemics. It was a 
De Corona, a Westminster Confession, and an Apologia in one. If we wish 
to find its nearest parallel in vehemence, effectiveness, and depth of conviction, 
we must look forward for sixteen centuries, and read Luther's famous treatise, 
De Cajptiviiate Babylonica, in which he realised his saying " that there ought 
to be set aside for this Popish battle, a tongue of which every word is a 
thunderbolt." * To the Churches of Galatia he never came again ; but the 
words scrawled on those few sheets of papyrus, whether they failed or not of 
their immediate effect, were to wake echoes which should " roll from soul to 
soul, and live for ever and for ever." 



CHAPTER XXXYL 

THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 



" The Epistle to the Galatians is my Epistle ; I have betrothed myself to it : it 
is my wife." — Luther. 

" Principalis adversus Judaismum Epistola." — Tert. adv. Marc. v. 2. 

" DiscrimenLegis et Evangelii est depictum in hoc dicto ' posteriora me a videbitis, 
faciem means non videbitis.' 

/"Dorsum \ ( Facies 

^jgLatp*. Evangel fe 

(.Infirmitas ; ( Perfectio." 

Luther, Colloq. i., p. 20, ed. 1571. 
" Judaism was the narrowest [i.e. the most special) of religions, Christianity 
the most human and comprehensive. In a few years the latter was evolved out of 
the former, taking all its intensity and durability without resort to any of its limi- 
tations. ... In St. Paul's Epistles we see the general direction in which 
thought and events must have advanced : otherwise the change would seem as 
violent and inconceivable as a convulsion which should mingle the Jordan and the 
Tiber." — Martesteau, Studies of Christianity, p. 420. 

In the very first line of the Apostle's greeting a part of his object — the vin- 

1 Luther, Tisch-Reden, 249. But though Luther constantly defends his polemical 
ferocity by the example of St. Paul, St. Paul never (not even in Gal. v. 12) shows the 
violence and coarseness which deface the style of Luther. 



482 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

dication of his Apostolic authority- — becomes manifest. 1 In the Epistles to 
the Thessalonians he had adopted no title of authority; but since those 
Epistles had been written, the Judaists had developed a tendency to limit the 
term Apostle almost exclusively to the Twelve, and overshadow all others 
with their immense authority. The word had two technical senses. In the 
lower sense it merely meant a messenger or worker in the cause of the Gospel, 
and as an equivalent to the common Jewish title of Sheliach, was freely 
bestowed on comparatively unknown Christians, like Andronicus and Junias." 
Now Paul claimed the title in the highest sense, not from vanity or self- 
assertion, but because it was necessary for the good of his converts. He had 
the primary qualification of an Apostle in that he had seen Christ, though 
for reasons which he explained in the last Epistle he declined to press it. He 
had the yet further qualification that his Apostolate and that of Barnabas 
had been publicly recognised by the Church of Jerusalem. But this claim 
also he wished to waive as unreal and even misleading ; for his Apostolate 
was derived from no merely human authority. Writing to the Corinthians, 
some of whom had impugned his rights, he had intentionally designated him- 
self as " a called Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." Writing to 
these weak and apostatising Galatians it was necessary to be still more explicit, 
and consequently he addresses them with his fullest greeting, in which he 
speaks both of his own authority and of the work of Christ. By impugning 
the first they were setting temporary relations above spiritual insight ; by 
errors respecting the latter they were nullifying the doctrine of the Cross. 

" Paul, an Apostle, not from men, nor by the instrumentality of any man, but 
by Jesus Christ and God our Father, who raised Him from the dead, and all the 
brethren with me, 3 to the Churches of Galatia. Grace to you and Peace from God 
the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins that He may 

1 The general outline of the Epistle is as follows : — It falls into three divisions — 1. 
Personal (an element which recurs throughout) ; 2. Dogmatic ; 3. Practical. In the first 
part (i., ii.) he vindicates his personal independence (a) negatively, by showing that he 
was an Apostle before any intercourse with the Twelve (i. 17, 18) ; and (^) positively, 
since he had secured from the Apostles the triumphant recognition of his own special 
principles on three occasions, viz., (i.) in an association on perfectly equal terms with 
Peter (18, 19) ; (ii. ) when they were compelled by facts to recognise his equal mission 
(ii. 9, 10) ; and (iii.) when he convinced Peter at Antioch that he was thoroughly in the 
wrong (ii. 11 — 21). 2. Passing naturally to the dogmatic defence of justification by faith, 
he proves it (<*) by the Christian consciousness (iii. 1 — 5), and (^) from the Old Testament 
(iii. 6 — 18). This leads him to the question as to the true position of the Law, which he 
shows to be entirely secondary, (<*) objectively, by the very nature of Christianity (iii. 19 — 
29) ; and (/3) subjectively, by the free spiritual life of Christians (iv. 1 — 11). After affec- 
tionate warnings to them about those who had led them away (iv. 11 — 30), he passes to — 
3. The practical exhortation to Christian freedom (v. 1 — 12), and warnings, both general 
(13 — 18) and special (v. 16 — vi. 10), against its misuse. Then follows the closing summary 
and blessing (vi. 11 — 18). 

2 Kom. xvi. 7 ; cf. Phil. ii. 25 ; 2 Cor. viii. 23. Similarly the title Imperator was used 
by Cicero and other Romans down to Junius Blsesus, long after its special sense had been 
isolated to connote the absolute head of the state. 

3 At this time he was accompanied by a larger number of brethren than at any other. 
This is one of the minute circumstances which support the all-but-certain inference that 
the Epistle was written at this particular period, during St. Paul's three months' stay at 
Corinth, towards the close of A.D. 57. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 433 

deliver us from this present evil state of the world, according to the will of our God 
and Father, to whom is His due glory * for ever and ever. Amen." 2 

This greeting is remarkable, not only for the emphatic assertion of his in- 
dependent Apostleship, and for the skill with which he combines with this 
subject of his Epistle the great theologic truth of our free deliverance 3 by 
the death of Christ, but also for the stern brevity of the terms with which he 
greets those to whom he is writing. A sense of wrong breathes through the 
fulness of his personal designation, and the scantiness of the address to his 
converts. He had addressed the Thessalonians as " the Church of the 
Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ," He 
had written " to the Church of God which is in Corinth, to the 
sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." About this very time 
he wrote to the Romans as "beloved of God, called to be saints." 
To the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, he adds the words "saints in 
Christ Jesus," and " saints and faithful brethren ; " but to these Galatians 
alone, in his impetuous desire to deal at once with their errors, he uses only 
the brief, plain address, " To the Churches of Galatia." 

And then without one word of that thanksgiving for their holiness, or 
their gifts, or the grace of God bestowed on them, which is found in every 
one of his other general Epistles, he bursts at once into the subject of which 
his mind is so indignantly full. 

" I am amazed that you are so quickly shifting from him who called you in the 
grace of Christ into a different Gospel, which is not merely another* only there are 
some who are troubling you, and wanting to reverse the Gospel of Christ. But 
even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach contrary to what we 
preached to you, let him be accursed? As we have said before, so now again I say 
deliberately, If any one is preaching to you anything contrary to what ye received, 
Let him be accursed. 6 Well, am I now trying to be plausible to men, or to conci- 
liate God Himself ? Had I still been trying to be a man-pleaser, I should not have 
been what I am — a slave of Christ." 7 

Such was the startling abruptness, such the passionate plainness with which 
he showed them that the time for conciliation was past. Their Jewish teachers 
said that Paul was shifty and complaisant, and that he did not preach the real 
Gospel. He tells them that it is they who are perverters of the Gospel, and 
that if they, or any one of them, or any one else, even an angel, preaches 

1 fj S6fr, sub. l<mv. Matt. vi. 13 ; 1 Pet. iv. 11. 2 i. 1—5. 

8 i. 4, e^e'ATjTcu. "Deliver strikes the key-note of the Epistle " (Lightfoot). we<nwos, 
" present," Eom. viii. 38. 

4 If fLerarieetree is really a mental pun (as Jerome thought) on Galatae and Vw, we 
might almost render it galatising. For erepov, "different," and a\\o, "another," see 
2 Cor. xi. 4. Hence eVepos came to mean "bad ; " edrepov is the opposite to "good." 

5 i. 8, avaOeixa ; the meaning " excommunicated" is later, and would not suit ayyeA.os. 
5 There is a sort of syllepsis in this, and the rbv ®ebv is more emphatic than the 

avOpayrrovs. Probably Paul had been accused of emancipating the Gentiles from Judaism 
out of mere complaisance. 

7 L 1—10, In, " after all 1 have endured ;" v. 11 ; vi 17 J 1 Oor, xv. 30 3S. 

o o 



434 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

contrary to what he has preached, let the ban — the cherem — fall on him. He 
has said this before, and to show them that it is not a mere angry phrase, he 
repeats it more emphatically now, and appeals to it as a triumphant proof that 
whatever they could charge him with having done and said before, now, at any 
rate, his language should be unmistakably plain. 

" Now I declare to you, brethren, as to the Gospel preached by me that it is not 
a mere human Gospel. For neither did I myself receive it from man, nor was I 
taught it, but by revelation from Jesus Christ. For you heard my manner of life 
formerly in Judaism, that I extravagantly 1 persecuted the Church of God, and 
ravaged it, and was making advance in Judaism above many my equals in age in my 
own race, being to an unusual degree a zealot for the traditions of my fathers. But 
when He who set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me by His grace 
thought good to reveal His Son in me that I should preach Him among the Gentiles, 
immediately I did not confer with mere human teachers, nor did I go away to 
Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and 
again returned to Damascus. 

" Next, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Kephas, and I stayed 
at his house fifteen days ; but not a single other Apostle did I see, except James, the 
Lord's brother. 2 Now in what I am writing to you, see, before God, I am not lying. 3 

" Next I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia ; and was quite unknown by 
person to the Churches of Judaea which were in Christ, only they were constantly 
being told that our former persecutor is now a preacher of the faith which once he 
ravaged. And they glorified God in me. 4 

" Next, after fourteen years, I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking 
with me Titus also. 5 And I went up by revelation, and referred to them the Gospel 
which I preach among he Gentiles, 6 privately however to those of repute, lest per- 
chance I might be running, or even ran, to no purpose.' But not even Titus, who 
was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised — but because of the 
false brethren secretly introduced, who slank in to spy out our liberty which we have 
in Christ Jesus that they might utterly enslave us — [to whom not even (?)] for an 
hour we yielded by xoay of the subjection they wanted, in order that the truth of the 
Gospel may permanently remain with you. 8 From, those, however, who are reputed 
to be something — whatever they once were, makes no matter to me, God cares for no 
man's person 9 — for to me those in repute contributed nothing, but, on the contrary, 
seeing that I have been entrusted with the Gospel of the uncircumcision, as Peter of 
the circumcision — for He who worked for Peter for the Apostolate of the circum- 
cision, worked also for me towards the Gentiles — and recognising the grace granted 

1 i. 13, Kaff vneppok-ijv, d outrance. 

2 Who in one sense was, and in another was not, an Apostle, not being one of the 
Twelve. 

3 V. supra, pp. 130 — 134. As I have already examined many of the details of 
this Epistle for biographical purposes, I content myself with referring to the passages. 
The strong appeal in i, 20 shows that Paul's truthfulness had been questioned. 
(Cf. 1 Thess. v. 27.) 

4 L 11—24. 

5 V. supra, pp. 232 — 237. Paul's purpose here is not the tedious pedantry of 
chronological exactitude. 

6 ii. 2, avedeiM-nv, not to submit to their decision, but with the strong belief that he 
could win their concurrence. (Cf. Acts xxv. 14.) 

7 J 'hil. ii. 16. I have already explained the probable meaning of this — " that I might 
feel quite sure of the truth and practicability of my views." Even Luther admits, 
" Nathan saepe mihi dixit, quid si falsum esset dogma tuum?" {Colloq. ii. 12.) 

8 V. supra, p. 234. 

,J ii. 6, 0ebs avGpunov. The position is emphatic. This seems to glance at the absurdity 
of founding spiritual authority on mere family or external claims. (See Martineaiif 
Sfaidia in Christianity, p. 428.) 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 435 

to me, James, and Kephas, and John, who are in repute as pillars, gave right hands 
of fellowship to me and Barnabas, that we to the Gentiles, and they to the circum- 
cision — only that we should bear in mind the poor, which very thing I was of my 
own accord even eager to do. 1 

" But when Kephas came to Antioch I withstood him to the face, "because he was 
a condemned man. 2 For before the arrival of certain from James 3 he used to eat 
with the Gentiles ; but on their arrival 4 he began to withdraw and separate himself, 
being afraid of these Jewish converts. And the rest of the Jews joined in this 
hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was swept away by their hypocrisy. 5 But 
when I perceived that they were not walking in the straight truth of the 
Gospel, I said to Kephas, before them all, If you, a born Jew, are living 
Gentile-wise and not Judaically, how can you try to compel the Gentiles to Judaise ? 
We, Jews by birth and not ' sinners ' of the Gentiles, 6 but well aware that no man 
is justified as a result of the works of the Law, but only by means of faith in Jesus 
Christ — even we believed on Jesus Christ that we maybe justified as a result of faith 
in Christ, and not of the works of Law ; for from works of Law ' no flesh shall be 
justified.' 7 But (you will object) if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we turn 
out to be even ourselves ' sinners ' (men no better than the Gentiles), is then Christ 
a minister of sin ? 8 Away with the thought ! For if I rebuild the very things I 
destroyed, then I prove myself to be not only a ' sinner ' but a transgressor." The 
very rebuilding (he means) would prove that the previous destruction was guilty ; 
"but it was not so," he continues to argue, "for it was by Law that I died to 
Law ;" in other words, it was the Law itself which led me to see its own nullity, 
and thereby caused my death to it that I might live to God. 9 " I have been crucified 
with Christ ;" my old sins are nailed to His cross, no less than my old Jewish 



1 ii. 1 — 10. It was, as Tertullian says, a distributio officii, not a separatio 
(De Praescr. Haer. 28). He had already shown his care for the poor (Acts xi. 30). 

2 ii. 11, KaTeyv. Manifestly and flagrantly in the wrong. Cf. Rom. xiv. 23. To 
make Kara. Trp6crix>Troi> mean "by way of mask," and treat the scene as one got up (/cam crx^ua) 
between the Apostles — as Origen and Chrysostom do — or to assume that Kephas does 
not mean Peter — as Clemens of Alexandria does — is a deplorable specimen of the power 
of dogmatic prejudice to blind men to obvious fact. St. Peter's weakness bore other 
bitter fruit. It was one ultimate cause of Ebionite attacks on St. Paul, and of Gnostic 
attacks on Judaism, and of Porphyry's slanders of the Apostles, and of Jerome's quarrel 
with Augustine. (See Lightfoot, pp. 123 — 126.) 

3 Cf. Acts xv. 24. 

4 ii. 12, ri\eev (n, B, D, F, G), if St. Paul really wrote it, could only mean "when 
James came ; " and so Origen understood it (c. Gels. ii. 1). 

5 We can scarcely even imagine the deadly offence caused by this boldness, an offence 
felt a century afterwards (Iren. Haer. i. 26 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. 27 ; Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 
16 ; Baur, Ch. Hist. 89, 98). Even when the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies were written 

the Jewish Christians had not forgiven the word KaTeyvuxrixdvos. El KaTeyvma^dvov jue Aiyei? 

©eoO airoKakvxl/avros fxoi tov Xpiorbv Karr)yope'is (Clem. Horn. xvii. 19). And yet, however 
bitter against unscrupulous Judaism, St. Paul is always courteous and respectful when 
he speaks of the Twelve. The Praedicatio Petri (in Cyprian, De Rebapt. ) says that Peter 
and Paul remained unreconciled till death. 

6 Cf. Bom. ix. 30, e6vn to. /xw SuoKovra SiKcuooiJirnv : Luke vi 32, 33 ; Matt. v. 47 ; ix. 
10, 11. 

7 Ps. cxliii. 2. St. Paul's addition Ipyois vo^ov is an obvious inference. The accentua- 
tion of meaning on ritual or moral observance must depend on the context. Here the 
latter is mainly in question (Neander, Planting, i. 211). 

8 It is impossible to say how much of this argument was actually addressed to Peter. 
f«j yeVoiro, nb'bn ; cf. Gen. xliv. 7, 17. 

9 The Latin fathers and Luther understand it "by the law (of Christ) I am dead to 
the law (of Moses)." The best commentary is Bom. vii. 1 — 11. Expressions like this 
led to the charge of antinomianism, which St. Paul sets aside in 1 Cor. ix. 21. Celsus 
taunts the Apostles with the use of such language while yet they could denounce each 
other {ap. Orig. v. 64). But they did not profess to have attained their own ideal 
(Phil, iii 13). 

c o 2 



436 THE liIPE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

obligations ; yet this death, is life — not mine, however out the life of Christ in me ; 
and so far as I now live in the flesh, I live in faith on the Son of God who loved me, 
and gave Himself up for me. I am not, therefore, setting at nought the grace of 
God by proclaiming my freedom from the Levitical Law ; you are doing that, not I ; 
" for had righteousness been at all possible by Law, then it seems Christ's death was 
superfluous." 1 

He has now sufficiently vindicated his independent Apostleship, and since 
this nullification of the death of Christ was the practical issue of the Galatian 
retrogression into Jewish ritualism, he passes naturally to the doctrinal truth 
on which he had also touched in his greeting, and he does so with a second 
burst of surprise and indignation :— 

" Dull Galatians ! 2 who bewitched you with his evil eye, — you before whose eyes 
Jesus Christ crucified was conspicuously painted ? 3 This is the only thing I want 
to learn of you ; — received ye the Spirit as a result of works of Law, or of faithful 
hearing ? Are ye so utterly dull ? After beginning the sacred rite spiritually, will 
ye complete it carnally ? Did ye go through so many experiences in vain ? 4 if it be 
indeed in vain. He then that abundantly supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh 
powers in you, does he do so as a result of works of Law or of faithful hearing P Of 
faith surely — just as ' Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righte- 
ousness.' Recognise then that they who start from faith, they are sons of Abraham. 
And the Scripture foreseeing 5 that God justifies the Gentiles as a result of faith, 6 
preached to Abraham as an anticipation of the Gospel, ' In thee shall all the Gentiles 
be blessed.' So they who start from faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham. 
For as many as start from works of law are under a curse. For it stands written, 
' Cursed is every one who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the 
Law to do them.' But that by Law no man is justified with God is clear because 
' The just shall live by faith.' But the Law is not of faith, but (of works, for 
its formula is) he that doth these things shall live by them. Christ ransomed us 
from the curse of the Law, — becoming on our behalf a curse, since it is written, 
' Cursed is every one who hangeth on a tree ' 7 — that the blessing of Abraham may 
by Christ Jesus accrue to the Gentiles, that we may receive the promise of the Spirit 
by means of faith." 8 

Then came some of the famous arguments by which he establishes these 
weighty doctrines — arguments incomparably adapted to convince those to 

i ii. 11 — 21. For an examination of this paragraph, v. supra, pp. 250, 251. 

2 iii. 1, avorjToi, as in Luke xxiv. 25. So far from being dull in things not spiritual, 

Themistius Calls them 6£ei? jcai ayx.li/OL /ecu evjaa0e<TTOpoi riov ayav "E\Kr)VOiv (flat. 23). 

3 If Trpo-ypa^w has here the same sense as in Rom. xv. 4, Eph. iii. 3, Jude 4, it must 
mean ' ' prophesied of ; " but this gives a far weaker turn to the clause. 

4 iii. 4, inaOeTe seems here to have its more general sense, as in Mark v. 26 ; if the 
common sense *' suffered " be retained, it must allude to troubles caused by Judaisers. 

5 A Hebraic personification. "What saw the Scripture?" is a Rabbinic formula 
Schottg. ad loc). The passages on which the argument is founded are Gen. xv. 6; 
(xii. 3 ; Deut. xxvii. 26 ; xxi. 23 ; Lev. xviii. 5 ; Hab. ii. 4. The reasoning will be better 
understood from 2 Cor. v. 15 — 21 ; Rom. vi. 3 — 23. 

6 €K nCarem, "from faith" as a cause; or Sid rijs marem, per fidem, "by means ol 
faith as an instrument ; " never Sid nitrnv, propter fidem, " on account of faith " as a 
merit. 

7 The original reference is to the exposure of the body on a stake after death (Deat. 
xxi. 23; Josh. x. 26). St. Paul omits the words "of God" after " cursed, " which 
would have required long explanation, for the notion that it meant " a curse, or insult, 
xgainst God " is a later gloss. Hence the Talmud speaks of Christ as " the hung " (nta.) 

8 iii. 1-14. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 437 

whom he wrote, because they were deduced from their own principles, and 
grounded on their own methods, however startling was the originality of the 
conclusions to which they lead. Merely to translate them without brief 
explanatory comment would add very little to the reader's advantage. I will 
endeavour, therefore, to throw them into a form which shall supply what is 
necessary to render them intelligible. 

" Brethren," he says, " I will give you an every-day illustration. 1 No one 
annuls, or vitiates by additions, even a mere human covenant when it has been onco 
ratified. Now the Promises were uttered to Abraham ' and to his seed.' The word 
employed is neither plural in form nor in significance. A plural word might have 
been used had many been referred to ; the reason for the use of a collective term is 
pre-eminently indicated, and that one person is Christ. 2 What I mean is this : 
God made and ratified a covenant with Abraham ; and the Law which came four 
hundred and thirty years afterwards 3 cannot possibly nullify the covenant or abro- 
gate the promise. Now God has bestowed the gift on Abraham by promise, and 
therefore clearly it was not bestowed as aresult of obedience to a law. 4 

" Why, then, was the Law ? you ask ; of what use w T as it ? " Very briefly St. 
Paul gives them the answer, which in the Epistle to the Eomans he elaborates with 
so much more fulness. 

Practically, the answer may be summed up by saying that the Law was damnatory, 
temporary, mediate, educational. 5 It was added to create in the soul the sense of sin, 
and so lead to the Saviour, who in due time should come to render it no more 
necessary ; 6 and it was given by the ministry of angels 7 and a human mediator. 
It was not, therefore, a promise, but a contract ; and a promise direct from God 
is far superior to a contract made by the agency of a human mediator between God 
and man. 8 The Law, therefore, was but " supplementary, parenthetical, provisional, 

■ iii. 15. Kara apOptonov, i.e., e£ av6p(oiriv<ov irapaieiyfiaTtav (Chrys.). 

2 V. supra, pp. 30, 31. 

8 In Gen. xv. 13, Acts vii. 6, &c, the period in Egypt seems to count from Abraham's 
visit. 4 iii. 15— 18. 

5 iii. 15, en-iSiaTao-o-eTai ; 19, npoo-eTeOr) ; Rom. V. 20, irapei<rr)\6ev. The Law was (1) TWf 

Tapa/Bdo-ecoi/ xaptv, restricted and conditioned ; (2) ixpis ofi, k.t.k., temporary and provisional; 
(3) Siaraydg, k.t.A.., mediately (but not immediately) given by God. ; (4) ei> xeipi ju.e<r., me- 
diately (not immediately) received from God (Bp. Ellicott, ad loc). The Law is a harsh, 
imperious incident in a necessary divine training. 

6 iii. 19, napapdaeuv x«ptv means "to bring transgression to a head." See Rom. v. 20 ; 
1 Cor. xv. 56. The fact is here stated in all its harshness, but in Rom. vii. 7, 13, the 
Apostle shows by a masterly psychological analysis in what way this was true — namely, 
because (i.) law actually tends to provoke disobedience, and (ii.) it gives the sting to the 
disobedience by making us fully conscious of its heinousness. The Law thus brought the 
disease of sin to a head, that it might then be cured. We might not be able to follow 
these pregnant allusions of the Epistle if we did not possess the Epistle to the Romans as 
a commentary upon it. The Galatians could only have understood it by the reminiscences 
of Paul's oral teaching. 

7 Jos. Antt. xv. 5, § 3 ; Acts vii. 53 ; Deut. xxxiii. 2. These angels at Sinai are 
often alluded to in the Talmud. R. Joshua Ben Levi rendered Psalm lxviii. 12, " The 
Angels (*3Nbo) of hosts kept moving " the Children of Israel nearer to Sinai when they 
retired from it (Shabbath, f. 88, 2). 

8 iii. 19, 20. A " mediator " in Jewish language meant one who stands in the middle 
position between two parties. 

" The voice of God 
To mortal ear is dreadful. They beseech 
That Moses might repeat to them His will, 
And terror cease." (Milton, P. L. xii. 235.) 

Moses receives the Law direct from God (lv xeipl), and hands it to man (Ex. xx. 19). He 
therefore was not one of the contracting parties ; but God is one, i.e., He is no mediator, 



438 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

manuductory." How startling- would such, arguments be to those who had, from 
their earliest childhood, been taught to regard the Law as the one divine, inspired, 
perfect, and eternal thing on earth ; the one thing which alone it was worth the 
labour of long lives to study, and the labour of long generations to interpret and to 
defend ! And how splendid the originality which could thus burst the bonds of 
immemorial prejudice, and the courage which could thus face the wrath of outraged 
conviction ! It was the enlightenment and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God ; 
yes, but the Spirit works by the human instruments that are fitted to receive His 
indwelling power ; and, in the admirable saying of the Chinese philosopher, "The 
light of heaven cannot shine into an inverted bowl." To many a thoughtful and 
candid Jew it must have come like a flash of new insight into the history of his 
nation, and of mankind, that he had elevated the Law to too exclusive a position ; 
that the promise to Abraham was an event of far deeper significance than the legis- 
lation of Sinai ; that the Promise, not the Law, was the primary and original element 
of Judaism; and that therefore to fall back from Christianity of Judaism was 
to fall back from the spirit to the letter — an unnatural reversion of what God had 
ordained. 

But he proceeds, " Is there any opposition between the Law and the Promise ? 
Away with the thought ! In God's ceconomy of salvation both are united, and the 
Law is a relative purpose of God which is taken up into His absolute purpose as a 
means. 1 For had a Law been given such as could give life, righteousness would in 
reality have been a result of law ; but the Scripture shut up all things under sin, 
that the promise which springs from faith in Jesus Christ may be given to all who 
believe. For before the faith came we were under watch and ward of Law, till the 
faith which was to be revealed. So the Law became our tutor unto Christ, the stern 
slave guiding us from boyish immaturity to perfect Christian manhood, 2 in order 
that we may be justified as a result of faith. But when the faith came we are no 
longer under a tutor. For by the faith ye are all sons of God in Jesus Christ. 
For as many of you as were baptised into Christ, put on Christ. There is no room 
for Jew or Greek, no room for slave or free, no room for male or female ; for ye are 
all one man in Christ Jesus ; 3 and if ye are of Christ then it seems ye are Abraham's 
seed, heirs according to promise. 4 

"Now, what I mean is, that so long as the heir is an infant he differs in no 

but one of the parties to the covenant (Siafl?^). It is only under a different aspect that 
Christ is a mediator (1 Tim. ii. 5). The passage has no reference to the eternal unity of 
God, which is not at all in question, but to the fact that He stands by Himself as one 
of the contracting parties. The "Law," then, has the same subordinate position as the 
" Mediator " Moses. The Promise stands above it as % " covenant," in which God stands 
alone — "is one" — and in which no mediator is concerned. Such seems to be the clear 
and simple meaning of this endlessly-disputed passage. (See Baur, Paul, ii. 198.) 
Obviously, (1) the Promise had a wider and nobler scope than the Law ; (2) the Law was 
provisional, the Promise permanent ; (3) the Law was given directly by angels, the 
Promise directly by God ; but, while he leaves these three points of contrast to be 
inferred, he adds the fourth and most important, that (4) the Promise was given, without 
any mediating human agency, from God to man. On the sources of the (perfectly 
needless) "three hundred explanations " of a passage by no means unintelligible, see 
Reuss, Les Epltres, i. 109. 

1 iii. 19, 20. Holsten, Irihalt des Briefs an die Galatcr, p. 30. 

2 iii. 24, TrouSaywyb? els XpiarSv. The TrcuSaywybs was often the most valueless of the 
slaves. Perikles appointed the aged Zopyrus as the TraiSaywybs of Alkibiades. This fact 
can, however, hardly have entered into St. Paul's meaning. The world, until Christ 
came, was in its pupilage, and the Law was given to hold it under discipline, till a new 
period of spiritual freedom dawned. The more inward relation between Law and sin, 
and its power to bring sin more to our conscience, and so bring about the possibility of 
its removal, are, as we shall see, worked out in the Epistle to the Romans. 

3 Contrast this with the Jewish morning prayer, in which in three benediction! • 
man blesses God who has not made him a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. 

< iii. 21—29, 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 439 

respect from a slave, though he is lord of all, hut is under tutors and stewards till 
the term fixed hy his father. So we, too, when we were infants, were enslaved 
under elements of material teaching ; hut when the fulness of time came God sent 
forth His Son — born of a woman, that we may receive the adoption of sons ; 1 horn 
under Law, that He may ransom those under Law. But because ye are sons, God 
sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, our Father ! So thou 
art no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, an heir also by God's means. Well, 
in past time not knowing God ye were slaves to those who by nature are not gods, 
but now after recognising God — nay, rather being recognised by God — how can ye 
turn back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, 2 to which again from the 
beginning ye want to be slaves ? Ye are anxiously keeping days and months and 
seasons and years. I fear for you that I have perhaps toiled for you in vain." * 

In this clause the boldness of thought and utterance is even more striking. 
He not only urges the superiority of the Christian covenant, but speaks of the 
Jewish as mere legal infancy and actual serfdom ; nay, more, he speaks of the 
ceremonial observances of the Levitical Law as "weak and beggarly rudi- 
ments ; " and, worse than all, he incidentally compares them to the ritualisms 
of heathendom, implying that there is no essential difference between observing 
the full moon in the synagogue and observing it in the Temple of Men; 
between living in leafy booths in autumn, or striking up the wail for Altis in 
spring ; nay, even between circumcision and the yet ghastlier mutilations of 
the priests of Cybele. 4 Eighteen hundred years have passed since this brief 
letter was written, and it has so permeated all the veins of Christian thought 
that in these days we accept its principles as a matter of course ; yet it needs 
no very violent effort of the imagination to conceive how savage would be the 
wrath which would be kindled in the minds of the Jews — aye, and even of the 
Jewish Christians — by words which not only spoke with scorn of the little 
distinctive observances which were to them as the very breath of their 
nostrils, but wounded to the quick their natural pride, by placing their 
cherished formalities, and even the antique and highly-valued badge of their 
nationality, on a level with the pagan customs which they had ever regarded 
with hatred and contempt. Tet it was with no desire to waken infuriated 
prejudice that St. Paul thus wrote. The ritualisms of heathen worship, so 
far as they enshrined or kept alive any spark of genuine devotion, were not 
objectionable — had a useful function; in this respect they stood on a level 
with those of Judaism. The infinite superiority of the Judaic ritual arose 
from its being the shadow of good things to come. It had fulfilled its task, 

1 iv. 4, 5. Notice the chiasmus of the original which would not suit the English 
idiom. Notice, too, the importance of the passage as showing that men did not begin to 
be sons of God, when they were declared sons of God, just as the Eoman act of emanci- 
pation did iiot cause sons to be sons, but merely put them in possession of their rights 
(Maurice, Unity, p. 504). 

2 iv. 3, o-Toixeta tov Kocr/aov ; 9, aarOevrj kol irruxa o-roixeta, physical elements of religion, 
symbols, ceremonies (cf. Col. ii. 8), &c, which invest the natural with religious signi- 
ficance. Both in Judaism and heathenism religion was so much bound up with the 
mater al and the sensuous as to place men in bondage. In neither was God recognised 
as a Spirit (Baur, New Test. Theol., p. 171). Or the notion may be that ritualism is only 
the elementary teaching, the A B C of religion. 

» iv. 1—11. Cf. CoL ii, 16. < Hausrath. p. 26& 



440 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

and ought now to be suffered to drop away. It is not for the sake of the 
calyx, but for the sake of the corolla, that we cultivate the flower, and the 
calyx may drop away when the flower is fully blown. To cling to the shadow 
when it had been superseded by the substance was to reverse tho order 
of God. 

Then conies a strong and tender appeal. 

" Become as I, because I too became as you, brethren, I beseech you. 1 It is not 

I whom you wronged at all, by your aberrations. Nay, to me you were always 
kind. You know that the former time it was in consequence of a sickness that I 
preached to you ; and though my personal condition might well have been a trial to 
you, ye despised me not, nor loathed me, 2 but as an angel of God ye received me, 
as Christ Jesus. What, then, has become of your self -felicitation ? for I bear you 
witness that, if possible, ye dug out your very eyes and gave them me. So, have 
I become your enemy by speaking the truth to you ? 3 

" Mere alien teachers are paying court to you assiduously, but not honourably ; 
nay, they want to wall you up from every one else, that you may pay court to 
them. 4 Now, to have court paid to you is honourable in an honourable cause 
always, and not only when I am with you, 5 my little children whom again I travail 
with, until Christ be formed in you. But I could have wished to be with you now, 
and to change my voice to you, 6 for I am quite at a loss about you." 7 

Then, returning as it were to the attack, he addresses to them the curious 
allegory of the two wives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, and their sons 
Ishmael and Isaac. 8 

These are types of the two covenants — Hagar represents Sinai, corresponds to, or 
is under the same head with bondage, with the Law, with the Old Covenant, and 
therefore with the earthly Jerusalem, which is in bondage under the Law ; but 
Sarah corresponds to freedom, and the promise, and therefore to the New Covenant, 
and to the New Jerusalem which is the free mother of us all. There must be 
antagonism between the two, as there was between the brother-sons of the slave and 
the free-woman ; but this ended in the son of the slave- woman being cast out. So 
it is now ; the unbelieving Jews, the natural descendants of the real Sarah, are the 
spiritual descendants of Hagar, the ejected bondwoman of the Sinaitic wilderness, 
and they persecute the Gentiles, who are the prophesied descendants of the spiritual 
Sarah. The spiritual descendants of Sarah shall inherit the blessing of which those 
Jews who are descended physically from her should have no share. Isaac, the 
supernatural child of promise, represents the spiritual seed of Abraham, — that is 
Christ, and all who, whether Jew or Gentile, are in Him. " Therefore, brethren, 
we," he adds — identifying himself far more entirely with Gentiles than with Jews, 
" are not children of a slave-woman, but of the free. In the freedom wherewith 
Christ freed us, stand then, and be not again enyoked with the yoke of slavery." 

1 i.e., free from the bondage of Judaism. 

2 iv. 14, e£e7TTwaTe — lit., "spat out," Krenkel (v. infra, Excursus X.) explains thin 
of the " spitting " to avert epilepsy. " Despuimus comitiales morbos " (Plin. xxviii. 4, 7 ; 
Plaut. Capt. iii. 4, 18, 21). 

3 iv. 12 — 16. On this passage, v. infra, Excursus X. 

4 iv. 17, Iva— frjAovre (ind. ), but probably meant for a subjunctive ; the apparent sole- 
ciflm is probably due to the difficulty of remembering the inflexions of the contract verb ; 
cf. 1 Cor. iv. 6. 

6 He seems to mean, " I do not blame zealous attachment, provided it be (as mine to 
you was) from noble motives, and provided it be not terminated (as yours to me was) by 
s temporary separation." 

6 i.e., to speak to you in gentler tones. 

f tr. 17-20. 9 On this allegory see supra, p. 32. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 441 

Again, how strange and how enraging to the Jews would he such *.n allegory ! 
It was Philonian, Rabbinic; but it was more admirable than any allegory in Philo, 
because it did not simply merge the historical in the metaphorical ; and more full of 
ability and insight than any in the Rabbis. 1 This was, indeed, " to steal a feather 
from the spicy nest of the Phoenix " in order to wing the shaft which should pierce 
her breast. The Jews, the descendants of Sarah, by the irresistible logic of their 
own most cherished method, here find themselves identified with the descendants of 
the despised and hated Hagar, just as before they had heard the proof that not they 
but the converted Gentiles were truly Abraham's seed ! 2 

And the Galatians must be under no mistake ; they cannot serve two masters ; 
they cannot combine the Law and the Gospel. Nor must they fancy that they could 
escape persecution by getting circumcised and stop at that point. " See," he says, 
" I, Paul — who, as they tell you, once preached circumcision — I, Paul, tell you that, 
if you hanker after reliance on circumcision, Christ shall profit you nothing. Nay, 
I protest again to every person who gets himself circumcised, that he is a debtor to 
keep the whole Law. Ye are nullified from Christ, ye who seek justification in 
Law, ye are banished from His grace; for we spiritually, as a consequence of 
faith, earnestly await the hope of righteousness. For in Christ neither circumcision 
availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working by means of love.'* 3 " In 
these," as Bengel says, " stands all Christianity." 

" Ye were running bravely. Who broke up your path to prevent your obeying 
truth ? This persuasion is not from Him who calleth you. It is an alien intrusion 
— it comes only from one or two — yet beware of it. A little leaven leaveneth the 
whole lump. I feel confident with respect to you 4 in the Lord that you will adopt 
my views ; and he who troubles you shall bear the burden of his judgment, be he 
who he may. And as for me, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still 
an object of persecution ? The stumbling-block of the cross has been done away 
with, it appears ! They are not persecuted, — just because they preach circumcision ; 
why then should I be, if as they say I preach it too ? Would that these turners of 
you upside down would go a little further than circumcision, and make themselves 
iike the priests of Cybele ! 5 

" I cannot help this strong language ; for ye were called for freedom, brethren ; 
only, not freedom for a handle to the flesh, but by love be slaves to one another. 6 
For the whole Law is absolutely fulfilled ' in one word in the ' Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself.' But if ye are biting and devouring one another, take heed 
that ye be not consumed by one another.8 

1 It was no mere pretty application of a story. It was the detection in one par- 
ticular case of a divine law, which might be traced through every fact of the divine 
history (Maurice, Unity, 508). How different from Philo's allegory, in which Charran 
is the senses ; Abraham, the soul ; Sarah, divine wisdom ; Isaac, human wisdom ; 
Ishmael, sophistry ; &c. 

2 iv. 21 — 31. 3 V. 1 — 6. 4 V. 10, e-yw 7re'7roi0a eis v/xas. 

5 v. 7 — 12, a-rroKotyovraj. ; cf. aTroKe/co/ajueVoi, Deut. xxiii. 1. I have given the only 
admissible meaning. Reuss calls it "une phrase affreuse, qui revolte notre sentiment." 
This is to judge a writer by the standard of two millenniums later. Accustomed to 
Paul's manner and temperament it would have been read as a touch of rough humour, 
yet with a deep meaning in it — viz., that circumcision to Gentiles was mere concision 
(Phil. iii. 2, 3), and if as such it had any virtue in it, there was something to be said for 
the priests at Pessinus. 

6 1 Peter ii. 16. 

7 v. 14, ireirAjjpcoTat, has been fulfilled ; Matt. xxii. 40 ; Rom. xiii. 8 (Lev. xix. 18). 

8 v. 13—15. To a great extent the Apostle's warning was fulfilled. Julian, Ep. 52, 
speaks of their internecine dissensions. Galatia became not only the stronghold of 
Montanism, but the headquarters of Ophites, Manichees, Passalorynchites, Ascodrogites, 
Artotyrites, Borborites, and other 

" Gorgons and hydras, and chiniseras dire ; " 
and St. Jerome speaks of Ancyra as Sckismatibus dilacerata, dogmatum varietatibus 
constuprata (Lightfoot, GcU., p. 31). 



4.42 THE LIEE AND WORK OF ST. PATJL. 

" I mean then, walk spiritually, and there is no fear of your fulfilling the lusts 
of the flesh. The flesh and the spirit are mutually opposing principles, and their 
opposition prevents your fulfilling your highest will. But if ye are led by the spirit 
ye are not under Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are manifest ; such are fornica- 
tion, uncleanness, wantonness, idolatry, witchcrafts, 1 — enmities, discord, rivalry, 
wraths, cabals, party-factions, envies, murders, 2 — drunkenness, revellings, 8 and 
things like these ; as to which I warn you now, as I warned you before, that all who 
do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit 4 is 
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, beneficence, faith, gentleness, self-control. 
Against such things as these there is no law. But they that are of Christ Jesus 
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we are living spiritually, spiritu- 
ally also let us walk. Let us not become vainglorious, provoking one another, 
envying one another." 5 

At this point there is a break. It may be that some circumstance at 
Corinth had powerfully affected him. Another lapse into immorality may 
have taken place in that unstable church, or something may have strongly 
reminded St. Paul of the overwhelming effect which had been produced by the 
sentence on the particular offender whom he had decided to hand over to 
Satan. However this may be, he says with peculiar solemnity : 

" Brethren, even though a man be surprised in a transgression, ye the spiritual 
restore such an one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest even thou 
shouldst be tempted. Bear ye the burdens of one another's cares, 6 and so shall ye 
fulfil the law of Christ. But if any man believes himself to be something when he 
is nothing, he is deceiving himself. But let each man test his own work, and then 
he shall have his ground of boasting with reference to himself, and not to his neigh- 
bour. For each one shall bear his own appointed load. 7 

" Let then him who is taught the word communicate with the teacher in all good 
things. 8 Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
also he shall reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, from his flesh shall reap cor- 
ruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap life eternal. 
[That is the general principle ; apply it to the special instance of the contribution 
for which I have asked you.] Let us not lose heart in doing right, for at the due 
time we shall reap if we faint not. Well, then, as we have opportunity, let us 
do good to all men, but especially to those who are of the family of the faith." 

" Look ye with what large letters I write to you with my own hand. 10 As many 
as want to make fair show in the flesh, want to compel you to get yourselves cir- 
cumcised, only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For not 
even the circumcision party themselves keep the law, yet they want to get you 
circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast 
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified 
to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision is anything nor uncircum- 
cision, but a new creation. 11 And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace on them 

I Sins with others against God. 2 Sins against our neighbour. 

3 Personal sins (Bengel). 

4 Deeds of the flesh, because they spring from ourselves ; fruit of the spirit, because 
they need the help of God's grace (Chrys.). 

5 v. 16 — 26. 6 vi. 2, /3apr/, weaknesses, sufferings, even sins. 

7 vi. 1 — 5. vi. 5, fyoprtov of responsibility and moral consequence. 

8 1 Cor. ix. ; Kom. xii. 13 ; 1 Thess. v. 12. 9 vi. 6—10. 

10 Theodore of Mopsuetia, believing that only the conclusion of the letter was auto- 
graph, makes the size of the letters a sort of sign that the Apostle does not blush for 
anything he has said. But the style of the letter seems to show that it was not dictated 
to an amanuensis. 

II It will be seen that in those two clauses he has resumed both the polemical (12, 



THE EPISTLE TO THE OALATIANS. 443 

and mercy, and on the Israel of God." And then, as though by a sudden after- 
thought, we have the " Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in triumph on 
my body the brands of Jesus. " 1 

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen." a 

Such was the Epistle to the Galatians ; nor can we without some knowledge 
of what Judaism then was, and what it was daily becoming, form any adequate 
conception of the daring courage, the splendid originality — let us rather say 
the inspired and inspiring faith — which enabled the Apostle thus to throw off 
the yoke of immemorial traditions, and to defy the hatred of those among 
whom he had been trained as a Hebrew and a Pharisee. We must remember 
that at this very time the schools of Rabbinisni were fencing the Law with a 
jealous exclusiveness which yearly increased in its intensity ; and that while 
St. Paul was freely flinging open all, and more than all, of the most cherished 
hopes and exalted privileges of Judaism, without one of its burdens, the 
Rabbis and Rabbans were on the high road to the conclusion that any Gentile 
who dared to get beyond the seven Noachian precepts — any Gentile, for 
instance, who had the audacity to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest — without 
becoming a proselyte of righteousness, and so accepting the entire yoke of 
Levitism, "neither adding to it nor diminishing from it," deserved to be 
beaten and punished, and to be informed that he thereby legally incurred the 
penalty of death. 3 What was the effect of the Epistle on the Churches of 
Galatia we cannot tell ; but for the Church of Christ the work was done. By 
this letter Gentiles were freed for ever from the peril of having their Chris, 
tianity subjected to impossible and carnal conditions. In the Epistle to 
the Romans circumcision does not occur as a practical question. Judaism 
continued, indeed, for some time to exercise over Christianity a powerful in- 
fluence, but in the Epistle of Barnabas circumcision is treated with contempt, 
and even attributed to the deception of an evil angel ; 4 in the Epistle of 
Ignatius, St. Paul's distinction of the true and false circumcision is absolutely 
accepted ; 5 and even in the Clementine Homilies, Judaistic as they are, not a 
word is said of the necessity of circumcision, but he who desires to be 
un-Hellenised must be so by baptism and the new birth. 6 

13) and the dogmatic theses (14, 16) of the letter ; and that the personal (17) as well as 
the doctrinal truth (18) on which he has been dwelling recur in the last two verses. 
Thus, from first to last, the Epistle is characterised by remarkable unity. 

1 Hence, as one marked with the brands of his master, in his next Epistle (Rom. i. 1) 
he for the first time calls himself "a slave of Jesus Christ." Stigmata were usually a 
punishment, so that in classic Greek, stigmatias is "a rascal." "Whether St. Paul's 
metaphor turns on his having been a deserter from Christ's service before his conversion, 
or on his being a Hierodoulos (Hdt. ii. 113), is doubtful. There seem, too, to be traces 
of the branding of recruits (Ronsch. Das JSF. T. Tertullian's, p. 700). The use of 
"stigmata" for the "five wounds" has had an effect analogous to the notion of 
" unknown " tongues. 

2 vi. 11 — 18. The one unusual last word, "brethren," beautifully tempers the 
general severity of tone. 

3 See Sanhedrin, f. 58, c. 2 ; and Maimonides Yad Hachezakah (Hilchoth, Melachim, 
1 10, Hal. 9). 

4 Ep. Ps. Barnab. ix. 5 Ep. ad Philad. 6, 6 tijs k<£tw irepno^yji ^evSotovSolvt, 
6 a£eAAr}i/i<707J»'<u (Ps. Clem. Horn, iii. 9). 



444 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

The Epistle to the Galatians was quickly followed by that to the Romans, 
which was at once singularly like and singularly unlike its immediate pre- 
decessor. No violent external opposition, no deep inward sorrow was at that 
particular moment absorbing the Apostle's soul. It was a little pause in his 
troubled life. The period of his winter stay at Corinth was drawing to a 
close. He was already contemplating a yet wider circle for his next missionary 
tour. The tide of his thoughts was turning wholly towards the West. He 
wished to see Rome, and, without making any prolonged visit, to confirm the 
Gospel in the capital of the world. He did not contemplate a long stay 
among the Roman Christians, because it was his invariable principle not to 
build on other men's foundations. But he wished to be helped by them — 
with facilities which a great capital alone can offer — on his journey to Spain, 
where as yet the Gospel had been unpreached. His heart was yearning 
towards the shores whose vessels he saw in the ports of Lechseum and 
Cenchreae, and whose swarthy sailors he may have often met in the crowded 
streets. 

But before he could come to them he determined to carry out his long- 
planned visit to Jerusalem. Whether the members of that church loved or 
whether they hated him — whether they would give to his converts the right 
hand of fellowship or hold them at arm's-length — he at least would repay evil 
with good ; he would effectually aid their mass of struggling pauperism ; he 
would accompany the delegates who carried to them a proof of Gentile love 
and generosity, and would himself hand over to the Apostles the sums — 
which must by this time have reached a considerable amount — which had 
been collected solely by his incessant endeavours. How earnestly and even 
solemnly had he brought this duty before the Galatians, both orally and by 
letter! how carefully had he recommended the Corinthians to prevent all 
uncertainty in the contributions by presenting them in the form of a weekly 
offering ! how had he stimulated the Macedonians by the forwardness of the 
Achaians, and the Achaians by the liberality of the Macedonians ! And after 
all this trouble, forethought, and persistence, and all the gross insinuations 
which he had braved to bring it to a successful issue, it was but natural that 
one so warm-hearted should wish to reap some small earthly reward for his 
exertions by witnessing the pleasure which the subscription afforded to the 
mother church, and the relief which it furnished to its humbler members. 
But he did not conceal from himself that this visit to Jerusalem would be 
accompanied by great dangers. He was thrusting bis head into the lion's den 
of Judaism, and from all his past experience it was but too clear that in such 
a place, and amid the deepened fanaticism of one of the yearly feasts, perils 
among his own countrymen and perils among false brethren would beset 
every step of his path. Whether he would escape those perils was known to 
God alone. Paul was a man who cherished no illusions. He had studied too 
deeply the books of Scripture and the book of experience to be ignorant of the 
manner in which God deals with His saints. He knew how Elijah, how 
Isaiah, how Jeremiah, how Ezekiel, how Daniel, how John the Baptist, how 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 445 

the Lord Jesus Himself, had lived and died. He knew that devotion to 
God's work involved no protection from earthly miseries and trials, and he 
quoted without a murmur the sad words of the Psalmist, " For Thy sake are 
we killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep appointed to be slain." 1 
But whether it was God's will that he should escape or not, at any rate it 
would be well to write to the Roman Christians, and answer all objections, 
and remove all doubts respecting the real nature of his teaching, by a 
systematic statement of his beliefs as to the true relations between Jews and 
Gentiles, between the Law and the Gospel, as viewed in the light of the great 
Christian revelation that we are justified through faith in Christ. This, if 
anything, might save him from those Judaic counter-efforts on the part of 
nominal Christians, which had undone half his work, and threatened to render 
of no effect the cross of Christ. He therefore availed himself of the earliest 
opportunity to write and to despatch the greatest of all his Epistles — one of 
the greatest and deepest and most memorably influential of all compositions 
ever written by human pen — the Epistle to the Romans. 



CHAPTER XXXVn. 

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THE THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 

Hws yap tffrat fipoTbs Sitcaios evavTi Kvplov; — Jo/* XXV. 4 (LXX.). 

" But to the cross He nails thy enemies, 
The Law that is against thee, and the sins 
Of all mankind ; with Him these are crucified, 
Never to hurt them more who rightly trust 
In this His satisfaction." 

Milton, Par. Lost, xii. 
Uav\os 6 fxeyas rijs aKrjdetas Krjpv£, rb KavxHH- - r V* iKK\7)<rlas, '6 ev ovpavoii 
ipdpwiros. — Ps. Chbys. Orat. Encom. 

I. — Introductory. 

Before we enter on the examination of the Epistle to the Romans, it will 
be necessary to understand, as far as we can, the special objects which the 
Apostle had in view, and the conditions of the church to which it was 
addressed. 

The first conqueror who had introduced the Jews in any numbers into 
Rome was the great Pompeius, who treated the nation with extreme indignity. 51 
In the capital of the world they showed that strong self-reliance by which 
they have ever been distinguished. From the peculiarities of their religious 

1 Rom. viii. 36. 

2 Jos. Antt. xiv. 4, §§ 1—5 ; B. J. i. 7 ; Floras, iii. 5 ; Tac. H. v. 9 ; Cic. pro Floe, 

xxv ii, &c. 



446 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

conviction, they were useless and troublesome as ordinary slaves, but they 
displayed in every direction the adaptability to external conditions which, 
together with their amazing patience, has secured them an ever-strengthen- 
ing position throughout the world. They soon, therefore, won their emanci- 
pation, and began to multiply and flourish. The close relations of friendship 
which existed between Augustus and Herod the Great improved their con- 
dition ; and at the dawn of the Christian era, they were so completely 
recognised as an integral section of the population, with rights and a religion 
of their own, that the politic Emperor assigned to them that quarter beyond 
the Tiber which they have occupied for ages since. 1 From these dim purlieus, 
where they sold sulphur matches, and old clothes, and broken glass, and went 
to beg and tell fortunes on the Cestian or Fabrician bridge, 2 8,000 of them 
swarmed forth to escort fifty deputies who came from Jerusalem with a 
petition to Augustus. 3 It was doubtless the danger caused by their growing 
numbers which led to that fierce attempt of Sejanus to get rid of them which 
Tacitus records, not only without one touch of pity, but even with con- 
centrated scorn. 4 The subsequent, but less atrocious decree of Claudius, 5 
brought about St. Paul's friendship with Aquila and Priscilla, and is probably 
identical with the measure alluded to by Suetonius in the famous passage 
about the " Imjpulsor Chrestus." Q If so, it is almost certain that Christians 
must have been confounded with Jews in the common misfortune caused by 
their Messianic differences. 7 But, as Tacitus confesses in speaking of the 
attempt to expel astrologers from Italy, these measures were usually as futile 
as they were severe. 8 We find that those Jews who had left Rome under im- 
mediate pressure began soon to return. 9 Their subterranean proselytism, 10 as 
far back as the days of Nero, acquired proportions so formidable that Seneca, 11 
while he characterised the Jews as a nation steeped in wickedness {gens 
sceleratissima), testifies to their immense diffusion. It is therefore certain 
that when St. Paul first arrived in Rome (A.D. 61), and even at the time 
when he wrote this letter (A.D. 58), the Jews, in spite of the unrepealed 

1 I have described this quarter of Rome in Seekers after God, p. 168. 

2 Mart. Ep. i. 42, 109 ; vi. 93 ; x. 3, 5 ; xii. 57 ; Juv. xiv. 134, 186, 201 ; Stat. Silv. i., 
vi. 72. They continued here for many centuries, but were also to be found in other parts 
of Rome. On their mendicancy see Juv. iii. 14, 296 ; vi. 542. On their faithfulness to the 
Law, see Hor. Sat. i., ix. 69 ; Suet. Aug. 76; Juv. xiv. 96 ; Pers. v. 184 ; &c. 

3 Jos. Antt. xvii. 1. 

4 Tac. Ann. ii. 85 ; Sueton. Tib. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5. 5 Acts xviii. 2. 

6 V. supra, p. 169. Since Christus would be meaningless to classic ears, the word 
was surfrappS (see my Families of Speech, p. 119). Ghrestianus is common in inscrip- 
tions ; Renan, St. Paul, 101. 

1 And perhaps by the commencing troubles in Judaea, early in A.D. 52. 

8 Tac. Ann. xii. 52, "atrox et irritum." It is not impossible that these may be one 
and the same decree, for the Mathematici, and impostors closely akin to them, were fre- 
quently Jews. 

8 Dion Cass. (Ix. 6), who is probably alluding to this decree, says that the Jews were 
not expelled, but only forbidden to meet in public assemblies. Aquila, however, as a 
leading Christian, would be naturally one of those who was compelled to leave. 

W Hor. Sat. i. 9, 70 ; Pers. Sat. v. 180 ; Ovid, A. A. i. 76 ; Juv. vi. 542 ; Suet. Aug. 76 ; 
Merivale, vi. 257, seq., &c. 

H Ap. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 11; v. infra, Excursus XIV. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 447 

decree of Claudius, which had been passed only six years before, formed a 
large community, sufficiently powerful to be an object of alarm and jealousy 
to the Imperial Government. 

Of this Jewish community we can form no conjecture how many were 
Christians ; nor have we a single datum to guide us in forming an estimate 
of the numbers of the Christian Church in Rome, except the vague assertion 
of Tacitus, that a " vast multitude " of its innocent members were butchered 
by Nero in the persecution by which he strove to hide his guilty share in the 
conflagration of July 19, A.D. 64. 1 Even the salutations which crowd the 
last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans do not help us. Twenty-six people 
are greeted by name, besides " the Church in the house " of Aquila and 
Priscilla, some of the " households " of Aristobulus and Narcissus, 2 the 
"brethren," with Asyncritus and others, and the " saints" with Olympas and 
others. 3 All that we could gather from these notices, if we could be sure that 
the sixteenth chapter was really addressed to Rome, is that the Roman Chris- 
tians possessed as yet no common place of meeting, but were separated into 
at least three communities grouped around different centres, assembling in 
different places of worship, and with no perceptible trace of ecclesiastical 
organisation. But there is nothing whatever to show whether these com- 
munities were large or small, and we shall see that the sixteenth chapter, 
though unquestionably Pauline, was probably addressed to the Ephesian and 
not to the Roman Church. 

Assuming, however, that the Christians were numerous, as Tacitus ex- 
pressly informs us, two questions remain, of which both are involved in deep 
obsurity. The one is, " When and how was Christianity introduced into 
Rome ? " The other is, " Was the Roman Church predominantly Jewish or 
predominantly Gentile? " 

1. Tradition answers the first question by telling us that St. Peter was the 
founder of Latin Christianity, and this answer is almost demonstrably false. 
It is first found in a work, at once malignant and spurious, written late in 
the second century, to support a particular party. That work is the forged 
Clementines, 4 in which we are told that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. 
Tradition, gathering fresh particulars as it proceeds, gradually began to assert, 

1 Tac. Arm. xv. 40, 41 ; Suet. Nero, 38. 

2 The mention of these two names has been regarded as an argument that the 
sixteenth chapter really belongs to the Roman letter, since Aristohulus, the son of 
Herod, and other Herodian princes of that time, had been educated in Rome, whose slaves 
and freedmen these might be. Again, although Narcissus, the celebrated freedman of 
Claudius, had been put to death in A.D. 54 (Tac. Ann. xiii. 1), four years before the 
date of this letter, "they of the household of Narcissus" may have been some of his 
slaves. On the other hand, neither of these names was uncommon, and it is less 
intrinsically improbable that there should have been a Narcissus and an Aristobulus at 
Ephesus, than that there should have been so many Asiatic intimates and Jewish 
kinsmen of St. Paul at Rome. Muratori (No. 1328) and Orelli (No. 720) give an inscrip- 
tion found at Ferrara from a tablet erected by Tib. Claud. Narcissus, to the manes of 
his wife, Zticczosune (Righteousness). See an interesting note on this in Plumptre, Bibl 
Stud., p. 428. 

3 Rom. xvi. 5, 14, 15. * Recognit. i. 6. 



448 THE LIFE AND WOKE OP ST. PAUL. 

with more or less confidence, that he came to Rome in the second year of 
Claudius (A.D. 42) ; that he met and confounded Simon Magus ; that he cou- 
tinued Bishop of Rome for twenty-five years ; that he was ultimately martyred 
by being crucified, head downwards, at his own humble desire; and that this took 
place on June 29th, the same day as the execution of St. Paul. In attestation 
of their martyrdom, Gaius refers to their " trophies " near the city. 1 The 
lateness of these details, the errors with which they are mingled, and the 
obvious party reasons for their invention, forbid our attaching to them any 
historic value. It is not at all probable that St. Peter arrived at the city till 
the year of his death. This at least is certain — that, in the New Testament, 
the sole asserted trace of his presence in Rome is to be found in the highly 
disputable allusion, " They of Babylon salute you." 2 He may have died in 
Rome ; he may even have preached in Rome ; he may even have been accepted 
by the Jewish section of Roman Christians as their nominal " Bishop ; " but 
that he was not, and could not have been, in any true sense the original 
founder of the Roman Church is freely admitted even by Roman Catholics 
themselves. 

At what time the chance seeds of Christianity had been wafted to the 
shores of Italy 3 we are utterly unable to say. That this took place in our 
Lord's lifetime is improbable, nor is it worth while to do more than allude 
to the fiction which ascribes to the Emperor Tiberius a favourable opinion 
respecting the divinity of Christ. 4 All that we can safely assert is the like- 
lihood that the good tidings may first have been conveyed by some of those 
Jews and proselytes from Rome who heard the speech of St. Peter at Pente- 
cost ; 6 or by others who, like St. Paul himself, received their first impressions 
from the close reasoning and fiery eloquence of St. Stephen as they sat among 
chance visitors in the synagogue of the Libertini. 6 

2. If this conjecture be correct, we see that, from the first, the Church 
of Rome must have contained both Jewish and Gentile elements. The 
mere probabilities of the case will not enable us to decide which of the 
two elements preponderated, and if we turn to the Epistle we are met by 

1 Euseb. H. E. ii. 14, 25 (quoting Dionysius of Corinth) ; Id. Bern. Ev. iii. 3 ; Origen 
{ap. Euseb. iii. 1) ; Justin Martyr, Apolog. ii. 26 ; Tert. De Praescr. Haer. 36 ; c. Marc. 
iv. 5 ; Gaius ap. Euseb. ii. 25. Justin, and perhaps others, were misled by the inscrip- 
tion to the Sabine deity Semo Sancus, which they read Simoni Sancto. Peter is also 
associated with Paul in the founding of Christianity at Rome by Clemens, Ep. ad Cor. 
5 ; by the K-qpvyna neVpov ; by Lactant. Instt. Div. iv. 21 ; by Iren. Haer. iii. 3 ; by 
Epiphan. Haer. i. 27 ; Oros. vii. 7 ; Constt. Apost. vii. 46 ; &c. &c. 

* The Acts prove that St. Peter was at Jerusalem about A.D. 49 (Acts xv.) ; and in 
Antioch about A.D. 53 (Gal. ii. 11) ; and the Epistles with the Acts prove all but con- 
clusively that he was not at Rome during the first or second imprisonment of St. Paul. 
If "Babylon" in 1 Pet. v. 13, means Babylon and not Rome — a question which cannot 
be positively decided — then St. Peter was in Babylon ten years later than this. (See 
Baur, Paul, ii. 291 seqq. ) Spanheim, in his celebrated Dissertatic (1679), dwells much on 
GaL ii. 9 as a strong argument against the likelihood of Peter's visiting Rome. Ellendorf 
(a Roman CathoUc writer) admits that it cannot be proved; but even Neander and 
Gieaeler admit it to be probable. 

8 Acts xxviii 14. 4 Tert. Apolog. 5, 21 (Just. Mart. Apolog. i. 35, 48), 

* Acts ii. y. • Acts vi. 9. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 449 

indications so dubious that critics have arrived at the most opposite con- 
clusions. 1 Baur cannot even imagine how it is possible for any one to 
avoid the conclusion that the Apostle has Jewish Christians in view 
throughout. Olshausen, on the other hand, prououuces with equal confi- 
dence on the prominence of Gentiles. Each can refer to distinct appeals 
to both classes. If, at the very outset of the Epistle, St. Paul seems to 
address the whole Church as Gentiles, and in xi. 13 says, " I speak unto 
you Gentiles," and in xv. 15, 16, writes in the exclusive character of 
Apostle of the Gentiles, 2 and in x. 1 speaks of the Jews in the third per- 
son ; 3 yet, on the other hand, in iv. 1 he speaks of " Abraham our father," 
and says that he is writing to those who " know the Law," and have once 
been under its servitude. If, again, the multitude of quotations from the 
Jewish scriptures 4 might be supposed to have most weight with Jews 
(though we find the same phenomenon in the Epistle to the Galatians), 
yet, on the other hand, in the apologetic section (ix. — xi.) the argument is 
rather about the Jews than addressed to them, 5 and the moral precepts of the 
practical chapters seem to have in view the liberal Gentiles far more than 
the Ebionising Jews. The views of the latter are not directly combated, 
while the former are bidden to waive their personal liberty rather than 
cause any personal offence. 

Of these apparent contradictions the solution most commonly accepted is 
that suggested by Professor Jowett, 6 that even the Gentile converts had been 
mainly drawn from the ranks of proselytes, who at Rome were particularly 
numerous, 7 so that "the Roman Church appeared to bo at once Jewish and 
Gentile — Jewish in feeling, Gentile in origin ; Jewish, for the Apostle every- 
where argues with them as Jews ; Gentile, for he expressly addresses them as 
Gentiles." This, no doubt, was the condition of other Churches, and may 
have been that of the Church at Rome. But as this hypothesis by no means 
solves all the difficiilties, it seems to me a preferable supposition that St., Paul 

1 Neander, Meyer, De Wette, Olshausen, Tholuck, Reuss, &c, are confident that it 
was mainly intended for Gentiles ; Baur, Schwegler, Thiersch, Davidson, Wordsworth, 
&c., for Jews. 

3 i. 13. "Among you, as among other Gentiles" (cf. 5, 6). 

8 x. 1, "My heart's desire and prayer for them " {vnep avrSv — M, A, B, D, E, F, G— 

not vnep tov 'IcparjK). 

4 The phrase xdfltos yeypawTai occurs no less than nineteen times in this single Epistle, 
as it does on almost every page of the Talmud. 

5 ix. 1; x. 1; xi., passim. 6 Jowett, Romans, vol. ii. 23. 

7 Tac. H. v. 5 ; Cic. pro Flacco, 28, &c. We read of Jewish slaves in the noblest 
houses. There was an Acme in the household of Livia ; a Samaritan named Thallus 
was a freedman of Tiberius ; Aliturus was a favourite mime of Nero, &c. The Judaic 
faithfulness of these Jews is proved by the inscriptions on their graves ; Garucci, 
Cimitero, 4 ; Gratz, iv. 123, 506 ; and by the allusions of classic writers. Suet. Aug. 
57, 76, &c. It is remarkable that among Jewish proselytes are found such names as 
Fulvia, Flavta, Valeria, &c, while the Christians were mainly Tryphsenas and Tryphosas, 
slave names ("Luxurious," " wanton ") which no human being would voluntarily bear. 
It appears from inscriptions given by Gruter and Orelli that there were many Jewish 
synagogues in Borne, e.g., Synagoga Campi, Augusti, Agrippae, Suburrae, Oleae. The 
titles (/xAeVroXo? and ^tXo'Aao? on their tombs significantly indicate their orthodoxy and 
patriotism. (See too Hor. SaL ii. 3, 288.) 



450 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

is not so much addressing a special body as purposely arguing out a funda- 
mental problem, and treating it in an ideal and dramatic manner. To the 
Soman Christians as a body he was avowedly a stranger, but he knew that 
Jews and Gentiles, each with their special difficulties and prejudices, existed 
side by side in every Church which he had visited, and he wished once for all 
to lay down, not only for the Roman Christians, but for all who might read 
his letter, the principles which were to guide their mutual relations. He is 
stating the truths which could alone secure the perfect unity of that Church 
of the future in which the distinctions between Jew and Greek were to be no 
more. It was natural that before he visited a strange Church, and one so 
important as the Church of Rome, he should desire plainly to state to them 
the Gospel which he meant to preach. But surely it is hardly probable that 
he would wish the benefits of this consummate effort to be confined to a single 
Church. The hypothesis that several copies of the letter were made, and that, 
with appropriate conclusions, it was sent in whole or in part to other Churches 
beside that of Rome, is not only intrinsically reasonable, but also accounts for 
some of the peculiar phenomena presented by the manuscripts, and especially 
by the structure of the concluding chapters. 1 

1 (i.) The mission of Phoebe to Ephesus is more probable than a mission to Eome, 
whioh was nearly three times more distant ; nor could Paul well have addressed a 
strange Church in language of such urgent request on the subject of her visit (Rom. xvi. 
1, 2). (ii.) It is strange that St. Paul should salute twenty-six people at a Church 
which he had never visited, and address them in terms of peculiar intimacy and 
affection, when he only salutes one or two, or none at all, in Churches which he had 
founded, (iii.) Aquila and Priscilla were at Ephesus when St. Paul wrote 1 Cor. xvi. 
19, and again at Ephesus when he wrote 2 Tim. iv. 19. It is strange to find them settled 
at Rome with a Church in their house between these two dates. ("Quoi ! toute l'Eglise 
d'Ephese s'etait done donne rendezvous in Rome?" Renan, St. Paul, lxviii.) (iv.) How 
is it that there are no salutations to Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia (2 Tim. iv. 21) ? 
(v.) How comes it that "Epsenetus, the first-fruits of Asia," is at Rome? and that so 
many others are there who have — in other places, of which, from the nature of the case, 
Ephesus is the one which most prominently suggests itself — toiled so much, and suffered 
so much for Paul, and even shared his frequent prisons (xvi. 7, 9, 12, 13)? (vi.) If so 
many were at Rome who deserve to be specially signalised as "beloved," and "approved," 
and "elect," and " kinsmen, " and "toilers," how is it that they all deserted him at the 
hour of need (2 Tim. iv. 16) ? Was the Church at Rome so mere a sand-cloud that all 
these had been scattered from Rome ? or had they all been put to death in the perse- 
cution of A.D. 64 ? How is it that not one of these exemplary twenty-six are among 
the three Jewish friends who are alone faithful to him, even before the Neronian 
persecutions began, and only a few years after this letter was despatched (Col. iv. 10, 11)? 
(vii.) Again, how comes it that the severe yet fraternal reproachfulness of xvi. 17 — 20 ia 
so unlike the apologetic and distant politeness of xv. 15 — 20 ? (viii. ) How came Timothy 
and St. Paul's other friends, whose salutations to Thessalonica or to Ephesus would be 
natural, to send them so freely to distant and unvisited Rome? (ix.) Even if these 
considerations were unimportant, how is it that they are so well supported by the appa- 
rently different terminations of the Epistle at xv. 33, and xvi. 20 and 24, as well as 
xvi. 27 ? Why is the concluding doxology missing in F, G, and some MSS. mentioned by 
Jerome ? Why is it placed after xiv. 23 in L, in most cursives, in Greek Lectionaries, in 
Chrysostom, Theodoret, &c. ? Why is it found twice in Codex A (xiv. 24 and xvi. 25) ? 
Why did Marcion, with no apparent dogmatic reason, omit the two last chapters 
altogether? Why, lastly, does so important a manuscript as G, founded as it is on a, 
very ancient manuscript, omit the words iv 'Pta/ufl m *• 7, 15 ? No fair critic will, I think, 
assert that these difficulties are collectively unimportant ; and they find a perfectly 
simple and adequate solution if, without accepting the entire details of Renan's theory, 
we suppose with him (St. Paul, lxiii. — lxxv.) that the main body of the Epistle was sent 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 451 

3. We come, then, to the question, What is the main object of the Epistle 
to the Romans ? And here we must not be surprised if we meet with different 
answers. The highest works of genius, in all writings, whether sacred or 
secular, are essentially many-sided. Who will pretend to give in a few words 
the central conception of the " Prometheus Yinctus" or of " Hamlet " ? Who will 
profess to unite all suffrages in describing the main purpose of Ecclesiastes or 
of Job ? Yet, although the purpose of the Epistle has been differently inter- 
preted, from our ignorance of its origin, and of the exact condition of the 
Church to which it was written, it is impossible so to state it as not to express 
one or other of its essential meanings. 

The first question which meets us affects the general character of the 
Epistle. Is it didactic or polemical ? Is it general or spe3ial ? The divergent 
views of commentators may here be easily reconciled. It is only indirectly 
and secondarily polemical ; the treatment is general even if the immediate 
motive was special. Its tone has nothing of the passionate intensity which the 
Apostle always betrays when engaged in controversy with direct antagonists. 
It has been supposed by some that he desired to vindicate to the Roman Church 
•lis Apostolic authority. Undoubtedly such a vindication is implicitly involved 
in the masterly arguments of the Epistle ; yet how different is his style from 
the vehemence with which he speaks in the Epistles to the Corinthians! 
Bishop Wordsworth says that it is " an apology for the Gospel against 
Judaism ;"' but where is the burning invective and indignant eloquence of the 
Epistle to the Galatians ? We have no trace here of the ultra-liberalism of 
Corinth, or the dreamy asceticisms of Colossse, or the servile Pharisaisms of 
Galatia. Clearly he is not here dealing with any special dissensions, heresies, 
or attacks on his authority. 1 The very value of the Epistle, as a systematic 
exposition of " the Gospel of Protestantism," depends on the calmness and 

not only to Rome, but also to Ephesus, Thessalonica, and possibly some other Church, 
with differing conclusions, which are all preserved in the present form of the Epistle. 
On the other side may be set the remark of Strabo (xiv. 5), that many Tarsians were at 
Rome, and that Rome swarmed with Asiatics (Friedlander, Sittengesch. Boms. i. 59) ; the 
certainty that even in the days of Scipio, and much more in each succeeding generation, 
the majority of the inhabitants of Rome — the faex populi—were but " stepsons of Italy " 
(Sen. ad Helv., Cons. 6, "Non possum ferre Quirites Graecam urban," Juv. Sat. hi. 61, 
73, seq., "St. ! tacete quibus nee pater nee mater est") and predominantly Greek (see 
Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 20) ; and that the names of Amplias, Urbanus, Stachys, 
Apelles, Nereus, Hermes, Hermas, are all found, as Dr. Lightfoot has shown (ib. 172 — 
175), in the inscriptions of the Columbaria among the slaves in the households of various 
Caesarian families ; and not only these, but the rarer names Tryphsena, Tryphosa, 
Patrobas, and even Philologus and Julia in connexion, which is at least a curious 
coincidence. But when we remember the many hundreds of slaves in each great Roman 
household ; and the extreme commonness of the names by whicb they were mostly 
called ; and the fact that Garucci found that Latin names were twice as numerous as the 
Greek in the old Jewish cemetery at Rome, — we must still consider it more likely that 
chap, xvi., in whole or in part, was addressed to Ephesus as a personal termination to 
the copy of the Roman Epistle, which could hardly fail to be sent to so important a 
Church. (See Schulz, Stud. u. Krit. 1829 ; Ewald, Sendsckr. 428 ; Reuss, Les Epitres, ii. 
19.) Of all theories, that of Baur, that the chapter was forged to show how intimate 
were the relations of Paul with the Roman Church, seems to me the most wanton and 
arbitrary. 

1 Reuss, Les Epitres, ii. 1L 
D D 2 



452 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

lucidity with which the Apostle appeals to an ideal public to follow him in the 
discussion of abstract truths. "We seem already to be indefinitely removed from 
the narrow fanaticism of those who insisted on the impossibility of salvation 
apart from circumcision. The Hellenistic Judaism of a great city, however 
ignorant and however stereotyped, was incapable of so gross an absurdity, and 
in the wider and deeper questions which were naturally arising between the 
Jew and the Gentile Christian, there was as yet nothing sufficiently definite to 
exasperate the Apostle with a sense of ruinous antagonism. The day indeed 
was not far distant when, in the very city to which he was writing, some would 
preach Christ even of contention, hoping to add affliction to his bonds. 1 But 
this lay as yet in the unknown future. He wrote during one of those little 
interspaces of repose and hope which occur in even the most persecuted lives. 
The troubles at Corinth had been temporarily appeased, and his authority 
established. He was looking forward with the deepest interest to fresh 
missions, and although he could not deliberately preach at Rome, because he 
had made it a rule not to build on another man's foundation, he hoped to have 
his heart cheered by a kindly welcome in the imperial city before he started to 
plant the Cross on the virgin soil of Spain. And the Church of Rome stood 
high in general estimation. It was composed of Jews and Gentiles, of whom, 
not long afterwards, the former seem to have ranged themselves in uncompro- 
mising hostility to the Gospel ; but he could as little foresee this as he could be 
aware that, in the second century, the Ebionism of this section of the Church 
would lead to a malignant attack on his character. At this time there do not 
seem to have been any open divisions or bitter animosities. 2 Differences of 
opinion there were between "the weak," who attached importance to distinctions 
of meats and drinks, and " the strong," who somewhat scornfully discarded 
them ; but it seems as though, on the whole, the Jews were forbearing and the 
Gentiles moderate. Perhaps the two parties owed their immunity from dis- 
sensions to the passage of the Gentiles into the Church through the portals of 
the synagogue ; or perhaps still more to the plasticity of ecclesiastical organisa- 
tion which enabled the foreign and Graeco-Roman converts to worship 
undisturbed in their own little congregations which met under the roof of an 
Aquila or an Olympas. If the Jewish and Gentile communities were separated 
by a marked division, collisions between the two sections would have been less 
likely to occur. 

Be this as it may, it is evident that it was in a peaceful mood that the 
Apostle dictated to Tertius the great truths which he had never before so 
thoroughly contemplated as a logical whole. 3 The broad didactic character 

1 Phil. i. 16. These were evidently Judaisers (iii. 2 ; Col. iv. 11). 

2 The only trace of these is in xvi. 17 — 20 ; t« Sixoorao-tas, to. a-KavSaKa. But this 
furnishes one of the arguments against that chapter as part of the Epistle to the 
Romans. 

8 See the much more tender tone towards the Jews, and also towards the Law, in 
Rom. iv. 16, xi. 26, &c, compared with Gal. iv. 3, 2 Cor. iii. 6, &c. In the " not only — 
but also " of iv. 16 is reflected the whole conciliatory character of the Epistle to the 
Romans (Pfleiderer, ii. 45). 



EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 453 

of the Epistle, its freedom from those outbursts of emotion which we find in 
others of his writings, is perfectly consistent with its having originated in 
historic circumstances; in other words, with its having been called forth, 
as was every one of the other Epistles, by passing events. St. Paul was on 
his way to Jerusalem, and his misgivings as to the results of the visit were 
tempered by the hope that the alms which he had collected would smooth the 
way for his favourable reception. Rome was the next place of importance 
which he intended to visit. How would he be received by the Christians of 
the great city? Would they have heard rumours from the Pharisees of 
Jerusalem that he was a godless and dangerous apostate, who defied all 
authority and abandoned all truth ? It was at any rate probable that, even if 
he had not been represented to them in the most unfavourable light, he would 
have been spoken of as one who was prepared to abandon not only the peculiari- 
ties, but even the exclusive hopes and promises of Judaism. To a great extent 
this was true; and, if true, how serious, nay, how startling, were the conse- 
quences which such a belief entailed ! They were views so contrary to centu- 
ries of past conviction, that they at least deserved the most careful statement, 
the most impregnable defence, the most ample justification, from the ancient 
scriptures. Such a defence, after deep meditation on the truths which God's 
Spirit had revealed to his inmost soul, he was prepared to offer in language 
the most conciliatory, the most tender — in language which betrayed how little 
the unalterable fixity of his conviction had quenched the fire of his patriotism, 
or deadened the quickness of his sensibility. 1 He expresses an inextinguish- 
able love for his countrymen, and a deep sense of their glorious privileges, at 
the very moment that he is explaining why those countrymen have been tempo- 
rarily rejected, and showing that those privileges have been inexorably an- 
nulled. 2 He declares his readiness to be even " anathema from Christ '"' for 
the sake of Israel, in the very verses in which he is showing, to the horrified 
indignation of his Jewish readers, that not the physical, but the spiritual seed 
of Abraham, are alone the true Israel of God. 3 

1 "We see," says Dr. Davidson, "a constant conflict between his convictions and feel- 
ings ; the former too deep to be changed, the latter too strong to be repressed, too ardent 
to be quenched by opposition of the persons he loved " (Introdn. i. 127). 

2 We can judge what the Jewish estimate of these privileges was by such passages of 
the Talmud as Yebhamoth, f. 47, 2 ; supra, i., p. 403. 

3 There can be no more striking contrast to the whole argument of the Epistle to the 
Romans than the following very remarkable passage in the Abhdda Zara (f . 3, col. 1—3), 
which will serve to show to what infinite heights above the ordinary Rabbinism of his 
nation St. Paul had soared. I appeal to any candid and learned Jew which is noblest, 
truest, divinest, manliest — the tone and the reasoning of the Epistle to the Romans, or 
the bigotry and frivolity of the following passage : — 

" In tha days of the Messiah, the Holy One, blessed be He, holding the roll of the 
Law in His bosom, will call upon those who have studied it to come forward and receive 
their reward. Instantly the idolatrous nations will appear in a body (Isa. xliii. 9), but 
will be told to present themselves separately with their Scribes at their head, that they 
may understand the answers severally addressed to them. The Romans, as the most 
renowned of all, will enter first. ' What has been your occupation ? ' will be demanded 
of them. They will point to their baths and forums, and the gold and silver with which 
they enriched the world, adding, ' All this we home done that Israel may have leisure for 



454 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

If the current feelings of the Jews towards the Gentiles were much em- 
bittered— if tliey habitually regarded them in the spirit of hostile arrogance — 
it is very possible that the section respecting the relative position of the Jews 
and Gentiles (ix. — xi.) may be, as Baur argues, the kernel of the whole 
Epistle, in the sense that these were the first thoughts which had suggested 
themselves to the mind of the Apostle. Tet it is not correct to say that " the 
whole dogmatic treatment of the Epistle can be considered as nothing but the 
most radical and thorough-going refutation of Judaism and Jewish Chris- 
tianity." x In his reaction against the purely dogmatic view which regards 
the Epistle as " a compendium of Pauline dogma in the form of an apostolic 
letter," 2 Baur was led into a view too purely historical ; and in his unwilling- 
to regard the central section as a mere carollary from the doctrines 



the study of the Law. 7 ' Fools ! ' will be the stern answer : ' have you not done all this for 
your own pleasure, the market-places, and the baths alike, to pamper your own self- 
indulgence? and as for the gold and silver, it is Mine (Hagg. ii. 8). Who among you can 
declare this Law ? ' (Isa. xliii. 9). 

" The Romans retire crestfallen, and then the Persians enter. They too will urge that 
they built bridges, took cities, waged wars to give Israel leisure to study the Law ; but 
receiving the same rebuke as the Romans, they too will retire in dejection. 

" Similarly all other nations, in the order of their rank, will come in to hear their 
doom ; the wonder is that they will not be deterred by the failure of the others, but will 
still cling to their vain pleas. But then the Persians will argue that they built the 
Temple, whereas the Romans destroyed it ; and the other nations will think that since 
they, unlike the Romans and Persians, never oppressed the Jews, they may expect more 
lenience. 

" The nations will then argue, ' When has the Law been offered to us, and we refused 
it ? ' In answer it is inferred from Deut. xxxiii. 2 and Hab. iii. 3 that the Law had been 
offered to each in turn, but that they would not have it. Then they will ask, ' Why didst 
Thou not place us also underneath the mount (Ex. xix. 17) as Thou didst Israel, bidding us 
accept the Law, or be crushed by the mountain ? ' To whom Jehovah will reply, ' Let us 
hear the first things (Isa. xliii. 9). Have you kept the Noachic precepts?' They answer, 
* Have the Jews kept the Law though they received it ? ' God answers, ' Yes ; I Myself 
bear them witness that they have. ' ' But is not Israel thy firstborn, and is it fair to 
admit the testimony of a Father?' 'The heaven and earth shall bear them witness.' 
' But are not they interested witnesses ? ' * ' Well, then, you yourselves shall testify ; ' and 
accordingly Nimrod has to testify for Abraham, Laban for Jacob, Potiphar's wife for 
Joseph, Nebuchadnezzar for the three children, Darius for Daniel, Job's friends for Job. 
Then the nations entreat, 'Give us now the Law, and we will keep it.' 'Fools ! do ye 
want to enjoy the Sabbath without having prepared for it ? However, I will give you one 
easy precept — keep the Feast of Tabernacles' (Zech. xiv. 16). Then they will all hurry off 
to make booths on the roofs of their houses. But the Holy One, blessed be He, will make 
the sun blaze with midsummer heat, and they will desert the booths with the scornful 
exclamation, ' Let us break His bands asunder, and fling away His cords from us ' (Ps. ii. 
3). Then the Lord, sitting in the heavens, shall laugh at them. The only occasion on 
which He laughs at His creatures," though He does so with His creatures, notably with 
Leviathan, every day. 

1 Baur, Paul. i. 349; Olshausen, Romans, Introd. §5. Philippi calls it "a con- 
nected doctrinal statement of the specifically Pauline Gospel." 

2 In any case this statement would be far too broad. If the Epistle to the Romans 
be a complete statement of what may be called the Apostle's " Soteriology," it contains 
little or none of the Eschatology which distinguishes these Epistles to the Theswalonians, 
or the Christology of the Epistle to the Colossians, or the Ecclesiology of the Epistle to 
the Ephesians. It is hardly worth while to notice the opinions that it is a mere defence 
of his Apostolate (Mangold), or a description and vindication of the Pauline system of 
missionary labours (Schott.). See Lange's Romans, p. 38, E. T. 

* Because they only exist for the sake of the Law (Nedarim, f . 32, col. X). 



EPISTLE' TO THE E0MAN8, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 455 

enunciated in the first eight chapters, he goes too far in calling them the heart 
and pith of the whole, to which everything else is only an addition. These 
chapters may have been first in the order of thought, without being first 
in the order of importance ; they may hare formed the original motive of the 
Epistle, and yet may have been completely thrown into subordination by the 
grandeur of the conceptions to which they led. 

May we not well suppose that the Epistle originated as follows ? The 
Apostle, intending to start for Jerusalem, and afterwards to open a new 
mission in the West, thought that he would utilise an interval of calm 
by writing to the Eoman Church, in which, though not founded by himself, he 
could not but feel the deepest interest. He knows that, whatever might be 
the number of the Gentile Christians, the nucleus of the Church had been 
composed of Jews and proselytes, who would find it very hard to accept the 
lesson that God was no respecter of persons. Yet this was the truth which 
he was commissioned to teach ; and if the Jews could not receive it without a 
shock — if even the most thoughtful among them could not but find it hard to 
admit that their promised Messiah — the Messiah for whom they had yearned 
through afflicted centuries — was after all to be even more the Messiah of the 
Gentiles than of the Jews — then it was pre-eminently necessary for him to set 
this truth so clearly, and yet so sympathetically, before them, as to soften the 
inevitable blow to their deepest prejudices. It was all the more necessary 
because, in writing to the more liberal Judaisers, he had not to deal with the 
ignorant malignity of those who had seduced his simple Galatians. In 
writing to the Churches of Galatia, and smiting down with one shattering 
blow their serpent-head of Pharisaism, he had freed his soul from the storm 
of passion by which it had been shaken. He could now write with perfect 
composure on the larger questions of the position of the Christian in reference 
to the Law, and of the relations of Judaism to Heathenism, and of both 
to Christianity. That the Gentiles were in no respect inferior to the Jews in 
spiritual privileges — nay, more, that the Gentiles were actually superseding 
the Jews by pressing with more eagerness into the Church of Christ 1 — was a 
fact which no Jewish Christian could overlook. Was God, then, rejecting 
Israel ? The central section of the Epistle (ix. — xi) deals with this grave 
scruple : and the Apostle there strives to show that (1) spiritual sonship does 
not depend on natural descent, since the only justification possible to man — 
namely, justification by faith — was equally open to Jews and Gentiles (ix.); 
that (2), so far as the Jews are losing their precedence in the divine favour, 
this is due to their own rejection of a free offer which it was perfectly open 
to them to have embraced (x.); and that (3) this apparent rejection is softened 
by the double consideration that (a) it is partial, not absolute, since there was 
" a remnant of the true Israelites according to the election of grace " ; and (0) 
it is temporary, not final, since, when the full blessing of the Gentiles has 

1 Just as in the days of Christ the publicans and harlots were admitted before th# 
Pharisees into the kingdom of God (Matt.xri. 31, 32). 



456 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL, 

been secured, there still remains the glorious hope that all Israel would at last 
be saved. 1 

But was it not inevitable that from this point his thoughts should work 
backwards, and that the truths to which now, for the first time, he gave full 
and formal expression should assume an importance which left but subordinate 
interest to the minor problem ? From the relative his thoughts had been led 
on to the absolute. From the question as to the extinction of the exclusive 
privileges of the Jews, he had ascended to the question of God's appointed plan 
for the salvation of mankind — its nature, its world-wide freedom, its necessity. 
That plan the Apostle sums up in the one formula, Justification 
by Faith, and in order to establish and explain it he had to prove the 
universality of human sin; the inability alike of Jew and Gentile to 
attain salvation by any law of works ; the consequent " subordinate, relative, 
negative " significance of the Law ; the utter and final evanescence 
of all difference between circumcision and uncircumcision in the light of 
a dispensation now first revealed. And thus the real basis of this, as of every 
other Epistle, is " Christ as the common foundation on which Jew and Gentile 
could stand, the bond of human society, the root of human righteousness." 2 It 
may be quite true that throughout all these high reasonings, and the many 
questions to which they give rise, there runs an undertone of controversy, and 
that the Apostle never lost sight of the fact that he was endeavouring to prove 
for the Roman Christians, and through them to the entire Church, the new 
and startling doctrine that, since the annihilation of sin was rendered possible 
by faith, and faith alone, all claims founded on Jewish particularism were 
reduced to nothingness. This is the main point; but even the practical 
questions which receive a brief decision at the close of the Epistle, 
are handled in strict accordance with the great principles which he 
has thus established of the Universality of Sin, and the Universality of 
Grace. 8 

Such seems to me to be the origin and the idea of the Epistle to the 
Romans, of which Luther says that " it is the masterpiece of the New Testa- 
ment, and the purest gospel, which can never be too much read or studied, 
and the more it is handled, the more precious it becomes ;" on which Melanc- 
thon founded the doctrinal system of the Reformed Church ; which Coleridge 
called " the most profound work in existence ; " in which Tholuck, who wrote 
the first really important and original commentary upon it in recent times, 
saw " a Christian philosophy of universal history." Its general outline may 
be given as follows : — After a full and solemn greeting, he passes, in the 
simplest and most natural manner, to state his fundamental thesis of justi- 



1 See Baur, Paul. ii. 328. 2 Maurice, Unity, p. 477. 

1 If wo were to choose one phrase as expressing most of the idea of the Epistle, it 
would be, " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive " (1 Cor. xv. 22). 
" Its precopts naturally arise from its doctrinal assertions, that (1) all are guilty before 
God ; that (2) all need a Saviour ; tbat (3) Christ died for all ; that (4) we are all one 
body in Him " (Jip. Wordsworth's Epistles, p. 200), 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST PAUL. 457 

fication by faith, 1 which he illustrates and supports by quoting the Septua- 
gint version of Hab. ii. 4. The necessity for this mode of salvation rests in the 
universality of sin— a fact taught, indeed, by human experience, but too apt 
to be overlooked, and therefore needing to be argumentatively enforced. 
Thus Jews and Gentiles are reduced to the same level, and the exceptional 
privileges of the Jew do but add to his condemnation (i. 16 — iii. 20). Conse- 
quently by the works of the Law — whether the natural or the Mosaic Law 
— no flesh can be justified, and justification can only be obtained by the faith 
of man accepting the redemption of Christ, so that all alike are dependent on 
the free will of God (iii. 21— 30). 2 Aware of the extreme novelty of these 
conclusions, he illustrates them by Scripture (iii. 31 — iv. 25), and then dwells 
on the blessed consequences of this justification (v. 1 — 11). These conse- 
quences are foreshadowed in the whole moral and religious history of man- 
kind as summed up in the two periods represented by Adam and by Christ 
(v. 12 — 21). Having thus completed the statement of his great doctrine, he 
meets the objections which may be urged against it. So far from diminish- 
ing the heinousness, or tending to the multiplication of sin, he shows that it 
involves the radical annihilation of sin (vi.). If any were startled at the 
close juxtaposition of the Law and sin, he points out that while the Law in 
itself is holy, just, and good, on the other hand what he has said of it, 
relatively to mankind, is demonstrated by its psychological effects, and that 
in point of fact the Law is, for the changed nature of the believer, super- 
seded by a new principle of life — by the Spirit of God quickening the heart 
of man (vii. 1 — viii. 11). This naturally leads him to a serious appeal to his 
readers to live worthily of this changed nature, and to a magnificent outburst 
of thanksgiving, which rises at last into a climax of impassioned eloquence 
(viii. 12—39). 

At this point he finds himself face to face with the question from which 
his thoughts probably started — the relations of Judaism to Heathenism, 
and of Christianity to both. In an episode of immense importance, especially 
to the age in which he wrote, he shows that God's promises to Israel, when 
rightly understood, both had been, and should be, fulfilled, and that — so far 
as they seemed for the moment to have been made void — the failure was 
due to the obstinate hardness of the chosen people (ix. — xi.). The remainder 
of the Epistle is more practical and popular. He urges the duties of holi- 
ness, humility, unity, the faithful use of opportunities, hope, and above all 
love, on which he dwells earnestly and at length (xii.). Then, perhaps with 
special reference to the theocratic prejudices of Jewish Christians, he enforces 
the duty of obedience to civil authority, and reverts once more to love as the 
chief of Christian graces ; enforcing these practical exhortations by the thought 
that the night of sin and ignorance was now far spent, and the day was 

1 6 Se Siicaios e* n-io-Tews |>ov] fjjcrerai. The fiov is emitted by St. Paul, and, indeed, by 
many MSS. of the LXX. (see supra on Gal. iii. 11) , 

2 This passage contains the very quintessence oj Pauline theology. See it admirably 
explained and developed by Reuss, Thiol. Chret. ii 18 — 107. 



458 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

near (xiii.). He then points out the necessity for mutual forbearance and 
mutual charity between the strong and the weak — that is, between those who 
considered themselves bound by legal prescriptions, and those who realised 
that from such elements they were emancipated by the glorious liberty of 
the children of God; mingling with these exhortations some reference to 
the views which he had already expressed about the mutual relation of 
Jews and Christians (xiv. — xv. 13). The remainder of the Epistle is chiefly 
personal. He first offers an earnest and graceful apology for having thus 
ventured to address a strange Church — an apology based on his apostolic 
mission (xv. 14 — 21) — and then sketches the outline of his future plans> 
specially entreating their prayers for the good success of his approaching 
visit to Jerusalem. In the last chapter, which I have given reasons 
for believing to have been addressed, at any rate in part, not to Romans, 
but to Ephesians, he recommends Phoebe to the kindly care of the Church 
(1, 2); sends affectionate salutations to six-and- twenty of the brethren 
(3 — 16); gives a severe warning against those who fostered divisions, 
which concludes with a promise and a benediction (17 — 20); repeats the 
benediction after a few salutations from the friends who were with him 
(21 — 24) ; and ends with an elaborate and comprehensive doxology, in which 
some have seen "a liturgical antiphony in conformity with the funda- 
mental thought of the Epistle." 1 



n. 

GENERAL THESIS OP THE EPISTLE. 



*X1 rov iSidorov rb daufxa & rod aypa^fidrov 7} <ro(f>ia. — Ps. Chrys. Orat. Encom. 
(Opp. viii. 10). 

" Such we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God 
Himself. Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our 
wisdom and our comfort ; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man 
hath sinned, and God hath suffered ; that God hath made Himself the Son of men, 
and men are made the righteousness of God." — Hooker, Serm. ii. 6. 

"It breaketh the window that it may let in the light ; it breaketh the shell that 
we may eat the kernel ; it putteth aside the curtain that we may enter into the 
most Holy Place : it removeth the cover of the well that we may come by the 
water." — Pre/, to Authorised Version. 

We must now look more closely at this great outline of one of the most 
essential factors of Christian theology ; and I must ask my readers, Bible in 
hand, to follow step by step its solemn truths as they gradually expand them- 
selves before our view. 

The Salutation, which occupies the first seven verses, is remarkable a* 

1 v. Lange, ad loc. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 459 

being the longest and most solemnly emphatic of those found in any of his 
Epistles. Had he adopted the ordinary method of his day, he would have 
simply headed his letter with the words, " Paul, an Apostle of Jesns Christ, to 
the Roman Christians, greeting." 1 But he had discovered an original method of 
giving to his first salutation a more significant and less conventional turn, and 
of making it the vehicle for truths to which he desired from the first to arrest 
attention. Thus, in one grand single sentence, of which the unity is not lost 
in spite of digressions, amplifications, and parentheses, he tells the Roman 
Christians of his solemn setting apart, 2 by grace, to the Apostolate ; of the 
object and universality of that Apostolate ; of the truth that the Gospel is no 
daring novelty, but the preordained fulfilment of a dispensation prophesied in 
Scripture; 3 of Christ's descent from David, according to the flesh, and of his 
establishment with power as the Son of God according to the spirit of holi- 
ness 4 by the resurrection of the dead. 6 

We ask, as we read the sentence, whether any one has ever compressed 
more thoughts into fewer words, and whether any letter was ever written 
which swept so vast an horizon in its few opening lines ? 6 

He passes on to his customary thanksgiving "by Jesus Christ" for the 
widely-rumoured faith of the Christians at Rome; 7 and solemnly assures 
them how, in his unceasing prayers on their behalf, he supplicates God that 
he may be enabled to visit them, because he yearns to see them, and impart to 
them, for their stability, some spiritual gift. 8 Then, with infinite delicacy, 
correcting an expression which, to strangers, might seem to savour of assumed 
authority, he explains that what he longs for is an interchange between them 
of mutual encouragement; 9 for he wishes them to know 10 that, though hin- 
dered hitherto, he has often planned to come to them, that he might reap 
among them, as among all other Gentiles, some of the fruit of his ministry. 
The Gospel has been entrusted to him, and he regards it as something due 
from him, a debt which he has to pay to all Gentiles alike, whether Greeks or 
non-Greeks, whether civilised or uncivilised. He is therefore eager, so far as 

1 This is the earliest letter which he addresses to "the saints." His former letteri 
were all addressed "to the Church" or "Churches" (1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., Gal.). It 
is also the first in which he calls himself " a slave of Jesus Christ." 

a<£>topic|U.evos. Cf. Acts XJil . 2, a.<popi<ra.T6. 

3 vpa^ai ayiai, not " sacred writings," but like lepa ypa/iju.ara, a proper name for the 
Scriptures, and therefore anarthrous. 

4 The form of expression is of course antithetical, but it seems to me that Dr. Forbes, 
in his Analytical Commentary, pushes this antithesis to most extravagant lengths. 

5 1 — 7. In ver. 4, avao-rao-is veicpwv, is not "from" (£k), but "of" the dead, regarded 
as accomplished in Christ. The notions of xap« and dprjvT) are united in Num. vi. 25, 26. 

6 "Epistola tota sic methodica est, ut ipsum quoque exordium ad rationem artig 
compositum sit " (Calvin). 

7 The h> o\cu tco K6<rju.w of course only means among the humble and scattered Christian 
immunities, and therefore furnishes no argument against the truth of Acts xxviii. 21, 22. 

8 The expressions in these verses (e-<.7ro0d>, 11 ; avfXTra.pa.Kky]e-i]vai, 12 ; 7rpoe0e>r}v, enuKv&riv, 
Kapnbv, 13 ; o^etXeTTjs, 14) are closely analogous to those in xv. (eyeK07rT6ju.iji>, 22 ; k-nuToBLa*. 

23 J cx^eiAirai, 27 ', <rvvava7rav(no/xai, 32). 

9 Cf. xv. 24. Erasmus goes too far in calling this a " sancta adulatio" 

10 ou eiXia di v/wis ayvoelv, xi. 25 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13 ; 1 Cor. x. 1, xii. 1 ; 2 Cor. i 8, 



460 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

it depends on him, to preach the Gospel even in the world's capital, even in 
imperial Rome. 1 

This leads him to the fundamental theme, which he intends to treat. 
Many are ashamed of that Gospel ; he is not ; 2 "for it is the power of God 
unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, 3 and also to the 
Greek. For in it God's righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, 
even as it is written, ' But the just shall live by faith. 9 " 4 

How easy are these words to read ! Yet they require the whole Epistle 
for their adequate explanation, and many volumes have been written to eluci- 
date their meaning. Rome is the very centre of human culture, the seat of 
the widest, haughtiest despotism which the world has ever seen, and he is well 
aware that to the world's culture the Cross is foolishness, and feebleness to 
the world's power. Yet he is not ashamed of the Gospel of that Cross, for 
to all who will believe it, whether the Jew to whom it was first offered or the 
Greek to whom it is now proclaimed, it is the display of God's power in order 
to secure their salvation. Even those few words " to the Jew first, and also 
to the Greek" are the sign that a new aeon has dawned upon the world; and 
having thus indicated in two lines the source (God's power), the effect (salva- 
tion), and the universality of the Gospel (to Jew and Gentile), he proceeds to 
sum up its essence. " In it," he says, " God's righteousness is being revealed 
from faith to faith." 

We repeat the familiar words, but what meaning should we attach to 
them ? It would take a lifetime to read all that has been written about them 
in interminable pages of dreary exegesis, drearier metaphysics, and dreariest 
controversy. Traducianist and Pelagian, Calvinist and Arminian, Sublap- 
sarian and Supralapsarian, Solifidian and Gospeller, Legalist and Antinomian, 
Methodist and Baptist, have wrangled about them for centuries, and strewn 
the field of polemical theology with the scattered and cumbering debris of 
technicalities and anathemas. From St. Augustine to St. Thomas of Aquinum, 
and from St. Thomas to Whitefield, men have — 

" Reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wandering mazes lost ; " 

and their controversies have mainly turned on these words. Does it not seem 
presumptuous to endeavour to express in one simple sentence what they appear 
to state ? 6 Not if we distinguish between " ideas of the head " and " feelings 

1 i. 8—15. 

2 What cause he might have had to be tempted to shame by the feelings of the 
lordlier and more cultivated Gentiles may be seen in the remark of Tacitus (Arm. xv. 44), 
who classes Christianity among the " cuncta atrocia aut pudenda " which flow together 
into the vortex of Roman life. 

8 npCnov, precedence, genetic and historical (John iv. 22 ; Acts i. 8). 
4 i. 16, 17. 

6 It will be observed that the true explanation of the meommg of the words is on« 
thing, and one which may be regarded as approximately certain j the adequate explana* 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 461 

of the heart." Not if we bear in mind that these controversies arise mainly 
from "the afterthoughts of theology." We can only understand St. Paul's 
views in the light of his own repeated elucidations, comments, and varied 
modes of expression ; yet with this guidance we should sum up the results of 
endless discussions, prolonged for a thousand years, by interpreting his words 
to mean that In the Gospel is being made known 1 to the world that inherent 
righteousness of God, which, by a judgment of acquittal pronounced once for 
all in the expiatory death of Christ, He imputes to guilty man, and which 
beginning for each individual, with his trustful acceptance of this reconciliation 
of himself to God in Christ, ends in that mystical union with Christ whereby 
Christ becomes to each man a new nature, a quickening spirit. 

It is impossible, I think, in fewer words to give the full interpretation of 
this pregnant thesis. The end and aim cf the Gospel of God is the salvation 
of man. Man is sinful, and cannot by any power of his own attain to holiness. 
Yet without holiness no man can see the Lord. Therefore, without holiness no 
man can be saved. How, then, is holiness to be attained ? The Gospel is the 
answer to that question, and this Epistle is the fullest and most consecutive ex- 
position of this divine dispensation. The essence of the answer is summed up in 
the one phrase " Justification by Faith." In this verse it is expressed as 
" the righteousness and justice of God" which" is being revealed in the Gospel 
from faith to faith." The word for " righteousness" is also rendered " justi- 
fication." But neither of this word, nor of the word "faith," has St. Paul ever 
given a formal definition. It is only from his constantly- varied phrases, and 
from the reasonings by which he supports, and the quotations by which ho 
illustrates them, that we can ascertain his meaning. Many writers have main- 
tained that this meaning is vague and general, incapable of being reduced to 
rigid and logical expression, impossible to tesselate into any formal scheme of 
salvation. We must not overlook the one element of truth which underlies 
these assertions. Undoubtedly there is a vast gulf between the large impas- 
sioned utterances of mystic fervour and the cold analytic reasonings of 
technical theology ; between emotional expressions and elaborate systems ; 
between Orientalism and scholasticism ; between St. Paul and St. Thomas of 
Aquinum. Speculative metaphysics, doctrines of sin, theories of imputation, 
transcendental ontology — these in the course of time were inevitable ; but 
these are not the foundation, not the essence, not the really important element 
of Christianity. This has been too much forgotten. Yet there is all the dif- 
ference in the world between understanding what Paul meant to express, 
and pretending to have fathomed to their utmost depths the Eternal Truths 
which He behind his doctrine ; and it is perfectly possible for us to compre- 
hend God's scheme, so far as it affects our actions and our hopes, without 

tion of the doctrine is quite another thing, and all attempt to do it lands us at once in 
the region of insoluble mysteries. " We cannot measure the arm of God with tbe finger 
of man." 

1 d7ro*:aAv;7j-TeTai — "progressive revelation," but i4>a.vepu6r), it has been once for all 
manifested ; or rather ntQavepuTai (iii. 21) has been manifested now cmdfor ever. 



462 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

attempting to arrange in the pigeon-holes of our logical formulae the incom- 
prehensible mysteries encircling that part of it which has alone been opened 
for our learning. 

1. We may, then, pronounce with reasonable certainty that in this 
memorable thesis of the Epistle, " God's righteousness," which, in the first 
instance, means a quality of God, is an expression which St. Paul uses to 
express the imputation of this righteousness by free bestowal upon man, so 
that man can regard it as a thing given to himself —a righteousness which 
proceeds from God and constitutes a new relation of man towards Him — a 
justification of man, a declaration of man's innocence — an acquittal from guilt 
through Christ given by free grace — the principle, ordained by God himself, 
which determines the religious character of the race, and by which the 
religious consciousness of the individual is conditioned. 1 

2. And when St. Paul says that this " righteousness of God " springs 
"from faith," he does not mean that faith is in any way the meritorious 
cause of it, for he shows that man is justified by free grace, and that this 
justification has its ground in the spontaneous favour of God, and its cause 
in the redemptive work of Christ ; 2 but what he means is that faith is the 
receptive instrument 3 of it — the personal appropriation of the reconciling 
love of God, which has once for all been carried into effect for the race by 
the death of Christ. 

3. Lastly, when he says that this righteousness of God is being revealed 
in the Gospel '' from faith to faith" he implies the truth, which finds frequent 
illustration in his writings, that there are ascensive degrees and qualities of 
Christian faith. 4 Leaving out of sight the dead faith (fides informis) of the 
schoolmen, its lowest stage (i.) is the being theoretically persuaded of God's 
favour to us in Christ on higher grounds than those of sensuous perception 
and ordinary experience, namely, because we have confidence in God {assensus 
fiducia). In a higher stage (ii.) it has touched the inmost emotions of the 

1 Pfleiderer, Paulmism, i. 178. " The acceptance wherewith God receives us into 
His favour as if we were righteous — it consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputa- 
tion of the righteousness of Christ " (Calvin). " Faith taketh hold of Christ, and hath 
Him enclosed, as the ring doth the precious stone. And whosoever shall be found having 
this confidence in Christ apprehended in the heart, him will Cod accept for righteous " 
(Luther). [See, too, the twelve ancient authorities quoted in the Homily on the 
salvation of mankind.] " The righteousness wherewith we shall be clothed in the world 
to come is both perfect and inherent ; that whereby here we are justified is perfect, but 
not inherent — that whereby we are sanctified, inherent, but not perfect " (Hooker). 
"The righteousness which God gives and which he approves" (Hodges). "The very 
righteousness of God Himself . . . imputed and imparted to men in Jesus Christ (Jer. 
xxiii. 6 ; xxxiii. 16) . . . who ... is made righteousness to us (1 Cor. i. 30) ... so 
that we may be not only acquitted by God, but may become the righteous of God in Him 
(2 Cor. v. 21) " (Bishop Wordsworth). 

2 The Tridentine decree speaks of God's glory and eternal life as the final, of God as 
the efficient, of Christ as the meritorious, of baptism as the instrumental, and of God's 
righteousness as the formal cause of justification. 

3 opyai/oi/ Atjtttikoi/. We are justified per, not propter fidem (Acts x. 1, 2). 

4 "From faith to faith," i.e., " which begins in faith and ends in faith, of which 
faith is the beginning, middle, and end " (JSaur, who compares baw £a>»js els i^v, 2 Cor. ii. 
10). In the first stage the Olaube passes into Treue. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST PAUL. 463 

heart, and has become a trustful acceptance of the gift of favour by God, u a 
self- surr ender of the heart to the favourable will of God as it presents itself 
to us in the word of reconciliation." But it has a higher stage (iii.) even than 
this, in which it attains a mystical depth, and becomes a mystical incorpora- 
tion w-ith Christ (unio mystica) in a unity of love and life — a practical 
acquaintance with Christ, which completes itself by personal appropriation of 
His life and death. In its final and richest development (iv.) it has risen 
from the passive attitude of receptivity into a spontaneous active force — " a 
living impulse and power of good in every phase of personal life." x In this 
last stage it becomes so closely allied to spirit, that what is said of the one 
may be said of the other, and that which regarded from without is " faith," 
regarded from within is "spirit." Faith, in this full range of its Pauline 
meaning, is both a single act and a progressive principle. As a single act, it 
is the self- surrender of the soul to God, the laying hold of Christ, the sole 
means whereby we appropriate this reconciling love, in which point of view it 
may be regarded as the root of the new relation of man to God in justification 
and adoption. As a progressive principle it is the renewal of the personal life 
in sanctification 2 — a preservation of the " righteousness of God " objectively 

1 For these ascensive uses of the word faith see (i.) Rom. iv. 18, Heb. xi. 1; (ii.) 
Rom. x. 9, Phil. iii. 7 ; (hi.) Phil. i. 21, Gal. ii. 20; (iv.) 1 Cor. vi. 17. (Baur, iV. Test. 
Theol. 176. ) It should be observed that in his earlier Epistles St. Paul does not use the 
word at all in the modern sense of "a body of doctrine," though this meaning of the 
word begins to appear in the Pastoral Epistles. From the lowest stage of the word, in 
which it merely means "belief " and " faithfulness," he rises at once to the deeper sense 
of "fast attachment to an unseen power of goodness," and then gradually mounts to 
that meaning of the word in which it is peculiar to himself, namely, mystic union, abso- 
lute incorporation, with Christ. 

2 Rom. xii. 3 ; 2 Cor. x. 15. "Faith," says Luther {Preface to Romans), " is a divine 
work in us, which changes us, and creates us anew in God." "Oh es ist ein lebendig, 
geschaf tig, thatig, machtig Ding um den Glauben, dass es unmachtig ist dass er nicht 
ohne Unterlass, sollte Gutes wirken. Er fragt auch nicht ob gute Werke zu thun sind, 
sondern ehe man fragt hat er sie gethan, und ist immer im Thun. . . . Also dass 
unmoglich ist "Werke vom Glauben zu scheiden : ja so unmoglich als brennen und leuchten 
vom Feuer mag geschieden werden." Coming from hearing {kKor\ n-ioretos, Gal. hi., 2), it 
is primarily a belief of the Gospel (n. tov evayyekCo). As Christ is the essence of the 
Gospel, it becomes n-. tov Xpio-rov (Gal. ii. 16, iii. 26), the faith which has its principle in 
Christ. It is further defined as "faith in Eus Blood " (Rom. iii. 24, 25), and thus is 
narrowed stage by stage in proportion as it grows more intense and inward, passing from 
theoretical assent to certainty of conviction (Baur, Paul. ii. 149). The antithesis of 
faith and works is only one of abstract thought ; it is at once reconciled in the simple 
moral truth of such passages as 1 Cor. hi. 13, ix. 17, Gal. vi. 7, &c. I cannot here enter 
on the supposed contradiction between St. Paul and St. James. It will be sufficient to 
remark that they were dealing with entirely different provinces of religious life, and were 
using every one of the three words, "faith," "works," and "justification," in wholly 
different senses. By "faith" St. James (who knew nothing of its Pauline meaning), 
only meant outward profession of dead Jewish religiosity. By "works" Paul meant 
Levitism and even moral actions regarded as external ; whereas James meant the 
reality of a moral and religious life. Their meeting-point may be clearly seen in 
2 Cor. v. 10 ; Rom. ii. ; 1 Cor. xiii. 1. And in the superficial contrast lies a real coinci- 
dence. "The regal law of St. James (i. 25, ii. 8) is the law of liberty in the Epistle to 
the Galatians. Both are confuting Jewish vanity and Pharisaism. Only the work of 
St. James was to confute the Pharisee by showing what was the true service of God, and 
that of St. Paul to show what foundation had been laid for a spiritual and universal 
economy after the Jewish ceremonial had crumbled" (Maurice, Unity, 511). See 
Wordsworth, Epistles, p. 205 ; Hooker, Eccl. Pol. 1. xi. 6. 



464 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

bestowed upon us, in the inward and ever-deepening righteousness of our own 
life ; it is, in fact, a new and spiritual life, lived in the faith of the Son of God, 
who loved us, and gave Himself for us. 1 And hence will be seen at once the 
absurdity of any radical antithesis between Christian faith and Christian works, 
since they can no more exist apart from each other than the tree which is 
severed from the root, or, to use the illustration of Luther, than fire can exist 
apart from light and heat. " Justification and sanctification," says Calvin, 
" cohere, but they are not one and the same. It is faith alone which justifies, 
and yet the faith which justifies is not alone ; just as it is the heat alone of the 
sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is 
always conjoined with light." 

In accordance with his usual manner when he is enunciating a new truth, 
St. Paul seeks to support it by the Old Testament Scriptures, and reads the 
deeper meaning which he has now developed into the words, " The just shall 
live by faith," which Habakkuk had used in the far simpler sense of " the just 
shall be delivered by his fidelity." But St. Paul reads these simple words 
by the light of his own spiritual illumination, which, like the fabled splendour 
on the graven gems of the Urim, makes them flash into yet diviner oracles. 
Into the words " faith " and " life " he infuses a significance which he had 
learnt from revelation, and, as has been truly said, where Habakkuk ends, 
Paul begins. And, in fact, his very phrase, " justification by faith," marks 
the meeting-point of two dispensations. The conception of " justification " 
has its roots in Judaism ; the conception of " faith " is peculiarly Christian. 
The latter word so completely dominates over the former, that Zinaioo-uvri from 
its first meaning of "righteousness," a quality of God, comes to mean sub- 
jectively "justification" as a condition of man — the adequate relation in 
which man has to stand towards God. Man's appropriation of God's recon- 
ciling love in Christ has issued in a change in man's personal life : justifica- 
tion has become sanctification, which is the earnest of future glory. 



III. 

UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. 
"Ruit in vetitum, damni secura, libido." — Claud. 

Having thus endeavoured to render clear the one subject which underlies the 
entire system of St. Paul's theology, we can proceed more rapidly in trying to 
catch his line of thought through the remainder of the Epistle. 

1 See the two very valuable sections on Faith and Justification in Pfleiderer's 
Paulinisium, § v. Other explanations of "from faith to faith" are — 1, "from the Old 
to the New Testament" (Origen, Chrys., &c.) ; 2, "Ex fide legis in fidem evangelii " 
(Tert.) ; 3, "from faith to the believer " (iii. 22 ; Olshausen, &c.) ; 4, " from weak to strong 
faith" (cf. 2 Cor. iii. 18; Ps. lxxxiv. 7; Luther, &c.) ; 5, "An intensive expression — 
mera fides ; faith the prora et puppis (Bengel, &c.) ; 6, From Divine faithfulness to human 
faith (Ewald). Cf. Heb. xii. 2, "the author and finisher of our faith " (Lange, ad loc). 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL. 465 

i. Now, since the Apostle had already dwelt on the universality of th6 
Gospel, it was necessary to show that it applied equally to Jews and Pagans ; 
that the universality of free grace was necessitated by the universality of 
wilful sin. Righteousness and sin, soteriology and hamartiology, are the 
fundamental thoughts in St. Paul's theological system. The first is a theoretic 
consequence of our conception of God's nature ; the second an historic fact 
deducible from experience and conscience. 

As there is a righteousness of God which is being revealed in the Gospel, so, too, 
there is a wrath of God against sin which is ever being revealed from heaven, by 
the inevitable working of God's own appointed laws, against all godlessness and 
unrighteousness of those who in their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 1 And 
since the world is mainly Gentile, he speaks of the Gentiles first. Some might 
imagine that their ignorance of God made them excusable. Not so. The facts 
which render them inexcusable 2 are (i.) that God did in reality manifest Himself to 
them, and the invisibilities of His eternal power and Godhead were clearly visible 
in His works ; 3 and (ii. ) that though they knew God, yet by denying Him the due 
glory and gratitude, they suffered themselves to plunge into the penal darkness of 
ignorant speculation, and the penal folly of self-asserted wisdom, and the self-con- 
victed boast of a degraded culture, until they sank to such depths of spiritual 
imbecility as to end even in the idolatry of reptiles ; 4 and (iii.) because mental 
infatuation, both as its natural result and as its fearful punishment, issued in moral 
crime. Their sin was inexcusable, because it was the outcome and the retribution, 
and the natural child, of sin. Because they guiltily abandoned God, God abandoned 
them to their own guiltiness. 5 The conscious lie of idolatry became the conscious 
infamy of uncleanness. Those " passions of dishonour " to which God abandoned 
them rotted the heart of manhood with their retributive corruption, and affected 
even women with their execrable stain. 6 Pagan society, in its hideous disintegration, 
became one foul disease of unnatural depravity. The cancer of it ate into the heart ; 
the miasma of it tainted the air. Even the moralists of Paganism were infected 
with its vileness. 7 God scourged their moral ignorance by suffering it to become a 
deeper ignorance. He punished their contempt by letting them make themselves 
utterly contemptible. The mere consequence of this abandonment of them was 
a natural Nemesis, a justice in kind, beginning even in this life, whereby their 
unwillingness to discern Him became an incapacity to discern 8 the most elementary 

1 Karexovrtov (ttjv akr}0eiav), i. 18. In 19, to yvoxnbv is "that which IS known," not 

" which may be known." 'ATroKoAvn-TeTai, is being revealed. "The modes of the New 
Testament converge towards the present moment " ( Jowett). 

2 In verse 20, obviously ei? to eW, k. t. a.., expresses rather a consequence than a 
purpose. 

3 aopaTa. Ka.6opa.Tat., " Invisihilia videntur" an admirable oxymoron. "Deum non 
vides, tamen Deum agnoscis ex ejus operibus" (Cic. Q. T. i. 29. Cf. De Div. ii. 72). 
The world was to the Gentiles a 0eoyvw<rias 7ra.18evn7p1.ov (Basil). On this point see Hum- 
boldt, Cosmos, ii. 16. 

4 As in Egypt. Egyptian worship was now spreading in Italy : — 

" Nos in templa tuam Romana recepimus Isim 
Semideosque canes " (Luc. Phars. viii. 83). 

5 Verse 24, irapeoWe, "non permissive, nee 6*e|3a.TiKws sed Swao-Tucm — i.e., not as a mere 
result, but as a judgment in kind. 

6 This is the period of which Seneca says that women counted their years by the 
number of their divorced husbands (De Benef. iii. 15). 

7 There are only too awful and only too exhaustive proofs of all this, and (if possible), 
worse than all this, in Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, 684. But "Ostendi 
debent scelera dum puniuntur abscondi Jlagitia." 

8 i. 28, Kadm oi>K eSoKifiaaav . . . napeSvtKev . . . els aBoKifiov vovv, "As they 

E S 



466 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

distinctions between nobleness and shame. Therefore, their hearts became sur- 
charged with every element of vileness ; — with impurity in its most abysmal degra- 
dations, with hatred alike in its meanest and its most virulent developments, with 
insolence culminating in the deliberate search for fresh forms of evil, 1 with cruelty 
and falsity in their most repulsive features. And the last worst crime of all — beyond 
which crime itself could go no further — was the awfully defiant attitude of moral evil, 
which led them — while they were fully aware of God's sentence of death, 2 pro- 
nounced on willing guilt — not only to incur it themselves, but, with a devilish 
delight in human depravity and human ruin, to take a positive pleasure in those who 
practise the same. Sin, as has been truly said, reaches its climax in wicked maxims 
and wicked principles. It is no longer Vice the result of moral weakness, or the 
outcome of an evil education, but Vice deliberately accepted with all its conse- 
quences, Vice assuming the airs of self -justification, Vice in act becoming Vice in 
elaborate theory — the unblushing shamelessness of Sodom in horrible aggravation of 
its polluting sin. 3 

Thus did Paul brand the insolent brow of Pagan life. It is well for the 
world — it is above all well for the world in those ages of transition and decay » 
when there is ever an undercurrent or tendency towards Pagan ideals — to 
know what Paganism was, and ever tended to become. It is well for the 
world that it should have been made to see, once for all, what features lurked 
under the smiling mask, what a heart of agony, rank with hatred, charred 
with self-indulgence, 4 lay throbbing under the purple robe. And in St. Paul's 
description not one accusation is too terrible, not one colour is too dark. He 
does but make known to us what heathen writers unblushingly reveal in those 
passages in which, like waves of a troubled sea, they foam out their own mire 
and dirt. 5 It is false to say that Christianity has added to the gloom of the 
world. It is false that it has weakened its literature, or cramped its art. It 
has been wilfully perverted ; it has been ignorantly misunderstood. Rightly 
interpreted it does not sanction a single doctrine, or utter a single precept, 
which is meant to extinguish one happy impulse, or dim one innocent delight. 

refused . . . God gave them to a refuse mind" (Vaughan, ad loc). St. Paul was 
deeply impressed (24, 26, 28) with the ethic retributive law of the punishment of sin 
with sin. It was recognised both by Jews and Gentiles {Pirke Abhoth, iv. 2; Sen. Ep. 16). 

1 i. 30, e^evpera? k.o.kuv (2 Mace. vii. 31). Pliny {H. N. xv. 5) applies this very expres- 
sion to the Greeks. Some of these words occur in speaking of corruptions within the 
Church (2 Tim. iii. 2) ; "of so little avail is nominal Christianity" (Vaughan) ; evpei^s 

ayaflwv (PrOV. Xvi. 20). 

2 i. 32, to Smaiw^aj " the just decree ;" irotova-iv, " single acts ;" npia-aova-iv, " habitual 
condition. " Possibly an ovk has dropped out before ktriyvovTes ( " they did not fully know "), 
of which some readings show a trace. 

3 i. 16 — 32. The Apostle is fond of these accumulative lists (owa0poio7ibs) of good 
a ad evil (2 Cor. xii. 20 ; Gal. v. 19 ; Eph. v. 3, 4 ; 1 Tim. i. 9 ; 2 Tim. iii. 2). No satis- 
factory classification of the order can be made. Bengel says, "Per membra novem, in 
aff ectibus ; duo in sermone ; tria respectu Dei et sui, et proximi ; duo in rebus gerendis ; 
sex respectu necessitudinum. " On verses 27, 28, the best comment is to be found in 
Aristophanes, Juvenal, and Suetonius ; on 29 — 31, in Thuc. iii. 82—84. See the contem- 
porary testimony of Sen. De Ira, ii. 8, "Omnia sceleribus ac vitiis plena sunt . . . 
nee furtiva jam scelera sunt." The special horror of the age is reflected in Tac. H. i. 2, 
and passim. "Le premier siecle de notre ere a un cachet infernal qui n'appartient qu'a 
lui ; le siecle des Borgia peut seul lui etre compare en fait de sceleratesse " (Renan, 
Meianges, p. 167). 

4 i. 27, k&K*ven*w. 6 Jud. 13; Isa, lvii. 20, 



fiPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 46? 

What it does is to warn us against seeking and following the lowest and most 
short-lived pleasures as a final end. This was the fatal error of the popular 
Hedonism. St. Paul's sketch of its moral dissolution and the misery and 
shame which it inevitably involved, is but another illustration of the truth that 

" Who follows pleasure, pleasure slays, 
God's wrath upon himself he wreaks ; 
But all delights attend his days 

Who takes with thanks but never seeks." 

ii. Having thus accomplished his task of proving the guilt of the Gentiles, 
he turns to the Jews. But he does so with consummate tact. He does not 
at once startle them into antagonism, by shocking all their prejudices, but 
begins with the perfectly general statement, " Therefore x thou art inexcusable, 
O man — every one who judgest." The " therefore " impetuously anticipates 
the reason why he who judges others is, in this instance, inexcusable — namely, 
because he does the same things himself. He does not at once say, as he 
might have done, " Tou who are Jews are as inexcusable as the Gentiles, 
because in judging them you are condemning yourselves, and though you 
habitually call them ' sinners ' you are no less sinners yourselves." 2 This is 
the conclusion at which he points, but he wishes the Jew to be led step by 
step into self-condemnation, less hollow than vague generalities. 3 He is of 
course speaking alike of Jews and of Pagans generically, and not implying 
that there were no exceptions. But he has to introduce the argument against 
the Jews carefully and gradually, because, blinded by their own privileges, they 
were apt to take a very different view of their own character. But they were 
less excusable because more enlightened. He therefore begins, " O man," and 
not " O Jew," and asks the imaginary person to whom he is appealing whether 
he thinks that God will in his case make an individual exception to His own 
inflexible decrees ? or whether he intends to despise the riches of God's endur- 
ance, by ignoring 4 that its sole intention is to lead him to repentance — and so 
to heap up against himself a horrible treasury of final ruin ? God's law is 
rigid, universal, absolute. It is that God will repay every man all to his 
works. 5 This law is illustrated by a twofold amplification, which, beginning 
and ending with the reward of goodness, and inserting twice over in the 

1 This Aib of ii. 1 is clearly proleptic. 

2 Gal. ii. 15, ^el? <£vVei 'lovSolot, km. ovk e| e(h>a>v ajaaprwXoi. Meyer truly says this 
judging of the Gentiles (which they little dreamt would be pointed out to them as self- 
condemnation, by one of themselves) was a characteristic of the Jews. 

3 Thus the High-priest said over the scapegoat, " Thy people have failed, sinned, and 
transgressed before Thee " ( Yoma, 66 a). 

4 Ver. 4, ayvowv. 'Avet, "Deus ducit volentem duci . . . non cogit necessitate" 
(Bengel). 

The apparent contradiction to the fundamental theme of the Epistle is due to his 
speaking here of ordinary morality. "The divine valuation placed on men apart from 
redemption" (Tholuck). Fritzsche's comment that " the Apostle is here inconsistent, 
and opens a semita per honestatem near the via regia of justification " is very off-hand and 
valueless. 

E£ 2 



468 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

middle clause the punishment of sin, 1 expresses the thought that this rule 
applies to all, by twice repeating that it applies to the Jew first and also to 
the Greek ; but to the Jew first, only because of his fuller knowledge and, 
therefore, deeper responsibility. And having thus introduced the name of the 
Jew, he lays down with a firm hand the eternal principle — so infinitely 
blessed, yet so startlingly new to the prejudices of a nation which for more 
than a thousand years had been intoxicating itself with the incense of spiritual 
pride — that there is no respect of persons with God. Each section of humanity 
shall be judged in accordance with its condition. 

" As many as sinned without the Law, shall also without the Law perish ; and 
as many as sinned in the Law, shall he condemned by the Law." Eighteousness 
before God depends, not on possession of the Law, but on obedience to it. Gentiles as 
well as Jews had a law ; Jews the Mosaic law, Gentiles a natural law written on 
their hearts, and sufficiently clear to secure, at the day of judgment, 2 their acquittal 
or condemnation before the prophetic session of their own consciences, in accordance 
with the decision of Christ the Judge. 3 Jew, then, and Gentile stand before God 
equally guilty, because equally condemned of failure to fulfil the moral law which 
God had laid down to guide their lives. The word "^ZZ," as has been truly ob- 
served, is the governing word of the entire Epistle. All — for whatever may be the 
modifications which may be thought necessary, St. Paul does not himself make 
them — all are equally guilty, all are equally redeemed. All have been temporarily 
rejected, all shall be ultimately received. All shall be finally brought into living 
harmony with that God who is above all, and through all, and in all, — by whom, 
and from whom, and unto whom, all things are, and all things tend. 4 

And then Paul turns upon the self-satisfied Jew, who has been thus 
insensibly entrapped (as it were) into the mental admission of his own 
culpability, and after painting in a few touches his self-satisfied pretensions 
to spiritual, moral, and intellectual superiority, and then leaving his sentence 
unfinished, bursts into a question of indignant eloquence, in which there is no 
longer any masked sarcasm, but terribly serious denunciation of undeniable 
sins. He does not use one word of open raillery, or give offence by painting 
in too glaring colours the weaknesses, follies, and hypocrisies of the Pharisee, 
yet the picture which stands out from phrases in themselves perfectly polished, 
and even apparently complimentary, is the picture of the full-blown religionist 

1 The figure of speech is called Chiasmus, or intro verse parallelism. " Glory and 
honour, and immortality — precious pearls ; eternal life —the goodly pearl, Matt. xiii. 46 " 
(Lange). 

2 ii. 16, leg. KpiVei " is judging," not icpivel " shall judge." 

3 ii. 1 — 16. St. Paul adds Kara to evayyi\t6v /u.ov. " Suum appellat ratione ministerii " 
(Calv.). It means, of course, the Gospel of free grace which he preached to Gentiles 
(Gal. ii. 7). In verse 14, " Do by nature the things of the law." St. Paul (who is not 
here speaking with theologic precision, but dealing with general external facts) recog- 
nises even in heathens the existence of the nobler nature and its better impulses. See 
the remarkable expression of Aristotle, 6 ekev6epo<; outos e£et olov vo>os wv eauroJ {Eth. 
Nic. iv. 14). It is strange to see so great a commentator as Bengel joining <j>u'<m with 
Ta fir) i/ofjtoi/ exoi/ra, and interpreting it to mean " do the same things that the Law does," 
i.e., commanding, condemning, punishing, &c. ! Nothing would have been more amazing 
to St. Paul than the notion that he discouraged good works. The phrase occurs no less 
than foui-teen times in his three last short Epistles. 

4 See Rom. v. 15—20 ; x. 12 ; 1 Cor. xv. 28 ; Col. iii. 11 ; 2 Cor. v. 15 ; Heb. ii. 8 ; &o. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL. 469 

in all his assumed infallibility, and the very air of the " Stand aside, for I am 
holier than thou." 

"But if" 1 (so we may draw out the splendid rhetoric), " if thou vauntest the 
proud name of Jew, 2 and makest the Law the pillow of thy confidence, 3 and boastest 
thy monopoly in God, and art the only one who canst recognise His will, and dis- 
criminatest the transcendent 4 in niceties of moral excellence, being trained in the 
Law from infancy,— if thou art quite convinced that thou art a Leader of the 
blind, a Light of those in darkness, one who can train the foolishness, and instruct 
the infancy of all the world besides, possessing as thou dost the very form and body 
of knowledge and of truth in the Law — thou then that teachest another, dost thou not 
teach thyself? thou that preachest against theft, art thou a thief ? thou that for- 
biddest adultery, art thou an adulterer? 5 loather of idols, dost thou rob temples? 6 
boaster in the Law, by violation of the Law dost thou dishonour God ? For" — and 
here he drops the interrogative to pronounce upon them the categorical condemnation 
which was as true then as in the days of the Prophet — " for on your account the 
name of God is being blasphemed among the Gentiles." 7 They had relied on sacri- 
fices and offerings, on tithes and phylacteries, on ablutions and mezuzoth, — but "omnia 
vanitas praeter amare Deum et Mi soli servire," — " all things are emptiness save to love 
God, and serve Him only," — and this weightier matter of the Law they had utterly 
neglected in scrupulous attention to its most insignificant minutiae. In fact, the 
difference between Heathenism and Judaism before God was the difference between 
Vice and Sin. The Jews were guilty of the sin of violating express commands ; 
the heathens sank into an actual degradation of nature. The heathens had been 
punished for an unnatural transposition of the true order of the universe by being 
suffered to pervert all natural relations, and so to sink into moral self -debasement ; 
but the Jews had been " admitted into a holier sanctuary," and so were " guilty of 
a deeper sacrilege." 8 

1 ii. 17, el fie, and not &, is almost unquestionably the true reading, », A, B, D, K, 
" oratio vehemens et splendida " (Est. ). 

2 e7rovo/u.a^T/. 3 verse 17, enavairavri. 

4 verse 18, 8o/a/oia£eis to. fiia^epovra. See Heb. V. 14. The Sta<TToA.Tj ayiW na\ /SeSTjAaw 

(Philo) was the very function of a Kabbi ; and the Pharisee was a Separatist, because of 
his scrupulosity in these distinctions. 

5 verse 21, on the morality of the Pharisees and Rabbis, see Surenhusius, Mishna, ii. 
290—293, and cf . Jas. iv. 4—13 ; v. 1—6 ; Matt. xix. 8 ; xxiii. 13—25. Josephus calls his 
own generation the most ungodly of all, and says that earthquake and lightning must 
have destroyed them if the Romans had not come. B. J. iv. 3 — 3 ; v. 9, 4, 10, 5, 13, 6. 
Take the single fact that the "ordeal of jealousy" had been abolished, because of the 
prevalence of adultery, by R. Johanan ben Zaccai quoting Hos. iv. 14 {Sotah, f . 47, 1). 

6 verse 22, 6 /SSeAvcro-ojuei/os. They called idols nn^in, pSeKvynara, 2 Kings xxiii. 13, &c. 
LXX. tepo<mA.et?. The reference is not clear, but see Deut. vii. 25 ; Acts xix. 36, 37 ; Jos. 
Antt. iv. 8, 10 ; xx. 9, 2. Or does it refer to defrauding their own Temple ? (Mai. i. 8 ; 
iii. 8 — 10.) <nrr)Kaiov Xtjcttwv (Matt. xxi. 13). Josephus quotes a Greek historian, Lysima- 
chus, who said that from the conduct of the Jews in robbing the Temples of their charms 
that city was called Hierosyla {Temple-plunder) and afterwards changed to Hierosolyma ; 
a story which he angrily rejects (c. Ap. i. 34). 

7 ii. 17 — 24. In verse 24 the words of Isa. Iii. 5 are curiously combined with the sense 
of Ezek. xxxvi. 21—23. 

8 The needfulness of this demonstration may be seen from the fact that some of the 
Talruadists regarded perfection as possible. They denied the sinfulness of evil thoughts 
by interpreting Ps. lxvi. 18 to mean — "If I contemplate iniquity in my heart, the Lord 
does not notice it" {Kiddushin, f. 40, 1). R. Jehoshua Ben Levi, admitted to Paradise 
without dying, is asked if the rainbow has appeared in his days, and answers "Yes." 
"Then," said they, "thou art not the son of Levi, for the rainbow never appears when 
there is one perfectly righteous man in the world." " The fact was that no rainbow had 
appeared, but he was too modest to say ao " ! {Kiddushin, f . 40, 1), 



470 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

From this impassioned strain he descends — in a manner very characteristic 
of his style — into a calmer tone. " But" — some Jew might urge, in accordance 
with the stubborn prejudices of theological assumption, which by dint of 
assertion, has passed into invincible belief — " but we are circumcised ! Surely 
you would not put us on a level with the uncircumcised — the dogs and sinners 
of the Gentiles?" To such an implied objection, touching as it does on a 
point wholly secondary, however primary might be the importance which the 
Jew attached to it, St. Paul can now give a very decisive answer, because with 
wonderful power he has already stripped them of all genuine precedence, and 
involved them in a common condemnation. He therefore replies in words 
which, however calm and grave, would have sounded to a Jerusalem Pharisee 
like stinging paradox. 

" Circumcision is indeed an advantage if thou keepest the Law ; but if thou art — 
as I have genetically shown that thou art — a violator of the Law, then thy circum- 
cision has become uncircumcision?- If, then, the circumcision of the disobedient Jew 
is really uncircumcision, is it not conversely plain that the ' uncircumcision of the 
obedient Gentile is virtually circumcision,' 2 and is even in a position to pass judg- 
ment upon Jewish circumcision P God (strange and heretical as you may think it) 
loves the man who does his duty more than the man who bears a cutting in his 
flesh. You praise literal circumcision ; God praises the unseen circumcision of the 
heart. Offensive as the antithesis may sound to you, the faithless Jew is but a 
Gentile ; the faithful Gentile is, in God's sight, an honoured Jew ! Though none 
may have told you this truth before — though you denounce it as blasphemous, and 
dangerous, and contrary to Scripture — yet, for all that, the mere national Judaism 
is a spiritual nonentity ; the Judaism of moral faithfulness alone is dear to God." 3 



IY. 

OBJECTIONS AND CONFIRMATIONS. 

" The stars of morn shall see Him rise 
Out of His grave, fresh as the dawning light ; 
Thy ransom paid, which man from death redeems, 
His death for man, as many as offered life 
Neglect not, and the benefit embrace 
Of faith, not void of works." — Milton, Par. Lost, xii. 

So far then, both by fact and by theory, he has shown that Jews and Gentiles 
are equal before God ; equally guilty, equally redeemed. But here a Jew 
might exclaim in horror, " Has the Jew then no superiority ? Is circumcision 
wholly without advantage ? " Here St. Paul makes a willing concession, and 

1 This is reluctantly admitted even in the Talmud. The Rabbis hold generally that 
"no circumcised man can see hell" {Midr. Tillin, 7, 2) ; but they get over the moral 
danger of the doctrine by saying that when a guilty Jew comes to Gehenna, an angel 
makes his nepiTour) into aKpofivo-Tla (Shem. Habbah, 138, 13; cf. 1 Mace. i. 15; Jos. Antt 
xii. 6, 2) and they even entered into minute particulars to show how it was done. 

2 Ford quotes an imitation from Tillotson — if we walk contrary to the Gospel "oui 
baptism is no baptism, and * Christianity is heathenism " (Sermon on 2 Tim. ii. 19), 

»ii. 25-29. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 471 

replies, " Much advantage every way. First, because they were entrusted 
with the oracles of God." The result of that advantage was that the Jew 
stood at a higher stage of religious consciousness than the Gentile. Judaism 
was the religion of revelation, and therefore the religion of the promise ; and 
therefore the religion which typically and symbolically contained the elements 
of Christianity ; and the religion of the idea which in Christianity was realised. 
Christianity was, indeed, spiritualised Judaism, an advance from servitude to 
freedom, from nonage to majority, from childhood to maturity, from the flesh 
to the spirit ; yet even in this view Judaism had been, by virtue of its treasure 
of revelation, preparatory to the absolute religion. 1 This was its first 
advantage. What he might have added as his secondly and thirdly, we may 
conjecture from a subsequent allusion, 2 but at this point he is led into a 
digression by his eagerness to show that his previous arguments involved no 
abandonment on God's part of His own promises. This might be urged as 
an objection to what he has been saying. He answers it in one word : — 

Some of the Jews had been unfaithful ; shall their unfaithfulness nullify God's 
faith ? Away with the thought ! 3 Alike Scripture and reason insist on God's 
truthfulness, though every man were thereby proved a liar. The horror with 
which he rejects the notion that God has proved false, interferes with the clearness 
of his actual reply. It lies in the word " some.' 1 God's promises were true ; true 
to the nation as a nation ; for some they had been nullified by the moral disobedience 
which has its root in unbelief, but for all true Jews the promises were true. 4 

A still bolder objection might be urged — "All men, you say, are guilty. In 
their guilt lies the Divine necessity for God's scheme of justification. Must not 
God, then, be unjust in inflicting wrath?" In the very middle of the objection the 
Apostle stops short — first to apologise for even formulating a thought so blasphemous 
— " I am speaking as men speak ; " B "these thoughts are not my own ;" — then to 
repudiate it with horror, "Away with the thought!" — lastly, to refute it by 
anticipation, " If it were so, how shall God judge the world ? " 6 Thus fortified, as 
it were, by the reductio ad absurdum, and purified by the moral justification, he 
follows this impious logic to its conclusion — " God's truth, it seems, abounded in my 
falseness ; why, then, am I still being judged as a sinner ? and why " — " such [he 
pauses to remark] is the blasphemous language attributed to me! " — " why may we 
not do evil that good may come ? " To this monstrous perversion of his teaching 
he deigns no further immediate reply. There are in theology, as in nature, admitted 
antinomies. The relative truth of doctrines, their truth as regards mankind, is not 
affected by pushing them into the regions of the absolute, and showing that they 
involve contradictions if thrown into syllogisms. "We may not push the truths of 
the finite and the temporal into the regions of the infinite and the eternal. Syllo- 
gistically stated, the existence of evil might be held to demonstrate either the weak- 
ness or the cruelty of God ; but such syllogisms, without the faintest attempt to 
answer them, are flung aside as valueless and irrelevant by the faith and conscience 
of mankind. The mere statement of some objections is their most effective re- 

1 iii. 2. "In vetere Testamento Novum latet, in Novo Testamento vetus patet." 
a is. 4, 5. 

3 Ten times in this Epistle (iii. 4, 6, 31; vi. 2, 15 j vii 7, 13 ; ix. 14 ; xi. 1, 11), and 
in 1 Cor. vi. 15 ; Gal. ii. 17 j iii. 21. 

4 iii. 1-4. 

5 iii. 5. There is an interesting reading, Kara avQp&irtav. " Is God unjust who inflicts 
His anger against men ? " (MSS. mentioned by Kufinus). tl epov/j-ev ; cf . vi. 1 ; vii 7 ; 
ix. 14, 30. It is found in no other Epistle. 

6 For similar instances of entangled objection and reply, Tholuck refers to vii an<j 
Gal. iii. See, too, Excursus XXI., " On the Antinomies of St, Paul," 



472 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

futation. It shows that they involve an absurdity easily recognisal le. However 
logically correct, they are so morally repulsive, so spiritually false, that silence is 
the only answer of which they are worthy. Such an objection is the one which 
Paul has just stated. It is sufficient to toss it away with the sense of shuddering 
repulsion — the horror naturalis — involved in a fit) yevono. It is enough to bid it 
avaunt, as we might avert with a formula an evil omen. People say that Paul has 
taught the hideous lie that we may sin to get experience — or sin to add to Christ's 
redeeming glory — or that the end justifies the means ; or that we may do evil that 

good may come. " They say What say they ? Let them say ! " All that Paul 

has to say to them is merely that " their judgment is just." x 

What further, then, can the Jew allege ? 2 Absolutely nothing ! In spite of 
every objection, Jew and Gentile are all proved to be under sin. Here this section 
of the proof might close, and on a demonstrated fact of human history Paul might 
have based his Gospel theology. But neither to himself nor to his readers would 
the proof have seemed complete without Old Testament sanction. He therefore 
proceeds to quote a number of fragmentary passages from the fifth, tenth, fourteenth, 
and hundred-and-fortieth Psalms, and from the fifty-ninth of Isaiah, the validity of 
which, in this connexion, he rests upon their use of the word " all," which implies 
Jews as well as Gentiles. The Law (which here means the Old Testament 
generally) must include the Jews, because it is specially addressed to Jews. The 
intention, then, of the Law " is that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world 
be recognised as guilty before God ; " guilty because 3 by the works of the Law 4 — 
seeing that, as a fact, neither Jew nor Gentile has obeyed it — no flesh shall be 
justified before God. Half, then, of his task is done. For before he could prove 
the thesis of i. 17, that in the Gospel was being revealed a justification by faith — it 
was necessary for him to demonstrate that by no other means could justification be 
attained. "For" — and here he introduces an anticipative thought, which later on 
in his epistle lie will have seriously to prove — " by the Law is the full knowledge 
of sin."* 



JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 



t ^ l' J S ae r ag n? Ca / Cae ^ imoniae ) ] illae sunt necessariae sed non justificant. 
Justitia 2. < Civilis (Decalogus) ) J 

3. [ Dei et fidei, coram Deo justificat." 

Luther, Colloqu. i. 30. 

iii. "But now," he says, and this introduces one of the fullest and weightiest 
passages in all his writings, " without the Law" — which all have failed to keep— 

i iii. 5-8. 

2 iii. 9, npoexofteBa properly means "use as a pretext;" the reading TrpoKarexofiev irepurcrov 
of D, G, Syr. is a gloss to give the meaning of npoexonev, " do we excel?" which suits the 
sense far better. Wetstein renders it "are we (the Jews) surpassed by the Gentiles?" 
But as the Greek Fathers made it mean " have we the advantage?" (Vulg. praecellimus), 
perhaps the sense is admissible here. 

3 iii. 19. Ae'yei speaks, \a\el utters, cf. John viii. 43, \a\Cav, \6yov. This is the only 
place in the New Testament where our translators have rendered SCon by "therefore," 
though it occurs twenty-two times. Everywhere else they render it " for " or "because." 
It may mean " therefore " in classical Greek, but Sib is the usual New Testament word in 
thiB sense. If rendered "because," a comma only should be placed after ©e6. 

4 epya vofiov, the works of any law, whether ritual, Mosaic, or general, and whether as 
to the works prescribed by it, or those produced by it. 

6 iii. 9 — 20. — e;n'yi/<ua-is ap.apria<;, and therefore the Law cannot justify, since, as Calvin 
gaja, " Ex eadem Bcatebra non prodeunt vita et mors," 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 473 

H the righteousness of God," hoth in itself and as an objective gift of justification 
to man, " has been manifested, being witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets." 
The nature of that witness he will show later on ; at present he pauses to give a 
fuller, and indeed an exhaustive, definition of what he means by " the righteousness 
of God." " I mean the righteousness of God accepted by means of faith in Jesus 
Christ, coming to and upon all believers — all, for there is no difference. For all 
3inned, and are failing to attain the glory of God, being justified freely by His 
grace, by means of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as 
a propitiation, 1 by means of faith in His blood, for the manifestation of His own 
righteousness" — which righteousness might otherwise have been doubted or mis- 
understood — " because of the pretermission of past sins in God's forbearance; with 
a view (I say) to the manifestation of this righteousness at this present epoch, that 
He might, by a divine paradox, and by a new and divinely predestined righteousness, 
be just and the justifier of him whose life springs from faith in Jesus." 2 

Let us pause to enumerate the separate elements of this great statement. 
It brings before us in one view — 

1. Justification, — the new relation of reconcilement between man and God. 

2. Faith, — man's trustful acceptance of God's gift, rising to absolute self- 
surrender, culminating in personal union with Christ, working within him as 
a spirit of new life. 

3. The universality of this justification by faith, — a possibility offered to, 
because needed by, all. 

4. This means of salvation given, not earned, nor to be earned ; a free gift 
due to the free favour or grace of God. 

5. The object of this faith, the source of this possibility of salvation, the 
life and death of Christ, as being (i.) a redemption — that is, a ransom of 
mankind from the triple bondage of the law, of sin, and of punishment ; 
(ii.) a propitiatory victim, 3 — not (except by a rude, imperfect, and most mis- 

1 Ver. 25. This verse is "the Acropolis of the Christian faith" (Olshausen). 
'An-oXwrpwo-is (not inLXX.) implies — i., bondage ; ii. , ransom; hi., deliverance (Eph. i. 7). 
Many most eminent theologians (Origen, Theodoret, Theophylact, Augustine, Erasmus, 
Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Calovius, Olshausen, Tholuck, &c.) make iKa.a-Tfipi.ov mean 
"mercy-seat," since Ikacnrjpiov is the invariable word for the capporeth in the LXX. 
(Ex. xxv., passim, &c), which never uses it for an expiatory sacrifice (eO/ma). Philo also 
(Vit. Mos., p. 668; cf. Jos. Antt. iii. 6, § 5) calls the mercy-seat a symbol, i'Aew SvyaVew?. 
It is, therefore, difficult to suppose how Hellenist readers of this Epistle could attach 
any other meaning to it. The capporeth between the Shekinah and the Tables of the 
Law, sprinkled with atoning blood by the High Priest as he stood behind the rising 
incense, is a striking image of Christ (Heb. ix. 25). I quite agree with Lange in calling 
Fritzsche's remark, "Valeat absurda explication an "ignorantly contemptuous one;" 
but as Christ is nowhere else in the New Testament compared to the mercy-seat, and 
the comparison would here be confined to the single word, I cannot help thinking that 
the word, though ambiguous, must here bear an analogous meaning to iKao-^bs, also 
rendered " a propitiation " in 1 John iv. 10. 

2 iii. 22 — 27. Bengel points out the grandeur of this evangelic paradox. In the Law 
God is just and condemns; in the Gospel He is just and forgives. God's judicial 
righteousness both condemns and pardons. On God's " pretermission " of past sins 
(hi. 25, 7ra'pe<ns, praetermissio, not a^ecris, remissio) compare Ps. lxxxi. 12 ; Acts xiv. 16 ; 
xvii. 30; Lev. xvi. 10. Tholuck calls the Atonement "the divine theodicy for the past 
history of the world." 

3 "Here is a foundation for the Anselmic theory of satisfaction, but not for its 
grossly anthropopathic execution." Schaff. ad loc. (Lange's Romans, 2 — 7). And this is 
only the external aspect of the death of Christ, the merely judicial aspect pertaining to 



474 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

leading anthropomorphism) as regards God, but from the finite and impe rfect 
standpoint of man ; and therefore the Apostle adds that Christ becomes such 
to us by means of faith in His blood. 

6. The reason for this, — the manifestation of God'g righteousness, which 
might otherwise have been called in question, because of the pretermission of 
past sins. 

7. The end to be attained, — that, in perfect consistency with justice, God 
might justify all whose new life had its root in faith. 

Boasting then is impossible, since merit is non-existent. By works it is 
unattainable ; by the very conception of faith it is excluded. This holds true 
alike for Jew and Pagan, and Justification is God's free gift to man as man, 1 
because He is One, and the God alike of Jews and Gentiles. To the Jew 
faith is the source, to the Gentile the instrument of this justification. 2 

But here another objection has to he combated. The Jew might say, " By this 
faith of yours you are nullifying the Law" — meaning by the Law the whole Mosaic 
dispensation, and generally the Old Testament as containing the history of the 
covenant people. On the contrary, St. Paul replies, I am establishing it on a firmer 
basis ; 3 for I am exhibiting it in its true position, manifesting it in its true relations ; 
showing it to be the divinely -necessary part of a greater system ; adding to the 
depth of its spirituality, rendering possible the cheerful obedience to its require- 
ments ; indicating its divine fulfilment. I am showing that the consciousness of 
sin which came by the Law is the indispensable preparation for the reception of 
grace. Let us begin at the very beginning. Let us go back from Moses even to 
Abraham. What did he, our father, gain by works? 4 By his works he gained 
nothing before God, as St. Paul proves by the verse that " He believed God, and it 
was imputed to him for righteousness." 6 That word "imputed" repeated eleven 

the sphere of Law. The inward motive — the element in which God's essential nature is 
revealed, is the grace of God (Kom. hi. 24). 

1 Ver. 28, " Therefore [but yap, #, A] we reckon that a man is justified by faith 
without the works of the Law. " This is the verse in which Luther interpolated the word 
"alone" — "Vox Sola tot clamoribus lapidata " (Erasm.). Hence the name Solifidian. 
It was a legitimate inference, and was already existing in the Nuremberg Bible (1483) 
and the Genoese (1476), but was an unfortunate apparent contradiction of ovk Ik irCo-Tews 
novov (James ii. 24). But Luther's famous preface shows sufficiently that he recognised 
the necessity of works in the same sense as St. James (see Art. xi., xii.). Luther was 
not guilty of the foolish error which identifies faith with mere belief ; and yet, perhaps, 
his mode of dealing with this verse led to his rash remark as to the impossibility of 
reconciling the two Apostles (Colloqu. ii. 203). 

2 iii. 27 — 30, TrepiTO/m.T)v e* iriCTecos . . . d*poj3vcrTtai/ 8ia ttj? 7r«TTea>s Seems to imply 

some real difference in the Apostle's view, though Meyer (usually such a purist) here 
denies it. Calvin sees a shade of irony in it — " This is the grand difference : the Jew is 
saved ex fide, the Gentile per fidem ! Bengel is probably right when he says that it 
implies the priority of the Jews, and the acceptance of the Gospel from them by the 
Gentiles ;— the Jews as an outgrowth of faith, the Gentiles by the means of the faith. 
( B ee Gal. iii. 22—26). 

3 iii. 31. See chap. vi. ; viii. 4 ; xiii. 10. 

4 iv. 1. If we do not Omit evprjKeuai (with B), Kara crap/ca must go with evpijKevat, 

not as in A. V. with irarepa. It means, " What did he obtain by purely human efforts ? " 
e.g., by circumcision (Baur) ; propriis viribus (Grot.); Nach rem menschlicher Weise 
(De Wette). St. Paul here attacks a position which afterwards became a stronghold of 
Talmudists. 

6 St. Paul here follows the LXX., which changes the active into the passive. The 
faith of Abraham was a common subject of discussion in Jewish schools. See some 
remarkable parallels in 1 Mace. ii. 52 ; Philo's eulogy of faith, De Abrahwmo, ii. 39 : De 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 475 

times in the chapter, is the keynote of the entire passage, and is one of very primary 
importance in the argument with the Jews, who held that Abraham obeyed the Law 
before it was given. 1 To us, perhaps, it is of secondary importance, since the 
Apostle did not derive his views from these considerations, but discovered the truths 
revealed to him in passages which, until he thus applied them, would not have been 
seen to involve this deeper significance. It required, as De Wette says, no small 
penetration thus to unite the climax of religious development with the historic 
point at which the series of religious developments began. To a worker, he argues, 
the pay is not " imputed" as a favour, but paid as a debt ; but Abraham's faith was 
" imputed" to him for righteousness, just as it is to all who believe on Him who 
justifies the ungodly. This truth David also indicates when he speaks of the 
blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness, or, which comes to the 
same thing, " does not impute sin." Now this imputation can have nothing to do 
with circumcision, because the phrase is used at a time before Abraham was circum- 
cised, and circumcision was only a sign 12 of the righteousness imputed to him 
because of his faith, that he might be regarded as " the father of the faithful," 
whether they be circumcised or uncircumcised. Had the great promise to Abraham, 
on which all Jews relied, come to him by the Law? Not so, for two reasons. 
First, because the promise was long prior to the Law, and would have been nullified 
if it were made to depend on a subsequent law ; and, secondly, because the Law 
causes the sense of wrongdoing, 3 and so works wrath, not promise. Hence, it was 
the strength of Abraham's faith looking to God's promise in spite of his own and 
Sarah's age, 4 which won him the imputed righteousness ; and this was recorded for 
us because the faith, and the promise, and the paternity, are no mere historic circum- 
stances, but have all of them a spiritual significance, full of blessedness for all who 
" believe on Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up 
for our sins, and raised for our justification." 5 

This, then, is the proof that the doctrine of Justification is not contrary to 
Scripture, and does not vilipend, but really establishes the Law ; and into the 
last verse are skilfully introduced the new conceptions of Christ's death for 
our sin, and His resurrection to procure our imputed righteousness, which are 
further developed in the subsequent chapters. 

But first, having proved his point, he dwells on its blessed consequences, 
which may be summed up in the two words Peace and Hope. 

These are treated together. We have Peace, 6 because through Christ we have 
our access into the free favour of God, and can exult not only in the hope of the 

Mut. Nom. i. 586. Nay, since the plural "laws" is used In Gen. xxvi. 5, Rabh held 
that he kept both the written and the oral law ( Yoma, f. 28, 2). 

1 Kiddushin, f. 82, 1. 

2 iv. 11. The word " seal " (m») occurs in the formula of circumcision (Berachoth, 
xiii. 1). A circumcised child was called "an espoused of blood" &c, to God 
(Ex. iv. 26). 

3 See vii. 7, seqq. 

4 In iv. 19 the ov should be omitted («, A, B, C, Syr., &c). He did perceive and con- 
sider the weakness of his own body, but yet had faith. In fact, " not considering his own 
body " contradicts Gen. xvii. 17. 

5 iv. 1 — 25. In verse 25 the first Sia. is retrospective, the second is prospective ; Sea r* 
napannafLaTa, " on account of our transgressions ; " 8iA rrji> Si/auWiv, "to secure our being 
justified." Luther calls this verse "a little covenant, in which all Christianity is com- 
prehended." 

6 v. 1, 6xw/u.ev is the better supported reading («, A, B, C, D, K, L) ; but exo^ev gives 
by far the better sense, and the other reading may be due to the Pietistic tendency of the 
Lectionaries to make sentences hortative, — which apparently began to work very early. 
For a defence of exw^ev, I may refer to the Eev. J. A. Beet's able commentary on the 
Epistle, which reached me too late for use. 



476 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

future, but even in the afflictions of the present, which tend to hope because first 
they work endurance, then approved firmness. 1 The certainty of our Hope is due 
to the love of God poured into our hearts by His Holy Spirit, and unmistakalle to 
us, since, by a stretch of self-sacrifice unknown to humanity, 2 Christ died for us, 
not because of any justice, much less any goodness of ours, but while we were yet 
sinners and enemies. And since we have been reconciled to God by His death, 
much more shall we be saved by His life, so that our hope — founded on this recon- 
ciliation to God — may even acquire a tinge of exultation. 3 Our Peace, then, is an 
immediate sentiment which requires no external proof ; and our Hope is founds! on 
the love of God assured to us in three ways — namely, by Christ's death for us while 
we were yet enemies to God ; on the strength to endure afflictions and see their 
blessed issue ; and above all on union with Christ in death and life. 4 

And this universality of Sin, and universality of Justification, leads Paul 
to one of his great sketches of the religious history of humanity. To him 
that history was summed up in three great moments connected with the lives 
of Adam, Moses, and Christ, of which the mission of Moses was the least 
important. Those three names corresponded to three stages in the world's 
religious history — Promise, Law, and Faith — of which the third is the realisa- 
tion of the first. Adam was a type of Christ, and each stood as it were at 
the head of long lines of representatives. Each represents the principle of 
a whole seon. Adam's first sin developed a principle from which none of 
his posterity could be free ; and Christ introduced the possibility of a new 
and saving principle, the necessity for which had been made manifest by the 
dispensation of Moses. Here, however, as so often, the logical statement is 
incomplete and entangled, owing to the rush of the Apostle's thoughts. 6 

" So then, as by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so 
death extended to all men on the ground that all sinned," 6 he probably meant to 

1 Matt. v. 10—12 ; Acts v. 41 ; 1 Pet. iv. 13, 14 ; 2 Cor. xii. 10, 11. 

2 v. 7, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Erasmus, Calvin, Meyer, &c, make no difference 
between iya06s, "good," and SiWos, "just," as though St. Paul meant "one would 
scarcely die for a good man, though possibly one might. " It is, however, more probable 
that St. Paul meant " one would not die merely for a man of ordinary integrity, but for 
a truly good man one might even dare to die " (cf. Cic. Be Off. hi. 15). 

3 v. 11, iAAd km icavx^evoi. 4 Verses 1 — 12. 

5 1 Cor. xv. 45. The difference between Adam and Eve (1 Tim. ii. 14) was a smaller 
matter, and one which had little or no bearing on the destiny of the human being, 
whether male or female. 

6 Pages and almost volumes of controversy have been written on verse 12. e<£' <2 names 
riixaprov. Many make the c5 masc, and, referring it to Adam, render it "in whom (Aug.), 
or, "by whose means" (Grot.), or "on whose account" (Chrys.). There can, however, 
be no doubt that w is neuter (cf. 2 Cor. v. 4 ; Phil. iii. 12, iv. 10), and that it means 
neither "unto which (death)," as a filial cause, nor any variation on this meaning, but 
"inasmuch as." Since, however, the argument of St. Paul seems simply to be that sin 
was universal, and that the universality of death was a proof of this, it certainly seems 
admissible to understand^* win the universal sense of "in accordance with the fact 
that." It is here used in a larger and looser causal connection than usual. Sin and 
death are universal, and are inseparably linked together ; it might be supposed that 
where there was no law there was no sin ; it is true that sin is not fully imputed where 
there is no law ; but death entered the world through sin, and so death passed upon all 
men, " which shows that — which involves the presupposition that — all sinned." This is 
Baur's view, and if it be tenable, the discussions about "original sin," "inherent total 
depravity," &c, are irrelevant to this passage (Baur, Paul. ii. 183 — 186). Let us, at any 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 477 

add as the second half of the parallel, " so, too, by one man came justification, and 
bo life was offered to all." The conclusion of the sentence was, however, displaced 
by the desire to meet a difficulty. He had said, " all sinned," hut some one might 
object, " How so ? you have already told us that where there is no law there is no 
transgression ; how, then, could men sin between Adam and Moses ?" The answer 
is far from clear to understand. St. Paul might perhaps have referred to the law 
of nature, the transgression of which involved sin ; but what he says is that " till 
the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law." If he 
had said, " sin is not brought into prominent self-consciousness," his meaning 
would have been both clear and consistent, but the verb used (iWayeirai) does not 
admit of this sense. Perhaps we may take the word popularly to imply that " it is 
not so fully reckoned or imputed," a view which may find its illustration in our 
Lord's remark that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was less unpardonable than 
that of Chorazin and Bethsaida. It seems as if he meant to imply a distinction 
between " sin " in general, and the " transgression " of some special law or laws in 
particular. 1 "Every sin," as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "may be called a trans- 
gression in so far as it transgresses a natural law ; but it is a more serious thing to 
transgress a law both natural and written. And so, when the law was given, trans- 
gression increased and deserved greater anger." But the only proof which St. Paul 
offers that there was sin during this period is that, throughout it, death also 
reigned. 2 When, however, he passes from this somewhat obscure reply (13, 14), 
to show how Adam was a type of Christ, his meaning again becomes clear. He 
dwells first on the points of difference (15 — 18), and then on those of resemblanc 
(18, 19). The differences between the results caused by Adam and Christ are dif- 
ferences both qualitative and quantitative — both in degree and kind. 

i. By Adam's one transgression the many died, but the free grace of Christ 
abounded to the many in a far greater degree. 3 

rate, imitate St. Paul in dwelling rather on the positive than the negative side, rather on 
Christ than Adam, rather on the superabundance of grace than the origin of sin. 

1 So most of the commentators. " Sine lege potest esse quis iniquus sed non praevari- 
cator" (Augustine). Luther explains eWoyelrat, " sin is not minded " — "man achtet ihrer 
nicht." 

2 Ver. 14, "Even over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's 
transgression " — i.e., who had broken no positive direct command — whose aixaprla was 
not a definite napapaais. Dr. Schaff (Lange's Romans, p. 191, E.T.) gives a useful sketch 
of the theories about original sin and imputation. 1. The Pantheistic and Necessitarian 
makes sin inherent in our finite constitution, the necessary result of matter. 2. The 
Pelagian treats Adam's sin as a mere bad example. 3. The Pre-Adamic explains sin 
by antenatal existence, metempsychosis, &c. 4. The Augustinian — all men sinned in 
Adam (cf. Heb. vii. 9, 10). "Persona corrumpit naturam, natura corrumpit personam" 
— i.e., Adam's sin caused a sinful nature, and sinful nature causes individual sin. This 
has many subdivisions according as the imputation of Adam's sin was regarded as 
(a-) Immediate ; ()3) Mediate ; or (y) Antecedent. 5. The Fedeeal — vicarious represen- 
tation of mankind in Adam, in virtue of a one-sided {fj.ov6n\ajpop) contract of God with 
man {foedus operum, ox naturae) ; with subdivisions of (a) The Augustino-f ederal ; (/3) The 
purely federal or forensic. 6. The New England Calvinists, who deny imputation and 
distinguish between natural ability and moral inability to keep innocence. 7. The 
Armlnian, which regards hereditary corruption not as sin or guilt, but as infirmity, a 
maladive condition, &c. I ask, would Paul have been willing to enter into all these 
questions ? Have they in any way helped the cause of Christianity or deepened vital 
religion ? Can they be of primary importance, since the traces of them in Scripture are 
so slight that scarcely any two theologians entirely agree about them ? Do they tend to 
humility and charity and edification, or to "vain word-battlings "? 

3 The contrast is between plurality and unity ; the phrase " the many " (not "many," 
as in Luther and the E.Y.) does not for a moment imply any exception {e.g., Enoch, or 
Elijah). It is merely due to the fact that "all" may sometimes be "a few" (Aug.). 
"Adamus et Christus," says Bengel, "secundum rationes contrarias, conveniunt in 
positivo, differunt in comparativo." See Bentley, Sermon upon Popery {Opp. iii. 244). 
Observe the parallel between the Kplfia, Ko.Tdi<pip.a, x*p"rp a > Sucauojua, of verse 16 and the 



478 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

ii. The condemnation of the race to death sprang from the single transmission 
of one ; the sentence of acquittal was freely passed in spite of many transgressions. 

iii. By the transgression of Adam began the reign of death ; far more shall all 
who are receiving the superabundance of grace of the gift of righteousness reign 
in life by the One, Jesus Christ. But with these differences there is also a parallel 
of deeper resemblance. One transgression (Adam's sin), and one sentence of con- 
demnation on all ; one act of righteousness (Christ's death), and one justification 
which gives life to all;— by the disobedience of the one, 1 the many were made 
sinners ; 2 by the obedience of the one, the many shall be made righteous. 3 Thus 
St. Paul states the origin of sin in this passage ; but however he might have solved 
the antinomy of its generic necessity and individual origin, which he leaves unsolved, 
he would certainly have been ready to say with Pseudo-Baruch that " every one of 
us is the Adam to his own soul." 

But here once more the question recurs, What then of the Law P Is that 
divine revelation to go for nothing ? To that question St. Paul has already 
given one answer in the Epistle to the Galatians : he now gives another, 
which till explained might well have caused a shock. To the Galatians he had 
explained that the ante- Messianic period was the tirocinium of the world, and 
that during this period the Law was necessary as a psedagogic discipline. 
To the Romans he presents a new point of view, and shows that the Law 
was not merely a corrective system thrust in between the promise and its ful- 
filment,, but an essential factor in the religious development of the world. It 
appears in the new aspect of a " power of sin," in order that by creating the 
knowledge of sin it may mediate between sin and grace. The Law, he says, 
came in (the word he uses has an almost disparaging sound, 4 which probably, 
however, he did not intend) " that transgression might multiply." A terrible 
purpose indeed, and one which he subsequently explained (chap, vii.) : but 
even here he at once hastens to add that where sin multiplied, grace super- 

napaTTToiiJia, KaTaicpifia, SiKa/w/uta, and Su«aico<ra of verse 18. The distinction between these 
words seems to be as follows : — 1. fiuccu'10/u.a, actio justificativa, Rechtsfertigungsthat, the 
act which declares us just. 2. fiixaiWis, the process of justification. 3. Si/caiocrvVrj, the 
condition of being justified. Eothe quotes Arist., Eth. Nic, v. 10, where St-KaCufia is 
defined as to iravopOuixa rod a8iKrma.To<;. In verse 16, D, E, F, G, read a.p.aprq^.a.To%. 

1 Adam, says Luther, stuck his tooth, not into an apple, but into a stachel, namely, 
the Divine command. Pelagius, in his commentary on Romans (preserved in Augustine's 
works), renders fit' evb? avOpuinov, "per unum hominem, Evam/" Philo's views about the 
Fall may be seen in his Legg. Alleg. ii. 73—106. He regards gluttony and lust as the 
source of all evil, and considers that all men are born in sin, i.e., under the dominion of 
sensuality {De Mundi Opif. 37 ; Vit. Mos. iii. 675). "God made not death, but ungodly 
men with their works called it to them " ("Wisd. i. 13 — 16). 

2 In what way they were made sinners St. Paul nowhere defines. There is no 
distinctive Pelagianism, or Traducianism, here. To say with Meyer, "men were placed 
in the category of sinners because they sinned in and with Adam's fall," is, as Lange 
remarks, not exegesis, but Augustinian dogmatics. St. Paul simply accepted the uni- 
versal fact of death as a proof of the universal fact of sin, and regards death and sin 
as beginning with Adam. Beza, Bengel, Reuss, &c, understand KareaTdOrjo-av and 
KaraffToB^aovrai in an imputative sense — " regarded as sinners" — which is a defensible 
translation, and makes the parallel more complete. 

3 Vs. 12—20. 

4 v. 20, rrapeio-rjAdei/, Vulg. Subintravit, "supervened," "came in besides," cf. vpoo-ereOr), 
Gal. iii. 19. In Gal. ii. 4 the surreptitious notion of ndpa is derived from the context. 
The notion of "betweeD," "medio tempore subingressa est," is not in the word itself. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 479 

abounded, that as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through 
righteousness into life eternal, by Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 

The next chapter (vi.) is of vast importance as stating an objection which 
might well be regarded as deadly, and as showing us how best to deal with an 
apparent paradox. If grace superabounds over sin, why should we not con- 
tinue in sin ? After first throwing from him the hateful inference with a 
" Perish the thought ! " he proceeds in this chapter to prove, first in a mystic 
(vi. 1 — 15), and then in a more popular exposition (15 — 23), the moral conse- 
quences of his doctrine. In the first half of this chapter he uses the 
metaphor of death, in the latter the metaphor of emancipation, to illustrate 
the utter severance between the Christian and sin. 

Ideally, theoretically, it should be needless to tell the Christian not to sin ; he Is 
dead to sin; the very name of "elect" or "saint" excludes the entire conception 
of sin, because the Christian is "IN CHRIST." Those two words express the very 
quintessence of all that is most distinctive in St. Paul's theology, and yet they are 
identical with the leading conception of St. John, who (we are asked to believe) 
rails at him in the Apocalypse as Balaam and Jezebel, a sham Jew, and a false 
apostle ! That the two words " in Christ " sum up the distinctive secret, the 
revealed mystery of the Christian life, especially as taught by St. Paul and by St. 
John, will be obvious to any thoughtful reader. If this mystic union, to which 
both Apostles again and again recur, is expressed by St. Paul in the metaphors of 
stones in a temple of which Christ is the foundation, 2 of members of a body of 
which Christ is the head, 3 St. John records, and St. Paul alludes to, the metaphor of 
the branches and the vine, 4 and both Apostles without any image again and again 
declare that thr Christian life is a spiritual life, a supernatural life, and one which 
we can only live by faith in, by union with, by partaking of the life of the Son of 
God. 6 With both Apostles Christ is our life, and apart from Him we have no true 
life. St. Paul, again, is fond of the metaphor of wearing Christ as a garment, 
putting on Christ, putting on the new man, 7 reflecting Him with ever-brightening 
splendour. 8 In fact, the words " in Christ " and " with Christ " are his most con- 
stantly recurrent phrases. We work for Him, we live in Him, we die in Him, 
we rise with Him, we are justified by Him. We are His sheep, His scholars, His 
soldiers, His servants. 

1 v. 20, 21. The old Protestant divines thus stated the uses of the Law : — 1. Usus 
-primus, civil or political — to govern states. 2. Usus secundus, convictive or paedagogio 
— to convince us of sin. 3. Usus tertius, didactic or formative — to guide the life of a 
believer (Formula Concordme, p. 594). Dr. Schaff, in his useful additions to the trans- 
lation of Lange's Romans, points out that these three correspond to the German sentence 
that the Law is a Ziigel (1, a restraint) ; a Spiegel (2, a mirror) ; and a Riegel (3, a rod). 
The Law multiplies transgressions because — i. "Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimus 
que negata." "Ignoti nulla cupido." ii. "Because desires suppressed forcibly from 
without increase in virulence" (St. Thomas), iii. "Because suppressive rules kindle 
anger against God " (Luther). But the real end of the Law was not the multiplication 
of transgressions per se, but that the precipitation of sin might lead to its expulsion ; 
that the culmination of sin might be the introduction of grace. "Non crudefiter hoc 
fecit Deus sed ratione medicinae — augebatur morbus, crescit malitia, quaeritur medicus, 
et totum sanatur " (Aug. in Ps. cii. ). 

2 Eph. ii. 19—22 (1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Isa. xxviii. 16). 

8 Rom. xii. 5 ; Eph. iv. 16 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13, 27 ; Col. i. 18. 
4 John xv. 5 ; Rom. vi. 5 ; Phil. i. 11. 

6 2 Cor. v. 17 ; Rom. vi. 8 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; Eph. iii. 6 ; Col. iii. 3 ; John x. 28 : xiv. 19 : 
xv. 4—10 ; 1 John v. 20 ; ii. 24, &c. 

6 John iii. 27 ; v. 24 ; xi. 25 ; xiv. 20 ; Gal. Ii. 20 ; Col. iii. 4 ; 1 John i. 1 ; v. 12, &e. 
^ Gal. iii. 27 ; Rom. xiii. 14 ; Eph. iv. 24 : Col. iii. 10. 
8 2 Cor. iii. 18. 



482 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

it could not justify he saw at once, because had it been adequate to do so. 
then the death of Christ would have been superfluous. But why was it 
that the Law was thus inefficacious ? St. Paul rather indicates than clearly 
states the reason in the next chapter (viii.). It is because the Law, as re- 
gards its form, is external ; it is a command from without ; it is a letter 
which denounces sentence of death on its violators ; x it has no sympathy 
wherewith to touch the heart ; it has no power whereby to sway the will. 
" Spiritual " in one sense it is, because it is " holy, just, and good ; " but it is 
in no sense a " quickening spirit," and therefore can impart no life. And 
why ? Simply because it is met, opposed, defeated by a strong counter- 
principle of man's being — the dominion of sin in the flesh. It was " weak 
through the flesh " — that is, through the sensuous principle which dominates 
the whole man in body and soul. 2 In the human spirit, Paul perceived 
a moral spontaneity to good ; in the flesh, a moral spontaneity to evil ; 
and from these different elements results "the dualism of antagonistic 
moral principles." 3 Man's natural self-will resists the Divine determina- 
tion ; the subjective will is too strong for the objective command. Even 
if man could obey a part of the Law he could not be justified, because the 
Law laid a curse on him who did not meet all its requirements, which the 
moral consciousness knew that it could not do. 4 

ii. But St. Paul's second proposition — that the Law multiplied trans- 
gressions B — sounded almost terribly offensive. " The Law," he had already 
said in the Galatians, was added until the coming of the promised seed, 
"for the sake of 'transgressions ." 6 To interpret this as meaning "a safeguard 
against transgressions " — though from another point of view, and in another 
order of relations, this might be true 7 — is in this place an absurdity, because 
St. Paul is proving the inability of the Law to perform this function at al) 
effectually. It would, moreover, entirely contradict what he says — namely, 
that the object of the Law was the multiplication of transgressions. Apart 
from the Law, there may indeed be " sin " (a^ua/ma), although, not being 
brought into the light of self -consciousness, man is not aware of it (Rom. v. 
13 ; vii. 7) ; but he has already told us that there is not " transgression " 
(iv. 15), and there is not " imputation " (v. 13), and man lives in a state of 
relative innocence, little pained by the existence of objective evil. 8 It was, 

1 2 Cor. iii. 6. 

2 The cr<£p£ is not only the material body, but an active inherent principle, which 
influences not only the tyvxn or natural life, but even the vov<; or human spirit (Baur, 
Paul. ii. 140). 

3 Gal. v. 17 ; Pfleiderer, i. 54. To this writer I am much indebted, as well as to 
Baur and Reuss, among many others, for my views of Pauline theology. I must content 
myself with this large general acknowledgment, because they write from a standpoint 
widely different from my own, and because I find in the pages of all three writers very 
much with which I entirely disagree. 

< Gal. iii. 10 : James ii. 10. 5 Rom. v. 20. 

6 Gal. iii. 19, x°-P lv irapafido-etDV 7rpocreTe'#Tj. 

7 The usus primm or politicus of the Law — v. supra, p. 479. It is a safeguard 
againtit acts which, when the law is uttered, become transgressions. 

h To be "naked and not ashamed" is, in the first instance, the prerogative of inno- 
cence ; but it becomes ultimately the culmination of guilt. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 483 

therefore, St. Paul's painful and difficult task to sever the Law finally from 
all direct connexion with salvation, by showing that, theologically considered — 
and this was the point which to the Jew would sound so paradoxical and so 
wounding — God had expressly designed it, not for the prevention of sin, and 
the effecting of righteousness, but for the increase of sin, and the working of 
wrath. 1 It multiplied sin, because, by a psychological fact, which we cannot 
explain, but which St. Paul here exhibits with marvellous insight into human 
nature, the very existence of a commandment acts as an incitement to its 
violation (" Permission fit vile nefas ") ; and it worked wrath by forcing all 
sin into prominent self-consciousness, 2 and thus making it the source of acute 
misery ; by bringing home to the conscience that sense of guilt which is the 
feeling of disharmony with God ; by darkening life with the shadows of dread 
and self-contempt ; by creating the sense of moral death, and by giving to 
physical death its deadliest sting. 3 

iii. The third proposition — that "we are not under the Law, but under 
grace" 4 — has been already sufficiently illustrated; and it must be borne in 
mind that the object of St. Paul throughout has been to show that the true 
theological position of the Law — its true position, that is, in the Divine 
ceconomy of salvation — is to come in between sin and grace, to be an impulse 
in the process of salvation. He has already shown this, historically and exe- 
getically, in the fifth chapter, as also in Gal. iii., by insisting on the fact that 
the Law, as a supplementary ordinance, 5 cannot disannul a free promise which 
was prior to it by 430 years, and which had been sanctioned by an oath. The 
Law, then, shows (1) the impossibility of any other way of obtaining the ful- 
filment of the promise, except that of free favour ; and (2) the impossibility 
of regarding this promise as a debt (6<t>elAriiJ.a) when it was a free gift. In 
this point of view the Law fulfils the function of driving man to seek that 
justification which is possible by faith alone. Objectively and historically, 
therefore, the history of man may be regarded in four phases — Sin, Promise, 
Law, Grace — Adam, Abraham, Moses, Christ ; subjectively and individually, 
also in four phases— relative innocence, awakened consciousness, imputable 
transgression, free justification. The one is the Divine, the other is the 
human side of one and the same process ; and both find their illustration, 
though each independently of the other, in the theology of St. Paul, 6 

1 Pfleiderer, i. 81. "Whoever separates himself from the words of the Law is con- 
sumed by fire " {Babha Bathra, f . 79, 1). 

2 " The strength of sin is the Law " (1 Cor. xv. 56), because it is what it is essentially 
through man's consciousness of it. It strengthens the perception of sin, and weakens the 
consciousness of any power in the will to resist it. 

" And therefore Law was given them to evince 
Their natural pravity, by stirring up 
Sin against Law to fight ; that when they see 
Law can discover sin, hut not remove, 
Save by those shadowy expiations weak, 
The blood of bulls and goats, they may conclude 
Some blood more precious must be paid for man."— Milton, P. L. xii. 285 

The last three lines express the argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

3 Horn. iv. 15 ; vii. 10—13. < * Eom. vi. 14. * Gal. iii. 
6 Rom. v., vii. f xi. ; Gal. iii., iv. 

ff2 



482 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

it could not justify lie saw at once, because had it been adequate to do so, 
then the death of Christ would have been superfluous. But why was it 
that the Law was thus inefficacious ? St. Paul rather indicates than clearly 
states the reason in the next chapter (viii.). It is because the Law, as re- 
gards its form, is external ; it is a command from without ; it is a letter 
which denounces sentence of death on its violators ; 1 it has no sympathy 
wherewith to touch the heart ; it has no power whereby to sway the will. 
" Spiritual " in one sense it is, because it is " holy, just, and good ; " but it is 
in no sense a " quickening spirit," and therefore can impart no life. And 
why ? Simply because it is met, opposed, defeated by a strong counter - 
principle of man's being — the dominion of sin in the flesh. It was " weak 
through the flesh " — that is, through the sensuous principle which dominates 
the whole man in body and soul. 2 In the human spirit, Paul perceived 
a moral spontaneity to good; in the flesh, a moral spontaneity to evil; 
and from these different elements results " the dualism of antagonistic 
moral principles." 3 Man's natural self-will resists the Divine determina- 
tion ; the subjective will is too strong for the objective command. Even 
if man could obey a part of the Law he could not be justified, because the 
Law laid a curse on him who did not meet all its requirements, which the 
moral consciousness knew that it could not do. 4 

ii. But St. Paul's second proposition — that the Law multiplied trans- 
gressions fi — sounded almost terribly offensive. " The Law," he had already 
said in the Galatians, was added until the coming of the promised seed, 
"for the sake of transgressions ." 6 To interpret this as meaning " a safeguard 
against transgressions " — though from another point of view, and in another 
order of relations, this might be true 7 — is in this place an absurdity, because 
St. Paul is proving the inability of the Law to perform this function at alJ 
effectually. It would, moreover, entirely contradict what he says — namely, 
that the object of the Law was the multiplication of transgressions. Apart 
from the Law, there may indeed be " sin " (a/j.apr(a), although, not being 
brought into the light of self -consciousness, man is not aware of it (Rom. v. 
13 ; vii. 7) ; but he has already told us that there is not " transgression " 
(iv. 15), and there is not " imputation " (v. 13), and man lives in a state of 
relative innocence, little pained by the existence of objective evil. 8 It was, 

» 2 Cor. iii. 6. 

2 The <rap£ is not only the material body, but an active inherent principle, which 
influences not only the ^yx*J or natural life, but even the vous or human spirit (Baur, 
Paul. ii. 140). 

3 Gal. v. 17 ; Pfleiderer, i. 54. To this writer I am much indebted, as well as to 
Baur and Keuss, among many others, for my views of Pauline theology. I must content 
myself with this large general acknowledgment, because they write from a standpoint 
widely different from my own, and because I find in the pages of all three writers very 
much with which I entirely disagree. 

4 Gal. iii. 10 : James ii. 10. 5 Rom. v. 20. 

6 Gal. iii. 19, X&piv irapaflaaeoiv irpocreTeOr). 

7 The usus primus or politicus of the Law — v. supra, p. 479. It is a safeguard 
against acts which, when the law is uttered, become transgressions. 

s To be " naked and not ashamed " is, in the first instance, the prerogative of inno* 
cence ; but it becomes ultimately the culmination of guilt. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 483 

therefore, St. Paul's painful and difficult task to sever the Law finally from 
all direct connexion with salvation, by showing that, theologically considered — 
and this was the point which to the Jew would sound so paradoxical and so 
wounding — God had expressly designed it, not for the prevention of sin, and 
the effecting of righteousness, but for the increase of sin, and the working of 
wrath. 1 It multiplied sin, because, by a psychological fact, which we cannot 
explain, but which St. Paul here exhibits with marvellous insight into human 
nature, the very existence of a commandment acts as an incitement to its 
violation (" Permissum fit vile nefas ") ; and it worked wrath by forcing all 
sin into prominent self- consciousness, 2 and thus making it the source of acute 
misery ; by bringing home to the conscience that sense of guilt which is the 
feeling of disharmony with God ; by darkening life with the shadows of dread 
and self-contempt ; by creating the sense of moral death, and by giving to 
physical death its deadliest sting. 3 

iii. The third proposition — that "we are not under the Law, but under 
grace" 4 — has been already sufficiently illustrated; and it must be borne in 
mind that the object of St. Paul throughout has been to show that the true 
theological position of the Law — its true position, that is, in the Divine 
ceconomy of salvation — is to come in between sin and grace, to be an impulse 
in the process of salvation. He has already shown this, historically and exe- 
getically, in the fifth chapter, as also in Gal. iii., by insisting on the fact that 
the Law, as a supplementary ordinance, 5 cannot disannul a free promise which 
was prior to it by 430 years, and which had been sanctioned by an oath. The 
Law, then, shows (1) the impossibility of any other way of obtaining the ful- 
filment of the promise, except that of free favour ; and (2) the impossibility 
of regarding this promise as a debt (6<p€i\vfj.a) when it was a free gift. In 
this point of view the Law fulfils the function of driving man to seek that 
justification which is possible by faith alone. Objectively and historically, 
therefore, the history of man may be regarded in four phases — Sin, Promise, 
Law, Grace — Adam, Abraham, Moses, Christ ; subjectively and individually, 
also in four phases — relative innocence, awakened consciousness, imputable 
transgression, free justification. The one is the Divine, the other is the 
human side of one and the same process ; and both find their illustration, 
though each independently of the other, in the theology of St. Paul. 6 

1 Pfleiderer, i. 81. "Whoever separates himself from the words of the Law is con- 
sumed by fire " [Babha Bathra, f . 79, 1). 

2 "The strength of sin is the Law " (1 Cor. xv. 56), because it is what it is essentially 
through man's consciousness of it. It strengthens the perception of siu, and weakens the 
consciousness of any power in the will to resist it. 

" And therefore Law was given them to evince 
Their natural gravity, by stirring up 
Sin against Law to light ; that when they see 
Law can discover sin, hut not remove, 
Save by those shadowy expiations weak, 
The blood of bulls and goats, they may conclude 
Some blood more precious must be paid for man." — Milton, P. L. xii. 285 

The last three lines express the argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

3 Rom. iv. 15 ; vii. 10—13. * Ro m . vi. 14. * q^ ^ 
6 Rom. v., vii., xi. ; Gal. iii., iv. 

F F 2 



484 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

And if it be asserted, by way of modern objection to this theology, and to 
St. Paul's methods of argument and exegesis, that they suggest multitudes of 
difficulties ; that they pour new wine into old wine-skins, which burst under 
its fermentation ; that they involve a mysticising idealisation of 1,500 years of 
history and of the plain literal intention of large portions of the Old and 
New Testament Scriptures ; that Moses would have been as horrified to be 
told by St. Paul that the object of his Law was only to multiply transgres- 
sion, and intensify the felt heinousness of sin, as he is said to have been when 
in vision he saw Pabbi Akhibha imputing to him a thousand rules which he 
had never sanctioned ; that the Law was obviously given with the intention 
that it should be obeyed, not with the intention that it should be brols en ; that 
St. Paul himself has spoken in this very Epistle of " doers of the Law being 
justified," and of "works of the Law," and of "working good," and of a 
recompense for it, 1 and of "reaping what we have sown;" 2 that he has in 
every one of his Epistles urged the necessity of moral duties, not as an 
inevitable result of that union with Christ which is the Christian's life, but as 
things after which Christians should strive, and for the fulfilment of which 
they should train themselves with severe effort; 3 and that in his Pastoral 
Epistles these moral considerations, as in the Epistles of St. Peter and 
St. James, seem to have come into the foreground, 4 while the high theological 
verities seem to have melted farther into the distance — if these objections be 
urged, as they often have been urged, the answers to them are likewise mani- 
fold. We have not the smallest temptation to ignore the difficulties, though 
it would be easy by separate examination to show that to state them thus is to 
shift their true perspective. As regards St. Paul's style of argument, those 
who see in it a falsification of Scripture, a treacherous dealing with the Word 
of God, which St. Paul expressly repudiates, 5 should consider whether they 
too may not be intellectually darkened by suspicious narrowness and ignorant 
prepossessions. 6 St. Paul regarded the Scripture as the irrefragable Word of 
God, and yet, even when he seems to be attaching to mere words and sounds 
a " talismanic value," he never allows the letter of Scripture to becloud the 
illumination (<t>a)Ti<r}x6s) of spiritual enlightenment. 7 Even when he seemed to 
have the whole Pentateuch against him, he never suffered the outward expres- 
sion to enthral the emancipated idea. He knew well that one word of God 
cannot contradict another, and his allegorising and spiritualising methods — 
(which, in one form or other, are absolutely essential, since the Law speaks in 
the tongue of the sons of men, and human language is at the best but an 
asymptote to thought) — are not made the vehicle of mechanical inference or 
individual caprice, but are used in support of formative truths, of fruitful 
ideas, of spiritual convictions, of direct revelations, which are as the Eternal 

1 Rom. ii. 6—13 ; iv. 4. 2 Gal. vi. 7 ; 2 Thess. iii. 13 ; 1 Cor. xv. 58. 

» 1 Cor. ix. 25—27 ; Phil. iii. 14. 

4 Mic. vi. 12 ; 1 Tim. iv. 7, 8 ; ii. 3 ; Tit. iii. 8 ; ii. 14 ; 2 Pet. i. 10, 11 ; James ii, 
17,24. 

6 2 Cor. ii. 17, ov Ka7njA.euoj/res I 2 Cor. iv. 2, uTjSe SoAoSvres. 

« 2 Cor. iv. 1—7. * 2 Cor. iv. 4. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 485 

Temple, built within the temporary scaffolding of abrogated dispensations. 
In this way of dealing with Scripture he was indeed regarded as a blasphemer 
by a Pharisaism which was at once unenlightened and unloving ; but he was a 
direct successor of the Prophets, who dealt in a spirit of sacred independence 
with earlier revelations, 1 and with their mantle he had caught a double portion 
of their spirit. He felt that the truths his opponents characterised as " teme- 
rities " and " blasphemies " were as holy as the Trisagion of the Seraphim ; 
that his "apostasy from Moses" 2 was due to a reverence for him far deeper 
than that of his upholders, and that there was an immemorial, nay, even an 
eternal validity, in the most extreme of his asserted innovations. 

And as for apparent contradictions, St. Paul, like all great thinkers, was 
very careless of them. It is even doubtful whether they were distinctly pre- 
sent to his mind. He knew that the predestinations of the Infinite cannot be 
thrust away — as though they were ponderable dust inurned in the Columbaria 
— in the systems of the finite. He knew that in Divine as well as in human 
truths there are certain antinomies, irreconcilable by the mere understanding, 
and yet perfectly capable of being fused into unity by the divinely enlightened 
reason, or, as he would have phrased it, by the spirit of man which has been 
mystically united with the Spirit of Christ. As a scheme, as a system, as a 
theory of salvation — abstractly considered, ideally treated — he knew that his 
line of argument was true, and that his exposition of the Divine purpose was 
irrefragable, because he knew that he had received it neither from man, nor 
by any man, 3 but by the will of God. But there is a difference between the 
ideal and the actual — between the same truths regarded in their theological 
bearing as parts of one vast philosophy of the plan of salvation, and stated in 
everyday language in their immediate bearing upon the common facts of life. 
In the language of strict and accurate theology, to talk of the " merit " of 
works, and the " reward " of works, or even the possibility of "good" works, 
was erroneous ; but yet — without any of such Protestant after-thoughts as 
that these works are the fruits of unconscious faith, or that without this faith 
they cannot in any sense be good, and without dreaming of any collision with 
what he says elsewhere, and untroubled by any attempt to reconcile his state- 
ments with the doctrine of original sin— he could and did talk quite freely 
about " Gentiles doing by nature the things of the Law," and says that "the 
doer of the Law shall be justified," and that God will render to every man 
according to his works.* St. Paul would probably have treated with contempt, 
as a mere carping criticism, which allowed no room for common sense in dealing 

1 Jer. xxxi. 29. Ezek. xviii. 2 ; xx. 25, " Wherefore I gave them also statutes that 
were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live." Hos. vi. 6, "I desired 
mercy and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offering." Jer. vii. 
22, 23, "I spake not unto your fathers concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices, but this 
thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice." 

2 Acts xxi. 21, " They have been indoctrinated with the view that you teach apostasy 
from Moses." 

Gal. 1. 1, ovk air avQp&irtav, ovSe 8i' av6pu>nov. 

4 Rom. ii. 13, 14 j xiv. 10. See, too, 2 Cor, v. 10 ; Gal. vi, 7 J Eph. vi, 8 ; Col. iii 
*4, 25, 



486 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

with the truths of revelation, any attempt to show that in such passages— 
both on this and on other subjects — he appears to contradict himself. 1 He 
would very briefly, and with profound indifference, have contented himself 
with saying that his remarks in these passages are not in pari materia. 2 He 
is not there speaking or thinking at all of the doctrine of redemption. He is 
there talking about " the justification of the Law," which is a very different 
thing from " the justification by faith." He is there using general language, 
altogether irrespective of the Gospel. Protestant commentators with all their 
elaborate and varying theories — that in these works faith is included as the 
highest work; 3 that they are perfected in faith; 4 that "works will be adduced 
in the day of judgment, not as meriting salvation, but as proofs and results of 
faith ;" 5 that " the imperfect works of the sanctified will be rewarded, not on the 
ground of the Law, but on the ground of grace ; " 6 that he was mentally refer- 
ring to a " prevenient grace " over the Gentile world, and so on — are doubtless 
dogmatically right, but they are far more anxious to save St. Paul's orthodoxy 
and consistency than he would have been himself. It is at least doubtful 
whether such considerations were consciously present to his mind. He would 
have held it enough to reply that, in these passages, he was only applying 
the current language of morality to the concrete relations of actual lif e ; 7 and 
that " the doctrine of justification cannot conflict with the doctrine of God's 
righteousness by virtue of which He will reward every man according to his 
works." 8 When St. Paul was using the language of accurate theology, he 
would have shown the nullity of righteousness by works. But, in any case, 
he would have thought far more highly of the possibility of such righteous- 
ness than of the righteousness of dogmatic orthodoxy, or the righteousness of 
the letter ; the righteousness of the jealous heresy-hunter, or the righteousness 
of the religious partisan. 9 

Lastly, it will be seen how little St. Paul is troubled by the apparent para- 
doxes which result from the doctrines which he enforces. By those who 
manipulated truth to suit their own parties and purposes ; by those who huck- 
stered the Word of Life ; by those who pushed truths into extravagant infer- 
ences, and then condemned them on the ground of their possible misapplication 
— his doctrines were denounced as " dangerous ;" and we know as a fact that, 
even in his own lifetime, what he taught was made a handle for evil doctrine, 10 
and was subjected to perilous perversions. 11 When such arguments as these 
were urged against him, St. Paul treated them with entire disdain. Truth 

1 For these antinomies, which exist in theology as they exist in nature, and are com- 
plementary truths of which the harmony is to be found in the Infinite, see Excursus II. 

2 "Haec descriptio justitiae lcgis, quae nihil impedit alia dicta de justitia fidei" 
(Melancthon in Rom. ii. 13). He is here " laying down those general principles of justice, 
according to which, irrespective of the Gospel, all men are to be judged " (Hodge on 
Rom. ii. 6). 

: ' Limborch. 4 Luthardt. 5 Gerhard. 6 Stuart. 

7 Baur, N. Test. Theol. 181 ; Pfleiderer, i. 78. 8 Lange on Rom. ii. 6—10. 

9 Lehrgerechtigkeit ; Buchstabende Echtigkeit, Negationsgerechtigkeit, Parteigerech- 
tigkeit (Lange, ubi supra). 

W Rom. iii. 8. n 2 Pet. Ui. 16, OTpe/3Aov<riy . , , wpbs ri\v ISiay avTUiV anmteia*. 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 487 

may be wrested, truth may be distorted, truth may be made an instrument ol 
self-destruction — but truth is truth, and can take care of itself, and needs no 
"lying for God" to serve as its buttress. 1 The doctrine of free grace might 
be, and was, quoted in the cause of antinomianism, and degraded into a justi- 
fication of sensuality. The predominance of grace over sin was twisted into a 
reason for doing evil that good might come. The hope of future forgiveness 
was pleaded as a ground for continuing in sin. Well, let it be so. The ocean 
of truth did not cease to be an ocean because here and there a muddy river of 
error flowed stealthily in its tides. In answer to the moral perversity which 
abused truth into an occasion of wickedness, St. Paul thought it sufficient to 
appeal to the right feeling of mankind. If a man chooses to pervert a Divine 
and gracious doctrine into a " dangerous downfall," he does so at his own 
peril. Evil inferences St. Paul merely repudiates with a " God forbid ! " 2 — of 
malignant misinterpreters he thought it enough to say that " their condemna- 
tion was just ! " 3 

After these preliminary considerations we are in a position to proceed 
uninterruptedly with our sketch of the Epistle, since we are now in possession 
of its main conceptions. Proceeding then to a further expansion of his 
views respecting the Law, and speaking (chap, vii.) to those who know it, 
the Apostle further enforces the metaphor that the Christian is dead to his 
past moral condition, and has arisen to a new one. A woman whose 
husband is dead is free to marry again; we are dead to the Law, and 
are therefore free to be united to Christ. Obviously the mere passing 
illustration must not be pressed, because if used as more than an illustration 
it is doubly incomplete — incomplete because the word " dead " is here used 
in two quite different senses; and because, to make the analogy at all 
perfect, the Law ought to have died to us, and not we to the Law. But 
St. Paul merely makes a cursory use of the illustration to indicate that the 
new life of the Christian involves totally new relationships; 4 that death 
naturally ends all legal obligations; and that our connexion with the risen 
Christ is so close that it may be compared to a conjugal union. Hence our 
whole past condition, alike in its character and its results, is changed, and a 
new Law has risen from the dead with our new life — a Law which we 
must serve in the newness of the spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. 
He who is dead to sin is dead to the Law, because the Law can only 
reign so long as sin reigns, and because Christ in His crucified body has 
destroyed the body of sin. 5 

But St. Paul is conscious that in more than one passage he has placed the 
Law and Sin in a juxtaposition which would well cause the very deepest 

1 Job xiii. 7, 8. 

8 Rom. iii. 4, 6, 31 ; vi. 2, 15 ; vii. 7, &c. ; Gal. ii. 17 ; iii. 21 ; vi. 14 ; 1 Cor. vi. 15. 

« Rom. iii. 8. * 2 Cor. xi. 2 ; Eph. v. 25. 

6 vii. 1 — 6. The very harshness of the construction anoOavovTes «/ <S ("by dying to 
that in which we were held fast ") seems to make it more probable than the tou Oavirov of 
D, E, F, G. The E.V, renders iiroOavovros, the unsupported conjecture of Beza, or 
Erasmus. 



488 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

offence. To show his meaning he enters on a psychological study, of which 
the extreme value has always been recognised entirely apart from its place 
in the scheme of theology. Here he writes as it were with his very heart's 
blood ; he dips his pen in his inmost experience. He is not here dealing 
with the ideal or the abstract, but with the sternest facts of actual daily 
life. There have been endless discussions as to whether he is speaking of 
himself or of others ; whether he has in view the regenerate or the unre- 
generate man. Let even good men look into their own hearts and answer. 
Ideally, the Christian is absolutely one with Christ, and dead to sin; in 
reality, as again and again St. Paul implies even of himself, his life is a 
warfare in which there is no discharge. There is an Adam and a Christ 
in each of us. " The angel has us by the hand, and the serpent by the 
heart." The old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon. 1 Here, then, 
be explains, from a knowledge of his own heart, confirmed by the knowledge 
of every heart, that the Law, though not the cause of sin, is yet the occa- 
sion of it ; and that there are in every human being two laws — that is, two 
opposing tendencies — which sway him from time to time, and in greater or 
less degree in opposite directions. And in this way he wrote an epitome 
of the soul's progress. When we have once realised that the "I" of the 
passage is used in different senses — sometimes of the flesh, the lower nature, 
in the contemplation of which St. Paul could speak of himself as the chief 
of sinners ; sometimes of the higher nature, which can rise to those full 
heights of spiritual life which he has been recently contemplating; some- 
times generically of himself as a member of the human race — it is then 
easy to follow his history of the soul. 

The Law is not sin— Heaven forbid! — but it provokes disobedience, 2 and it 
creates the consciousness of sin. Without it there is sin indeed, but it is dead ; in 
other words, it is latent and unrecognised. That is the age of fancied innocence, 
of animal irreflective life, of a nakedness which is not ashamed. But it is a condi- 
tion of "immoral tranquillity" which cannot be permanent ; of misplaced confidence 
which causes many an aberration from duty. When the blind tendency of wrong 
becomes conscious of itself by collision with a direct command, then sin acquires 
fresh life at the expense of that misery and shame which is spiritual death. 3 Thus 
sin, like Satan, disguises itself under the form of an angel of light, and seizes the 
opportunity furnished by the command which in itself is holy, just, and good, 4 to 
utterly deceive and to slay me. 5 

1 " Our little lives are kept in equipoise 

By struggles of two opposite desires : 
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 
And the more noble instinct that aspires." 

2 Of this thought there are many interesting classical parallels. Liv. xxxiv. 4 : 
" Parricidae cum lege coeperunt, et illis facinus poena monstravit." Sen. De Clem. i. 23 : 
" Gens humana ruit per vetitum et nefas." Hor. i. 3 : " Quod licet ingratum est, quod 
non licet acrius urit." Ov. Amor. ii. 19, &c. : "The Law produces reflection on the 
forbidden object, curiosity, doubt, distrust, imagination, lust, susceptibility of the seed 
of temptation and of seduction, and finally rebellion — the napd^aais (Lange). 

3 " Mors peccati vita est hominis ; vita peccati mors hominis " (Calvin). " By the 
jetscr hard " (the evil impulse), says Kabbi Simeon Ben Lakish, "is meant the angel of 
death " (Tholuck). 

4 Holy in its origin, just in its requirements, good in its purpose, 6 vii. 7 — X2 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL 489 

" What ? " one may ask, " did that which is good become death to me ? " Nay, 
but sin by means of that which was good effected my death, because by means of the 
commandment sin's exceeding sinfulness was dragged into recognition. How came 
this ? It came out of the struggle of the higher and the lower elements of our being ; 
out of the contest between my fleshenand servile nature 1 and the Law's spirituality 
of origin, — the result of which is that I am two men in one, and live two lives in 
one, not doing what I desire, and doing what I detest. In me — that is, in my flesh 
— dwelleth no good thing ; but I am not my flesh. I identify my own individuality 
with that higher nature which wills what is noble, but is too often defeated by the 
indwelling impulses of sin. 2 My true self, my inward man, 3 delights in the law of 
God; but my spirit, my intellect and my reason are in constant warfare with 
another law — a sensual impulse of my fleshy nature — which often reduces me into 
the bondage of its prison-house. Wretched duality of condition which makes my 
life a constant inconsistency ! Wretched enchainment of a healthy, living organism 
to a decaying corpse ! Who shall rescue me from these struggles of a disintegrated 
individuality P 

" Thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord ! " It is a sign of the intensity 
of feeling with which he is writing that he characteristically omits to mention the 
very thing for which he thanks God. But the words " through Jesus Christ our 
Lord " sufficiently show that his gratitude is kindled by the conviction that the deli- 
verance is possible — that the deliverance has been achieved. 4 1, my very self — the 
human being within me 6 — serve with my mind the law of God. Through my 
weakness, my inconsistency, my imperfect faith, my imperfect union with Christ, I 
still serve with my flesh the law of sin ; 6 but that servitude is largely weakened, is 
practically broken. There is no condemnation for those who by personal union 
with Christ 7 live in accordance with the Spirit. Sin is slavery and death ; the 
Spirit is freedom and life. The Law was rendered impotent by the flesh, but God, 
by sending His own Son in the form of sinful flesh 8 and as a sin-offering, 9 con- 

1 vii. 14. o-ap/civbr, " flesh en," cameus ; vapKiKhs, "fleshly," carnalis. The former is 
here the true reading, and involves (of course) less subjection to the flesh than the latter. 

2 The most commonly-quoted of the classic parallels is Ovid's " Video meliora pro- 
boque, Deteriora sequor " {Met. vii. 19). The nearest is 6 ixev OeKet. (6 <ip.apTaiw) ou Troiet koI 
6 /ultj 0e'A.ei Timet. Au'o yap cra</>a>? ex<«> \jruxas (Xen. Cyr. vi. 1). Chrysostom calls ver. 21 
Aerate? eiprjju.eVov, but the obscurity is only caused by the trajection of on, which involves 
the repetition of Ipoi. It means "I find, then, the law that evil is close at hand to me 
when my will is to do good." 

3 Cf. 1 Pet. hi. 4. 6 /cpum-os -rijs *ap8tas dvflpajTTo?. German writers speak of the 

" pseudo-plasmatic man" with his vovs Trjs aapKos, (j>p6m)fxa rfj? crap/co?, crcojU.a ttj? aju.apTias, 

co/j-os ev tois p-e'Xeo-i, crap£, &c. Schuh. Patholoyie und Therapie des Pseudo-plasmen, 18. 
"This double personality is a dethronement of the eytb in favour of the ajaaprta." 

4 Instead of "I thank God" (evxapioru)), the easier, and therefore less probable reading, 
of D, E, F, G is ri x«pts rov ®eov, or KvpCov. More probable is the x<*pis tw 0e&> of B and the 
Sahidic. 

5 vii. 25, avrbs eyw. I believe this to be the true meaning, though many reject it. 
St. Paul is speaking in his own person, not by nerao-xwaTio-nos (see 1 Cor. iv. 6). An 
"infection of nature " remains even in the regenerate (Art. ix.). . . 

6 There is a determining power in the "flesh " which Paul calls " a law in the members," 
and which by its predominance becomes " a law of sin." This is opposed by the rational 
principle, the vov? or human irvev^a — the eaw avflpomos — the higher spiritual consciousness, 
which can however never, by itself, invade and conquer the flesh. Its power is rather 
potential than actual. Reason is the better principle in man, but the flesh is the stronger. 
It is not the Divine nvevfia. Nothing but union with Christ can secure to the voCs the 
victory over the crap£ (Baur, Paul. ii. 146). 

« viii. 1. " Christus in homine, ubi fides in corde " (Aug.). The true reading is, 
"There is, then, now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus." The rest of the verse 
is a gloss. 

8 Lit., "in a flesh-likeness of sin." 

* trepl a/Japriaus " as a sin-offering " riKT^n, chattOth. Lev. XVi. 5 : A^erac Sub x^apovs 



490 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

demned to death * the victorious power of sin in the flesh, and so enabled us, by a 
spiritual life, to meet the otherwise impossible requirements of the Law. Our life 
is no longer under the dominion of the flesh, which obeys the la w of sin, but of the 
spirit. 2 The death of Christ has, so to speak, shifted the centre of gravity of our 
will. If Christ be in us, the body indeed is still liable to death because of sin, but 
the spirit — our own spiritual life — (he does not say merely 'contains the elements of 
life,' but in his forcible manner) — is life, because of the righteousness implanted by 
the sanctifying Spirit of God. If that Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead dwell 
in us, He who raised Christ from the dead will also quicken us to full life, partially 
but progressively here, but triumphantly and finally beyond the grave. 3 And even 
here, in a measure, we attain to the "life of the spirit." Never, indeed, can we 
fulfil the whole Law (G-al. iii. 10) ; but for the quantitative is substituted a quali- 
tative fulfilment, and the " totality of the disposition contains in itself the totality 
of the Law." In that stage life becomes life indeed. The " law of the spirit " is 
the " law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." 

This, then, shows us the true law, and the final issue of our lives. If we are led 
by the Spirit of God we are the sons of God, and the spirit of fear becomes the spirit 
of sonship, and the cry of slavery the cry of confident appeal to a Father in heaven. 
Thus we become joint-heirs with Christ ; and, therefore, to share His glory we must 
share His sufferings. The full glory of that sonship is to be ours beyond the grave, 
and in comparison with it the sufferings of this life are nothing. The life of all 
creation is now in anguish, in bondage, in corruption, yearning for a freedom which 
shall be revealed when we too have entered on the full glory of our inheritance as 
the children of God. We, though we have the first-fruits of the spirit, share in the 
groaning misery of nature, as it too shares in inarticulate sympathy with our 
impatient aspirations. We live, we are saved BY HOPE, and the very idea of 
Hope is the antithesis of present realisation. 4 

Hope is not possession, is not reality ; it can but imply future fruition; it is Faith 
in Christ directed to the future. But we have something more and better than 
Hope. We have the help in weakness, the intercession even in prayer that can find 
no utterance, of the Holy Spirit Himself. We know, too, that all things work 
together for good to all them that love God and are called according to His purpose. 
He ends the Divine work that He begins. Election — predestination to conformity 
and brotherhood with Christ — vocation — justification — these four steps all follow, 
all must inevitably follow each other, and must end in glorification. So certain is 
this glorification, this entrance into the final fulness of sonship and salvation, that 
St. Paul — with one of those splendid flashes of rhetoric which, like all true rhetoric, 
come directly from the intensities of emotion, and have nothing to do with the tech- 
nicalities of art — speaks of it in the same past tense which he has employed for every 
other stage in the process. Those whom He foreknew, 6 predestined, called, justified 
— them He also glorified. 6 

" What shall we then say to these things ?" What, but that magnificent burst 

wtpi a/xapTtar. Ps. xl. 7 : nepl ajuapnaf ovk. jjT7j(rav (Heb. X. 5). Lev. iv. 25 : otto toO at/utaTW 
tov tt)s afiaprias. 

1 Kare'icpivev, "condemned to execution" (Matt, xxvii. 13). 

2 Ver. 6. On the ^po^p-a -Hj? o-apicb?, see Art. ix. Philo also dwells strongly on the 
impotence of man apart from Divine grace (Legg. Alleg. i. 48, 55, 101). 

3 vii. 13— viii. 11. The change from tow eyeipavTo? 'l-qaovv to o t-yei'pa? tov Xpio-Tov is 

remarkable. " Appellatio Jesu spectat ad ipsum, Christi refertur ad nos " (Bengel, viii. 1) 
partly resumes the subject of v. 11 after the separate points handled in v. 12 — 21 ; 
vi. 1—23 ; vii. 1—6, 7—25. 

* viii. 18—25. 

■ r ' There are four explanations of " foreknew," and each is claimed alike by Calvinists 
and Arminians ! (Tholuck.) But, "in the interpretation of Scripture, if we would feel 
as St. Paul felt, or think as he thought, we must go back to that age in which the water 
of life was still a running stream." 

b viii. 2G— aa 



PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 491 

of confidence and rapture 2 which we will not degrade by the name of peroration, 
because in St. Paul no such mere artificiality of construction is conceivable, but 
which fitly closes this long and intricate discussion, in which he has enunciated 
truths never formulated since the origin of the world, but never to be forgotten till 
its final conflagration. The subtleties of dialectic, the difficulties of polemical argu- 
ment, the novelties of spiritualising exegesis, are concluded; and, firm in his own 
revealed conviction, he has urged upon the conviction of the world, and fixed in the 
conviction of Christians for ever, the deepest truths of the G-ospel entrusted to his 
charge. "What remains but to give full utterance to his sense of exultation in spite 
of earthly sufferings, and " to reduce doubt to absurdity" by a series of rapid, eager, 
triumphant questions, which force on the minds of his hearers but one irresistible 
answer ? In spite of all the anguish that persecution can inflict, in spite of all the 
struggles which the rebellious flesh may cause, " we are more than conquerors 
through Him that loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor 
angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor 
depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us for a moment 2 from 
God's love manifested towards us in Christ Jesus our Lord." In spite of failure, 
in spite of imperfection, our life is united with the life of Christ, our spirit quick- 
ened by the Spirit of Christ, and what have we to fear if all time, and all space, and 
all nature, and all the angels of heaven, and all the demons of hell, are utterly 
powerless to do us harm ? 3 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 



"Everything is foreseen, and free will is given. And the world is judged by 
grace, and everything is according to work." — It. Akhibha in Pirke Abhkh, iii. 24. 
'Op$$ Sri ov (pvcreeos oi»5e v\iKrjs avdyKrjs tcrrl to slvai XP V(T0 ^ V % offrpdicivov a\\k 
tt)s rjfxerepas Trpoaipeo~e(i>s. — Chrys. ad 2 Tim. ii. 21. 

" Reasoned high 
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wandering mazes lost." 

Milton, Paradise Lost y ii. 
" Soil ich dir die Gegend Zeigen 
Musst du erst das Dach besteigen." — Gothe. 

We now come to the three memorable chapters (ix., x.. xi.) in which St. Paul 
faces the question which had, perhaps, led him to state to the Jews and Gen- 
tiles of Rome the very essence of his theology. He has told them " his 
Gospel" — that revealed message which he had to preach, and by virtue of 

1 Compare the outburst in 1 Cor. xv. 54. "In fact, as verses 19 — 23 may be called 
a sacred elegy, so we may term 31 — 39 a sacred ode ; that is as tender and fervent as tkii 
is bold and exalted — that, an amplification of "we do groan being burdened" (2 Cor. 
v. 4) ; this, a commentary on " this is the victory that overcometh the world " (1 John 
v. 4). Philippi, ad loc. 

2 viii. 39, x«»ptcrat. 

* Compare this rapture of faith and hope with the aching despair of materialism. 
" To modern philosophical unbelief the beginning of the world, as well as its end, is sunk 
in mist and night, because to it the centre of the world — the historical Christ — is sunk 
in mist and night" (Lange). The time was ripe for the recognition of a deliverer. Plato 
and Seneca had clearly realised and distinctly stated that man was powerless to help 
himself from his own misery and sin. (Sen. Ep. 53. Cf. Tac. Ann. iii. 18 : Cic. De Off, 
L 4, 18.) 



492 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

which he was the Apostle of the Gentiles. He has shown that Jews and 
Gentiles were equally guilty, equally redeemed. The Redemption was achie red ; 
but only by faith, in that sense of the word which he has so fully explained, 
could its blessings be appropriated. Alas ! it was but too plain that while the 
Gentiles were accepting this great salvation, and pressing into the Kingdom of 
Heaven, the Jews were proudly holding aloof, and fatally relying on a system 
now abrogated, on privileges no longer exclusive. Their national hopes, their 
individual hopes, were alike based on a false foundation, which it has been the 
Apostle's duty inexorably to overthroAv. Their natural exclusiveness he meets 
by the unflinching principle that there is no favouritism with our Heavenly 
Father; he meets their attempts after a legal righteousness by proving to 
them that they, like the Gentiles, are sinners, that they cannot attain a legal 
righteousness, and that no such endeavour can make them just before God. 
Obviously he was thus brought face to face with a tragic fact and a terrible 
problem. The fact was that the Jews were being rejected, that the Gentiles 
were being received. Even thus early in the history of Christianity it had 
become but too plain that the Church of the future would be mainly a Church 
of Gentiles, that the Jewish element within it would become more and more 
insignificant, and could only exist by losing its Judaic distinctiveness. The 
problem was, how could this be, in the face of those immemorial promises, in 
the light of that splendid history ? Was God breaking His promises ? Was 
God forgetting that they were " the seed of Abraham His servant, the children 
of Jacob whom He had chosen P " x To this grave question there was (1) a 
theologic answer, and (2) an historic answer. (1) The theologic answer was — 
that acceptance and rejection are God's absolute will, and in accordance with 
His predestined election to grace or wrath. (2) The historic answer was — that 
the rejection of the Jews was the natural result of their own obstinacy and 
hardness. The two answers might seem mutually irreconcilable ; but St. Paul, 
strong in faith, in inspiration, in sincerity, never shrinks from the seeming 
oppositions of an eternal paradox. He often gives statements of truth 
regarded from different aspects, without any attempt to show that they are, to 
a higher reason than that of man, complementary, not (as they appear) contra- 
dictory, of each other. Predestination is a certain truth of reason and of 
revelation ; free will is a certain truth of revelation and of experience. They 
are both true, yet they seem mutually exclusive, mutually contradictory. The 
differences between Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians do not really touch 
the question ; God's foreknowledge is always recognised, but in no way does it 
solve the difficulty of the absolute decree. If we say that St. Paul is here 
mainly arguing about great masses of men, about men in nations, and the 
difference between Jews and Gentiles, that is partially true; but he most 

1 " Who hath not known passion, cross, and travail of death, cannot treat of foreknow- 
ledge without injury and inward enmity towards God. "Wherefore, take heed that thou 
drink not wine while thou art yet a sucking babe " (Luther). He also said, " The ninth 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is the ninth. Learn first the eight chapters which 
precede it." 



PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 493 

definitely recognises the case of individuals also, and God is the God not only 
of nations, but of individuals. In any case, this sacrifice of the individual to 
the interests of the mass would be but a thrusting of the difficulty a little 
further back. The thought that many, though Edomites, will be saved, and 
many, though of Israel, will be lost, may make the antenatal predilection for 
Israel and detestation of Esau less startling to us, and it is quite legitimate 
exegetically to soften, by the known peculiarities of Semitic idiom, the painful 
harshness of the latter term. But even then we are confronted with the pre- 
destined hardening of Pharaoh's heart. St. Paul recognises — all Scripture 
recognises — the naturalness of the cry of the human soul ; but the remorseless 
logic of a theology which is forced to reason at all about the Divine prescience 
can only smite down the pride of finite arguments with the iron rod of revealed 
mysteries. Man is but clay in the potter's hands. God is omnipotent ; God 
is omniscient ; yet evil exists, and there is sin, and there is death, and after 
death the judgment ; and sin is freely forgiven, and yet we shall receive the 
things done in the body, and be judged according to our works. All things 
end in a mystery, and all mysteries resolve themselves into one — the existence 
of evil. But, happily, this mystery need in no way oppress us, for it is lost in 
the Plenitude of God. The explanation of it has practically nothing to do 
with us. It lies in a region wholly apart from the facts of common life. 
When St. Paul tells us "that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that 
runneth," he is dealing with one order of transcendental ideas ; but when he 
comes to the common facts of Christian life, he bids us will, and he bids us 
ran, and he bids us work out our own salvation with fear and trembling ; 
exactly as he tells us that justification is of faith alone, and not of works, and 
yet constantly urges us to good works, and tells us that God will reward every 
man according to his works. 1 Beyond this we cannot get. " Decretum 
horribile fateor," said Calvin, " at tamen verum." Theology must illustrate 
by crushing analogies its irreversible decrees, but it cannot touch the sphere of 
practical experience, or weaken the exhortations of Christian morality. God 
predestines ; man is free. How this is we cannot say ; but so it is. St. Paul 
makes no attempt to reconcile the two positions. " Neither here nor anywhere 
else does he feel called upon to deal with speculative extremes. And in what- 
ever way the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and 
moral self-determination are both involved in the immediate Christian self- 
consciousness." 2 The finite cannot reduce the infinite to conditions, or express 
by syllogisms the mutual relations of the two. The truths must be stated, 
when there is need to state them, although each of them belongs to separate 
orders of ideas. Since they cannot be reconciled, they must be left side by 
side. It is an inevitable necessity, implied throughout all Scripture, that, as 
regards such questions, the sphere of dogma and the sphere of homily should 
often be regarded as though they were practically separate from each other, 

1 oTroSiSovat (Kom. ii. 6: 2 Tim. iv. 8); avTewroSoo-is (Col. iii. 24); juatfbs (1 Cor. iii. 8; 
ix. 17), &e. 

« Baur, Paul. ii. 259. 



494 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

though in reality they intersect each other. And the reason of this is that 
both are enclosed in the circumference of a sphere by far more vast — that 
sphere of the Divine, of which for us the centre is everywhere, and the 
circumference, not indeed " nowhere," but immeasurably beyond our ken. 1 
This is one comfort. And again, just as St. Paul refuses to find the sub- 
stantial essence of morality anywhere but in the inmost disposition, so he does 
away with the individual ego by raising it to the universal ego — to that 
humanity which is present, and is identified with itself, in every separate 
individual. 2 It is unquestionable that he categorically asserts, and that 
without limitations, the redemption of the universe and of the race. 3 In that 
thought, and in the thought of God's infinite love, lies the gleam of light 
in the saddest destinies or the most perplexed enigmas of the individual. 
The logical conclusions of an exaggerated dogmatism are rectified by the 
unchangeable certainties of moral conviction, and the inspired hopes of a 
child-like love. 

" Ah, truly," says Reuss, 4 " if the last word of the Christian revelation 
is contained in the image of the potter and the clay, it is a bitter derision 
of all the deep needs and legitimate desires of a soul aspiring towards its 
God. This would be at once a satire of reason upon herself, and the suicide 
of revelation." But it is neither the last word, nor the only word; nor 
has it any immediate observable bearing on the concrete development of 
our lives. It is not the only word, because in nine-tenths of Scripture it 
is as wholly excluded from the sphere of revelation as though it had been 
never revealed at all; and it is not the last word, because throughout the 
whole of Scripture, and nowhere more than in the writings of the very 
Apostle who has faced this problem with the most heroic inflexibility, we 
see bright glimpses of something beyond. How little we were intended to 
draw logical conclusions from the metaphor, is shown by the fact that we 
are living souls, not dead clay ; and St. Paul elsewhere recognised a power, 
both within and without our beings, by which, as by an omnipotent alchemy, 
mean vessels can become precious, and vessels of earthenware be transmuted 
into vessels of gold. 5 Yessels fitted for destruction may be borne with 
much long-suffering. Apparent loss is made the immediate instrument of 
wider gain. Partial rejection is to pave the way for universal acceptance. 
God wills the salvation of all. 6 Where sin abounds, there grace super- 
abounds. 7 God giveth freely to all, and freely calleth all, and His gifts 
and calling are without repentance. Israel is rejected, Israel in part is 
hardened, yet "all Israel shall be saved." 8 "God shut up all into 

1 The Rabbis, to avoid even the most distant semblance of irreverent anthropo- 
morphism, often spoke of God as Ha-Makdm, "the place ; " and it is one of their grand 
sayings that "the Universe is not the place of God, but God is the Place of the 
Universe." 

2 Baur, Three Centuries, p. 32. 

• See Rom. viii. 19—24 ; xi. 32 ; 1 Tim. ii. 3— £ (Acts iii. 21 ; Rev. xxi. 4 ; xxii. 3). 
« TheoL Chrit. ii. 115. 

* 2 Tim. ii 21. « 1 Tim. ii. 4 ; Tit. ii. 11 ; 2 Pet iii. 9. 
1 Rom. v. 20, 21. 8 Rom. xi. 26. 



PREDESTINATION AND FREE WIW,. 495 

disobedience, that He might pity all." 1 The duality of election resolves 
itself into the higher unity of an all-embracing counsel of favour ; and the 
sin of man, even through the long Divine oeconomy of the ceons, is seen to 
be but a moment in the process towards that absolute end of salvation, 
which is described as the time when God shall be " all things in all things," 
and therefore in all men; and when the whole groaning and travailing 
creation shall be emancipated into " the freedom of the glory of the children 
of God." 2 If disobedience has been universal, so too is mercy ; and Divine 
mercy is stronger and wider, and more infinite and more eternal, than human 
sin. Here, too, there is an antinomy. St. Paul recognises such a thing as 
u perdition ; " there are beings who are called " the perishing." 3 There are 
warnings of terrible significance in Scripture and in experience. But may we 
not follow the example of St. Paul, who quite incontestably dwells by prefer- 
ence upon the wide prospect of infinite felicity; who seems always lost in the con- 
templation of the final triumph of all good ? However awful may be the future 
retribution of sinful lives, we still cannot set aside — what true Christian would 
wish to set aside? — the Scriptures, which say that " as in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive ; " that all things tend " unto God," as all 
tilings are from Him and by Him ; 4 that Christ shall reign until He hath put 
all enemies under His feet, and that the last which shall be destroyed is death. 5 

Let us, then, see more in detail how the Apostle deals with a fact so shock- 
ing to every Jew as the deliberate rejection of Israel from every shadow of 
special privilege in the kingdom of God ; let us see how he proves a doctrine 
against which, at first sight, it might well have seemed that the greater part 
of the Old Testament and 1,500 years of history were alike arrayed. 

It should be observed that in his most impassioned polemic he always 
unites a perfect conciliatoriness of tone with an absolute rigidity of statement. 
If he must give offence, he is ready to give offence to any extent, so far as the 
offence must inevitably spring from the truth which it is his sacred duty to 
proclaim. Doubtless, too, much that he said might be perverted to evil 
results ; be it so. There are some who abuse to evil purposes God's own 
sunlight, and who turn the doctrine of forgiveness into a curse. Are we to 
quench His sunlight ? are we to say that He does not forgive ? Some Jews 
were, doubtless, dangerously shaken in all their convictions by the pro- 
clamation of the Gospel, as some Pomanists were by the truths of the 
Reformation. Is error to be immortal because its eradication is painful ? Is 
the mandrake to grow, because its roots shriek when they are torn out of the 
ground ? Or is it not better, as St. Gregory the Great said, that a scandal 
should be created than that truth should be suppressed ? There is no style of 

1 Rom. xi. 32. 

s 1 Cor. xv, 22 ; Rom. xi. 15—36 ; viii. 19—23. See Baur, First Three Centuries, 
p. 72 ; Pfleiderer, ii. 256, 272—275 ; Reuss, Thiol. Chret. ii. 23, seqq. 

3 'A7roAAvVevot. This word does not mean "the lost," a phrase which does not exist 
io Scripture, but "the perishing." 

4 Boin. xi. 36 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; Col. i. 16, 17. 

* 1 Cor. xv. 25— 28; Eph. i. 20-22 ; 2 Tim. i. 10 (Matt. xi. 27 ; Heb. ii. 8, 14). 



496 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL 

objection to the proclamation of a new or a forgotten trut Ii which is so false, 
so faithless, and so futile, as the plea that it is " dangerous." But one duty 
is incumbent on all who teach what they believe to be the truths of God. It 
is that they should state them with all possible candour, courtesy, forbearance, 
considerateness. The controversial method of St. Paul furnishes the most 
striking contrast to that of religious controversy in almost every age. It is 
as different as anything can be from the reckless invective of a Jerome c r of a 
Luther. It bears no relation at all to the unscrupulousness of a worldly 
ecclesiasticism. It is removed by the very utmost extreme of distance from 
the malice of a party criticism, and the Pharisaism of a loveless creed. 

Thus, though he knows that what he has to enforce will be most un- 
palatable to the Jews, and though he knows how virulently they hate him, how 
continuously they have thwarted his teaching and persecuted his life, he begins 
with an expression of love to them so tender and so intense, that theologians 
little accustomed to an illimitable unselfishness felt it incumbent upon them 
to explain it away. 

" I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the 
Holy Spirit, that I have great grief and incessant anguish in my heart ; " and then, 
in the intensity of his emotion, he omits to state the cause of his grief, because it is 
sufficiently explained by what follows and what has gone before. It is grief at the 
thought that Israel should be hardening their hearts against the Gospel. " For I 
could have wished my own self to be anathema from Christ 1 on behalf of my 
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, seeing that they are Israelites, whose 
is the adoption, 2 and the Shechinah,3 and the covenants, and the legislation, and the 
ritual, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to 
the flesh, who is over all — God blessed for ever. Amen." 4 On his solemn appeal 
to the fact of his readiness even to abandon all hopes of salvation if thereby he could 
save his brethren, I think it only necessary to say that the very form in which it is 

» Dnn, Deut. vii. 46; Zech. xiv. 11; Gal. i., 8, 9; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xvi. 22. Strong 
natures have ever been capable of braving even the utmost loss for a great end. " If not, 
blot me, I pray thee, out of the book which Thou hast written " (Ex. xxxii. 32). "Que 
mon nom soit fletri," said Danton, "pourvu que la France soit libre." "Let the name 
of George Whitefield perish if God be glorified." 

2 2 Cor. vi. 18. 3 Ex. xvi. 10 ; 1 Sam. iv. 22, &c. (LXX.) 

4 Rom. ix. 1 — 5. On the punctuation of this last verse a great controversy has arisen. 
Many editors since the days of Erasmus (and among them Lachmann, Tischendorf, 
Kiickert, Meyer, Fritzsche) put the stop at " flesh ;" others at "all" (Locke, Baum- 
garten, Crusius) ; and regard the concluding words as a doxology to God for the grandest 
of the privileges of Israel. In favour of this j>unctuation is the fact that Paul, even in 
his grandest Christological passages, yet nowhere calls Christ, " God over all," nor ever 
applies to Him the word evAoyrj-rds. (See i. 25; 1 Cor. iii. 23 ; viii. 6 ; 2 Cor. i. 3 ; xi. 31 ; 
Eph. i. 17 ; iv. 6 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5, &c.) But, on the other hand, a doctrinal ana£ keySfievw 
may, as Lange says, mark a culminating point ; and having regard (i. ) to the langxiage 
which Paul uses (Phil. ii. 6 ; Col. i. 15 ; ii. 9 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4), and (ii.) to the 
grammatical structure of the sentence, and (iii.) to the position of evAoyrji-b? (which in 
doxologies in the New Testament stands always first), and (iv.) to the unanimity of all 
ancient commentators, and (v.) to the fact that the clause probably alludes to Ps. lxvii. 19 
(LXX.), and in Eph. iv. 8, St. Paul quotes the previous verse of this Psalm, and applies 
it to Christ, — the punctuation of our received text can hardly be rejected. Yet there is 
weight in Baur's remark that Kara a-apKa is added to show that it is as only "after the 
flesh" that the Jews could claim the birth of the Messiah, and that the "God over all 
blessed for ever " would have been allowing too much to Jewish particularism. (Cf. 
GaL iv. 4, yevopevcx; ex yvvaticos.) For a full examination of the question, I may refer to 
my papers on the text in the Expositor, 1879. 



PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 497 

expressed shows Ms sense that such a wish is hy the very nature of things 
impossible. Further explanation is superfluous to those who feel how natural, how 
possible, is the desire for even this vast self-sacrifice to the great heart of a Moses 
or a Paul. 

"Not, however, as though the Word of God has failed." 1 This is the point 
which St. Paul has to prove, and he does it by showing that God's gifts are matters 
of such free choice that the Jew cannot put forward any exclusive claim to their 
monopoly. 

In fact, all who are Jews naturally are not Jews spiritually — are not, therefore, 
in an; true sense heirs of the promise. To he of the seed of Abraham is nothing in 
itself. Abraham had many sons, but only one of them, the son of Sarah, was 
recognised in the promise. 2 

Not only so, but even of the two sons of the son of promise one was utterly rejected; 
and so completely was this a matter of choice, and so entirely was it independent of 
merit, that before there could be any question of merit, even in the womb, the elder 
was rejected to servitude, the younger chosen for dominion. And this is stated in 
the strongest way by the prophet Malachi— " Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." 3 

"Is God unjust then?" To a natural logic the question might seem very 
excusable, but St. Paul simply puts it aside as irrelevant and impossible, while he 
re-states the fact which suggests it by quoting as decisive two passages of Scripture. 4 
God has an absolute right to love whom He will ; for He says to Moses, " Whomso- 
ever I pity, him I will pity ; and whomsoever I compassionate, him I will com- 
passionate ; " so that pity is independent of human will or effort. And God has an 
absolute right to hate whom He will; for Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this 
very purpose I raised thee up, to display in thee my power, and that my name may 
be proclaimed in all the earth." 5 

So then God pities, and God hardens, whom He will. 

Again, the natural question presents itself — " Why does He then blame ? If 
wickedness be the result of Divine Will, what becomes of moral responsibility?" 

In the first place, Paul implies that the question is absurd. Who are you, that 
you can call God to account ? No matter what becomes of moral responsibility, it 
does not at any rate affect God's decree. Man is but passive clay in the Potter's 
hands ; He can mould it as He will. 6 

1 eKTreVrcoKev, "fallen like a flower," Job xiv. 2 ; but see 1 Cor. xiii. 8 ; James i. 11. 

2 ix. 6 — 9; comp. Nedarim, f. 31, 1. "Is not Ishmael an alien, and yet of the seed 
of Abraham?" It is written, " In Isaac shall thy seed be called." "But is not Esau 
an alien, and yet of the seed of Isaac? " " No. ' In Isaac,' but not all Isaac." 

3 Mai. i. 2, 3. Hated =" loved less" (Gen. xxix. 31; Matt. vi. 24; x. 37, com- 
pared with Luke xiv. 26) ; and the next verse shows that temporal position is alluded to. 

4 "These arguments of the Apostle are founded on two assumptions. The first is 
that the Scriptures are the word of God ; and the second, that what God actually does 
cannot be unrighteous " (Hodge). At the same time it is most necessary, as Bishop 
Wordsworth says, "not to allow the mind to dwell exclusively or mainly on single 
expressions occurring here or there, but to consider their relation to the context, to the 
whole scope of the Epistle, to the other Epistles of St. Paul, and to the general teachings 
of Holy Writ " {Epistles, p. 201). 

5 ix. 14 — 18. "Satis habet," says Calvin, "Scripturae testimoniis impuros latratus 
compescere ; " but the "impure barkings" (a phrase which St. Paul would never have 
used) shows the difference between the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Genevan 
Reformer. SKArjpvVei, however, in ver. 18, cannot mean "treats hardly." Calovius says 
that God does not harden evepyrjTt/cd)?, "by direct action," but a-u^x^?^^^ (permissively), 
a0op/u.7}TiKd»s (by the course of events), ey/caTaAeiTn-iKcos (by abandonment), and Tvapa&oTiKus 
(by handi&g men over to their worst selves). It may be said that this chapter contradicts 
the next, and Fritzsche goes so far as to say that "Paul Avould have better agreed with 
himself if he had been the pupil of Aristotle, not of Gamaliel ; " but the contradiction, 
or rather the antinomy is not in any of St. Paul's arguments, but in the very nature 
of things. 

6 ix. 19 — 22. It was a common metaphor (Jer. xviii. 6 ; Isa. xiv. 9 ; Wisd. xv. 7 ; 
Siracb. xxxiii. 13). 



498 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

But Paul would not thus merely smite down the timid questioning of 
sinners by the arbitrary irresponsibility of Infinite Power. He gives a gleam 
of hope ; he sheds over the ultimate Divine purposes a flash of insight. He 
asks a question which implies a large and glorious answer, and the very form 
of the question shows how little he desires to dwell on the unpractical in- 
soluble mysteries of Divine reprobation. 1 

What if God, willing to display His wrath, and to make known His power — (he 
will not say, " created vessels of wrath," or " prepared them for destruction," but, 
swerving from a conclusion too terrible for the wisest) — " endured in much long- 
suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction . . . ? And what if He did this 
that He might also make known the riches of His glory towards the vessels of 
mercy which He before prepared for glory . . . ?" What if even those 
decrees which seemed the harshest were but steps towards an ultimate good ? . . 
By that blessed purpose we profit, whom God called both out of the Jews and out of 
the Gentiles. This calling is illustrated by the language of two passages of Hosea, 2 
in which the prophet calls his son and daughter Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah (Nbt- 
my-people and Not-pitied) because of the rejection of Israel, but at the same time 
prophesies the day when they shall again be His people, and He their God : — and 
by two passages of Isaiah 3 in which he at once prophesies the rejection of the mass 
of Israel and the preservation of a remnant. 4 

Having thus established the fact on Scriptural authority, what is the conclusion ? 
Must it not be that — so entirely is election a matter of God's free grace — the 
Gentiles, though they did not pursue righteousness, yet laid hold of justification by 
faith ; and that the Jews, though they did pursue a legal righteousness, have not 
attained to justification ? How can such a strange anomaly be explained ? What- 
ever may be the working of Divine election, humanly speaking, their rejection 
is the fault of the Jews. They chose to aim at an impossible justification by works, 
and rejected the justification by faith. Again St. Paul refers to Isaiah in support 
of his views. 5 They stumbled at Christ. To them, as to all believers, He might 
have been a firm rock of foundation ; they made Him a stone of offence. 6 The 
desire of his heart, his prayer to God, is for their salvation. But their religious 
zeal has taken an ignorant direction. They are aiming at justification by works, 
and therefore will not accept God's method, which is justification by faith. 7 

In the path of works they cannot succeed, for the Law finds its sole end, and 
aim, and fulfilment in Christ, 8 and through Him alone is justification possible. 
Even these truths the Apostle finds in Scripture, or illustrates by Scriptural quota- 
tions. He contrasts the statement of Moses, that he who obeyed the ordinances of 

1 When we read such passages as Horn. viii. 22 — 24 ; 2 Cor. v. 18 ; Acts iii 19, 21, 
we think that St. Paul would have seen a phase of truth in the lines — 
" Safe in the hands of one disposing power, 
Or in the natal or the mortal hour ; 
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee ; 
All Chance, Direction which thou canst not see ; 
All Discord, Harmony not understood ; 
All partial evil, universal good." 
8 Hob. i. 9, 10 ; ii. 23. 3 T sa . Xt 22 ; i. 9. 

4 ix. 22 — 30. Ver. 28 is an exegetical translation which St. Paul adopts from the 
LXX. As the form of quotation has only an indirect bearing on the argument, the reader 
must refer to special commentaries for its elucidation. 
6 Isa. viii. 14 ; xxviii. 16. 

6 In ix. 33, the "be ashamed "of the LXX., followed by St. Paul, is an exegetical 
translation of "make haste" or "flee hastily." 

7 ix. 30— x. 4. 

8 x. 4, tcAos — i.e., the righteousness at which the Law aims is accomplished in Christ, 
and the Law leads to Him ; He is its fulfilment and its termination. Its glory is done 
i» way, but He remains, because His eternal brightness is the tcXos tov Ka.Tapyovy.ivov (GaL), 



PEEDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 499 

the Law should live by them, 1 with those other words which he puts into the mouth 
of .Justification personified, " Say not in thine heart who shall ascend ini^ heaven, 
or who shall descend into the abyss, but the word is very nigh thee in thy mouth 
and in thy heart," which (being used originally of the Law) he explains of the near- 
ness and accessibility of the Gospel which was now being preached, and which was 
Bummed up in the confession and belief in Him as a risen Saviour. This is again 
supported by two quotations in almost the same words — one from Isaiah (xxviii. 16), 
" Every one that believeth on Him shall not be ashamed ;" and one from Joel 
(ii. 32), " Every one that calleth on the name of the Lord shall be saved" — and the 
" every one " of course includes the Gentile no less than the Jew. 2 

But had the Jews enjoyed a real opportunity of hearing the Gospel ? In a 
series of questions, subordinated to each other by great rhetorical beauty, St. Paul 
shows that each necessary step has been fulfilled — the hearing, the preachers, the 
mission of those whose feet were beautiful upon the mountains, and who preach the 
glad tidings of peace ; but, alas ! the faith had been wanting, and, therefore, also the 
calling upon God. For all had not hearkened to the Gospel. It was not for want 
of hearing, for in accordance with prophecy (Ps. xix. 4) the words of the preachers 
had gone out to all the world ; but it was for want of faith, and this, too, had been 
prophesied, since Isaiah said, "Who believed our preaching ?" Nor, again, was it 
for want of warning. Moses {Deut. xxxii. 21) had told them ages ago that God 
would stir up their jealousy and kindle their anger by means of those Gentiles 
whom in their exclusive arrogance they despised as "no nation;" and Isaiah 
(lxv. 1, 2) says with daring energy, "I was found by such as sought me not, 
I became manifest to such as inquired not after me," whereas to Israel he saith, 
" The whole day long I outspread my hands to a disobedient and antagonistic 
people." 3 

Thus, with quotation after quotation — there are nine in this chapter alone, 
drawn chiefly from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms — does St. Paul state 
his conviction as to the present rejection of the Gospel by his own nation ; 
while he tries to soften the bitter rage which it was calculated to arouse both 
against himself and against his doctrine, by stating it in words which would 
add tenfold authority to the dialectical arguments into which they are 
enwoven. But having thus established two very painful, and at first sight 
opposing truths — namely, that the Jews were being deprived of all exclusive 
privileges by the decree of God (ix.), and that this forfeiture was due to their 
own culpable disbelief (x.)— he now enters on the gladder and nobler task of 
explaining how these sad truths are robbed of their worst sting, when we 
recognise that they are but the partial and transient phenomena incidental 
to the evolution of a blessed, universal, and eternal scheme. 

11 1 ask, then, did God reject His people ? Away with the thought ! for at worst 
the rejection is but partial." Of this he offers himself as a proof, being as he is 
" an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin;" and he then 
quotes the analogy of the 7,000 whom God "reserved for Himself," who in the 
days of Elijah had not bowed the knee to Baal. On this he pauses to remark that 
the very phrase, " I reserved for myself," implies that this remnant was saved by 
faith, and not by works. But how came it that the majority had missed the end 
for which they sought? Because, he answers, they were hardened; God (as 

1 N, A, B, ev avTfl. 

a x. 4—12. It is remarkable that in verse 11 the important word nas is found neithei 
In the Hebrew nor in the LXX. Cf. ix. 33. 
a x. 14-2L 

a a 2 



500 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST PAUL. 

Isaiah prophesied) had sent them a spirit of stupor which finds its illustration in the 
phrase, " let their eyes he darkened," amid David's prayer for the humiliation and 
bewilderment of his enemies. 1 

But then another awful question occurs : is this hardening-, this spiritual blind- 
ness, to be final ? " Did they stumble that they may utterly fall ? " Again Paul 
exclaims, Perish the thought ! Their very fall was meant for salvation to the 
Gentiles, and to stimulate their own hearts to better things. And here tie readers 
could not but feel that he was explaining facts which were taking place under their 
very eyes. In every instance the Gospel had been offered first to the Jew ; in every 
instance the Jew had rejected it ; and it was through this very obstinacy that it 
had now been offered everywhere to the Gentile. The Messiah rejected by the 
Jew was daily being glorified as the Redeemer of the Gentile. The Church of the 
Christ was now securely founded, but even already Antioch, and Rome, and 
Ephesus, and Thessalonica were far more its capitals than the Holy City. But this 
fact revealed a glorious anticipation. If their deficiency was thus the wealth of 
the Gentiles, how much more would their replenishment ! It was his grand mission 
to preach this to the Gentiles, and thereby, if possible, to stir the Jews to emulation, 
for if their rejection be the world's reconciliation, what will be their acceptance but 
life from the dead ? 

And that there will be this restoration of Israel he illustrates by i 
double metaphor. 

i. When the heave-offering was offered, the whole lump of dough acquired 
sacredness from the fact that a portion of it was sanctified to the Lord. So with 
Israel. Their first-fruits — Abraham and their patriarchal fathers — were holy, and 
their holiness was ideally attributable to all the race. 

ii. The second metaphor has a wider applicability. The root of the olive-tree 
is the source of its fruitfulness ; but if some of its branches lose their fruitfulness 
and become withered, they are lopped off and are replaced by grafts of the wild 
olive, which then shares the richness of the tree. Such withered branches were the 
present unbelieving majority of Israel. That they should be lopped off is a part of 
God's just and necessary severity. To explain this truth — to bring it home to the 
pained and angry consciousness of his people — has been one of his objects in this 
great Epistle , and he has carried it out, at whatever cost, with a most unflinching 
sincerity. But meanwhile, if the Gentiles in their turn were tempted to assume 
the airs of particularism with which the Jews had so long gloried over them, what 
a warning should be conveyed to them by the state of things here shadowed forth ! 
And how much consolation might the Jew find in this metaphor to revive the faint- 
ing hopes of his patriotism, and to alleviate his wounded pride of nationality by 
gentler and holier thoughts ! For Christ, after all, was a rod of the stem of Jesse, 
and a branch out of his roots. The Gentiles were admitted into the Church through 
the vestibule of the Temple. With the Jews had remained till this moment the 
oracles of God. In Judaism — its privileges, its promises, its prophecies — were the 
germs of Christianity. The new rich fruitfulness of the Gentiles was drawn from 
the tree into which they had been grafted. Little cause had they to boast against 
the natural branches. Deep cause had they to take warning by the fate which 
those branches had undergone. They, in their turn, might be lopped off, and — ■ 
though here the metaphor as such breaks down — the old branches might be grafted into 
their proper place once more. 2 Let them remember that faith was the source of 
their new privileges, as the want of it had caused the ruin of those whom they 
replaced ; let them not be high-minded, but fear. 3 

1 xi. 1-11. 

2 This of course was, physically, an impossible method of eyKe»rpi<rf*<5? ; the other, if 
adopted at all, was most rare. (V. supra, p. 12.) 

3 xi. 10— 24. 



FRUITS OF FAITH. 501 

The concluding words of this section of the Epistle open a glorious per- 
spective of ultimate hope for all whose hearts are sufficiently large and 
loving to accept it. He calls on the brethren not to ignore the mystery that 
the partial hardening of Israel should only last till the fulness of the 
Gentiles should come in ; and he appeals to Scripture (Isa. lix. 20) to sup- 
port his prophecy that " all Israel shall be saved," beloved as they are for the 
sake of their fathers as regards the election of grace, though now alienated 
for the blessing of the Gentiles as regards the Gospel. 

For God's gifts and calling admit of no revocation ; once given, they are given 
for ever. 1 Once themselves disobedient, the Gentiles were now pitied in con- 
sequence of the disobedience of the Jews ; so the Jews were now disobedient, but 
when the pity shown to the Gentiles had achieved their full redemption, the Jews 
in turn should share in it. 2 " For " — such is the grand conclusion of this sustained 
exposition of the Divine purposes — " God shut up all into disobedience, 3 that He 
might show mercy unto all." — ]\iany are anxious, in accordance with their theo- 
logical views, to weaken or explain away the meaning of these words ; to show that 
"all" does not really mean "all" in the glad, though it does in the gloomy 
clause ; or to show that " having mercy upon all" is quite consistent with the final 
ruin of the vast majority. Be that as it may, the Apostle, as he contemplates the 
universality of free redeeming grace, bursts into a pecan of praise and prophecy : 
" the depth of the riches, and wisdom, and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable 
are His judgments, and untrackable His ways! For who ever fathomed the mind 
of the Lord, or who ever became His counsellor ? Or who gave Him first, and it 
shall be repaid to him ? For from Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all 
things. To Him be glory for ever. Amen." 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

FRUITS OF FAITH. 



" La foi justifie quand il opere, mais il n'opere que par la charite " (Quesnel). 

" Not that God doth require nothing unto happiness at the hands of man save 
only a naked belief (for hope and charity we may not exclude), but that without 
belief all other things are as nothing ; and it is the ground of those other divine 
virtues" (Hooker, Eccl. Pol. I. xi. 6). 

" Faith doth not shut out repentance, hope, love, dread, and the fear of God, to be 
joined with faith in every man that is justified ; but it shutteth them out from the 
office of justifying " (Homily of Salvation, pt. ii.j. 

[It is needless to point out that the sense of the word "faith " in these passages 
is by no means the Pauline sense of the word."] 

At this point there is a marked break in the letter, and we feel that the 
writer has now accomplished the main object for which he wrote. But to 

1 Hos. xiii. 14, "I will redeem them from death . . . repentance shall be hid 
from mine eyes." 

2 xi. 41. If , as in this explanation, the comma is placed after ^7rei0T?o-av,the connexion 
of tcS u/xeTe'po) eA.eei is very awkward, and almost unparalleled. On the other hand, the 
antithesis is spoiled if we place the comma after eAeet, and render it, " So they too now 
disbelieved (or disobeyed) the pity shown to you," 

3 In the declaratory sense. 



502 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

this, as to all his letters, he adds those noble practical exhortations, which are 
thus made to rest, not on their own force and beauty, but on the securer basis 
of the principles which he lays down in the doctrinal portion. No one felt 
more deeply than St. Paul that it requires great principles to secure our 
faithfulness to little duties, and that every duty, however apparently 
insignificant, acquires a real grandeur when it is regarded in the light of those 
principles from which its fulfilment springs. Since, then, the mercy and pity 
of God, as being the source of His free grace, have been dwelt upon throughout 
the Epistle, St. Paul begins the practical part of it — " I exhort you therefore, 
brethren, by the compassions of God " — for these, and not the difficult 
doctrines of election and reprobation, are prominent in his mind — " to present 
your bodies, not like the dead offerings of Heathenism or Judaism, but " a 
living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God — your reasonable service, and not to 
be conformed to this world, but to be transformed l in the renewing of your 
mind, that ye may discriminate what is the will of God, good and acceptable to 
Him, and perfect." 

This general exhortation is then carried into details, unsystematically 
indeed, and even unsyntactically, but with an evident rush and glow of 
feeling which gives to the language a perfection transcending that of conscious 
art. 2 The prevalent thought is the duty of love : — to the brethren, love without 
dissimulation; to the Church, love without struggling self-assertion; 
to the civil power, love without fear ; to the world, love without despising its 
rights or mingling with its immoralities. 3 First, by the grace given to him, 
he urges them " not to be high-minded above what they ought to be minded, 
but to mind to be soberminded, 4 each in porportion to their God-apportioned 
receptivity of faith ; " and he illustrates and enforces this duty of modest 
simplicity in the fulfilment of their mutual ministries, 6 by touching once more 
on the apologue of the body and the members, 6 which he has already applied 
in his Letter to the Corinthians. The moral of the metaphor is that " Diversity 
without unity is disorder; unity without diversity is death." 7 Then with 
a free interchange of participles, infinitives, and imperatives, and with a mixture 
of general and special exhortations, he urges them to love, kindliness, zeal, 
hope, patience, prayer, generosity, forgiveness, sympathy, mutual esteem, self- 

1 Ver. 2, o~ucrxwa.Ti£e<T6e, " fashioned in accordance;" p.eTanop<f>ov<rOe, " trans-/orme<2. " 
2 X wa, as in Phil. ii. 8, is the outward, transitory fashion; fiop^rj, the abiding and 
substantial form. 

2 Ver. 3, ju.t} vTrep<f>poveli> nap' o Sei (/>poveiv, iAAa (ppovelv eis to <Tu><f>povelv. 

3 Lange ad loc. 4 xii. 3. 

5 In ver. 6 the "prophecy [i.e., high Christian teaching] according to the proportion 
of faith" {Kara, tijj/ afoAo-yiav ttjs 7u<tt<:ws) means that the Christian teacher is to keep 
within the limits of his gift assigned him by his individuality (Tholuck), i.e., not to push 
his xap i 0> a &B a preacher into disproportionate prominence (Deut. xviii. 18). The 
objective sense of n-urrts as a body of doctrines is later. Hence the common rule of 
explaining Scripture, "according to the analogy of faith," though most true and 
necessary, is a misapplication of the original meaning of the phrase. 

6 1 Cor. xii. 12—27. 

7 Lange. The conception of Christian fellowship involves both unity and variety. 
"The Spirit resolves the variety into unity, introduces variety into the unity, and 
reconciles unity to itself through variety " (Uaur), 



FRUITS OF FAITH. 503 

restraint, the steady love of God, the steady loathing of evil, the deliberate 
victory of virtue over vice. It is clear that the dangers which he most 
apprehended among the Roman Christians were those exacerbations which 
spring from an unloving and over-bearing self-confidence ; but he gives 
a general form to all his precepts, and the chapter stands unrivalled as a 
spontaneous sketch of the fairest graces which can adorn the Christian 
life. 1 

The first part of the thirteenth chapter has a more obviously special bear- 
ing. It is occupied by a very earnest exhortation to obedience towards the 
civil power, based on the repeated statements that it is ordained of God ; that 
its aim is the necessary suppression of evil ; that it was not, under ordinary 
circumstances, any source of terror to a blameless life ; and that it should be 
obeyed and respected, not of unwilling compulsion, but as a matter of right 
and conscience. 2 This was, indeed, the reason why they paid taxes, 3 and why 
the payment of them should be regarded as a duty to God. 4 

The warmth with which St. Paul speaks thus of the functions of civil 
governors may, at first sight, seem surprising, when we remember that a 
Helius was in the Prsef ecture, a Tigellinus in the Prsetorium, a Gessius Florus 
in the provinces, and a Nero on the throne. On the other hand, it must be 
borne in mind that the Neronian persecution had not yet broken out ; and that 
the iniquities of individual emperors and individual governors, while it had 
free rein in every question which affected their greed, their ambition, or their 
lust, had not as yet by any means destroyed the magnificent ideal of Roman 
Law. If there were bad rulers, there were also good ones. A Cicero as well 

1 xii. 1 — 2L As regards special expressions in this chapter, we may notice — ver. 9, 

a7ro<rTvyouvres "loathing;" KoAAaJ/mewn, "bridal intimacy with." Ver. 10, rrj <pi\a8e\.<f)ia 

<t>ik6<TTopyoi, " love your brethren in the faith as though they were brethren in blood ; " 
TrpoTjyoujaevoi, Vulg. invicem ■praeveumxtes,'"' " anticipating one another, and going before 
one another as guides in giving honour " (ver. 11). The evidence between the readings, 
Kaipw, " serving the opportunity," and Kv P <o>, "the Lord," is very nicely balanced, but 
probably rose from the abbreviation Kpm. The orher clause is, "In zealous work not 
slothful ; boiling in spirit " (cf. the «»30, " a prophet " ). In ver. 13, /iveiats, "memories," 
can hardly be the true reading. In ver. 14, the 5u6kovt6s, "pursuing hospitality," may 

have suggested the thought of Sico/covras, "persecutors ; " Ver. 16, rots TaTreivoi? a-uvanayofievoc 

is either " modestissimorum exempla sectantes" (Grot.), "letting the lowly lead you 
with them by the hand" (ma.sc), or "humilibus rebus obsecundantes," "going along 
with lowly things" (neut.). Ver. 19, 86-re tottov rfj bpyfj, either (1) "Give place for the 
divine wrath to work" (Chrys., Aug., &c.) ; or (2), "Give room to your own anger" — 
i.e., defer its outbreak — this, however, would be a Latinism, "irae spatium dare (cf. 
Virg. jEn. iv. 433); or (3) "Give place to, yield before, the wrath of your enemy.'* 
The first is right. Ver. 20, "coals of fire " (Pr<>v. xxv. 21, 22) to melt him to penitence 
and beneficent shame. The chapter is full of beautiful trilogies of expression. 

2 xiii. 5, ava.yK.ri (7, 8, Aug.) vnorda-a-ea-ee (D, E, F, G, Vulg., Luther), "Yield to 
necessity." "Pray for the established Government," said Eabbi Chaneena, "for with- 
out it men would eat one another " (Abhdda Zara, f. 4, 1). Josephus calls Judas the 
Gaulonite " the author of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy," who have " an inviolable 
attachment to liberty," and say that God is to be the only Ruler {Antt. xxiii. 1, § 6). 

8 xiii. 6, reXeu-e is the indicative ; not, as in the A.V., an imperative (Matt. xxii. 21). 
In ver. 4 the ndxaipa refers to the jus gladii. A provincial governor on starting was 
presented with a dagger by the Emperor. Trajan, in giving it, used the words— Pro 
me ; si merear, in me." 

« xiii. 1-7. 



504 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

as a Verres had once been provincial governors ; a Barea Soranus as well as a 
Felix. The Roman government, corrupt as it often was in special instances, 
was yet the one grand power which held in check the anarchic forces which 
but for its control were "nursing the impatient earthquake." If now and 
then it broke down in minor matters, and more rarely on a large scale, yet the 
total area of legal prescriptions was kept unravaged by mischievous injustice. 
St. Paul had himself suffered from local tyranny at Philippi, but on the 
whole, up to this time, he had some reason to be grateful to the impartiality of 
Roman law. At Corinth he had been protected by the disdainful justice of 
Gallio, at Fphesus by the sensible appeal of the public secretary; and not 
long afterwards he owed his life to the soldier-like energy of a Lysias, and 
the impartial protection of a Festus, and even of a Felix. Nay, even at his 
first trial his undefended innocence prevailed not only over all the public 
authority which could be arrayed against him by Sadducean priests and 
a hostile Sanhedrin, but even over the secret influence of an Aliturus and a 
Poppsea. Nor had the Jews any reason to be fretful and insubordinate. If 
the ferocity of Sejanus and the alarm of Claudius had caused them much 
suffering at Rome, yet, on the other hand, they had been protected by a 
Julius and an Augustus, and they were in possession of legal immunities 
which gave to their religion the recognised dignity of a religio licita. It may 
safely be said that, in many a great city, it was to the inviolable strength and 
grandeur of Roman law that they owed their very existence ; because, had it 
not been for the protection thus afforded to them, they might have been liable 
to perish by the exterminating fury of Pagan populations by whom they were 
at once envied and disliked. 1 

No doubt the force of these considerations would be fully felt by those 
Jews who had profited by Hellenistic culture. It is obvious, however, that 
St. Paul is here dealing with religious rather than with political or even theo- 
cratic prejudices. The early Church was deeply affected by Essene and 
Ebionitic elements, and St. Paul's enforcement of the truth that the civil 
power derives its authority from God, points to the antithesis that it was not 
the mere vassalage of the devil. It was not likely that at Rome there should 
be any of that zealot fanaticism which held it unlawful for a Jew to recognise 
any other earthly ruler besides God, and looked on the payment of tribute as 
a sort of apostasy. 2 It is far more likely that the Apostle is striving to 
counteract the restless insubordination which might spring from tha preva- 
lence of chiliastic notions such as those which we find in the Clementine 
Homilies, that " the present world with all its earthly powers is the kingdom 
of the devil," and that so far from regarding the civil governor as " the 
minister of God for good," the child of the future could only look upon him 
as the embodied representative of a spiritual enemy. This unpractical and 
dualistic view might even claim on its side certain phrases alluding to the 

1 Thus the later Rabbis found it necessary to say, with Shemuel, "The law of the 
Gentile kingdom is valid " {Babha Kama, f. 113, 1). 
3 Matt. xxii. 17. 



FRUITS OP FAITH. 505 

moral wickedness of the world, which had a wholly different application ; * 
and therefore Panl, with his usual firmness, lays down in unmistakable terms 
the rule which, humanly speaking, could alone save the rising Church from 
utter extinction — the rule, namely, of holding aloof from political distur- 
bances. On the whole, both Jews and Christians had learnt the lesson well, 
and it was, therefore, the more necessary that the good effects of that faithful 
fulfilment of the duties of citizenship, to which both Jewish historians and 
Christian Fathers constantly appeal, should not be obliterated by the fanatical 
theories of incipient Manichees. 

The question as to the payment of civil dues leads St. Paul naturally to 
speak of the payment of other dues. The one debt which the Christian owes 
to all men is the debt of love — that love which prevents us from all wrong- 
doing, and is therefore the fulfilment of the law. To this love he invites them 
in a powerful appeal, founded on the depth of the night and the nearness of 
the dawn, so that it was high time to put away the works of darkness and put 
on the arms of light 2 — nay, more, to put on, as a close-fitting robe, by close 
spiritual communion, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 3 

The fourteenth chapter again reveals the existence of Ebionitic elements 
in the K-oinan Church. In a strange city, and especially if he were ont free, 
a scrupulous Jew, uninfluenced by Hellenism, would find it so impossible to 
fulfil the requirements of the Law respecting clean and unclean meats, and 
still more the many minute additions which Rabbinic Pharisaism had made to 
those requirements, that he would be forced either to sacrifice his convictions, 
or to reduce his diet to the simplest elements. As St. Paul does not allude 
to the Law, it is probable that he is here dealing with scruples even more 
deeply seated. His object is to reconcile the antagonistic feelings of two 
classes of Christians, whom he calls respectively the " strong " and the " weak." 
The " strong " regarded all days as equally sacred, or, as the " weak " would 
have said, as equally profane ; whereas the " weak " surrounded the Sabbath 
and the Jewish festivals with regulations intended to secure their rigid observ- 
ance. 4 Again, the " strong " ale food of every description without the smallest 
scruple, whereas the " weak " looked on all animal food with such disgust 
and suspicion that they would eat nothing but herbs. 3 It is obvious that in 
adopting so severe a course they went far beyond the requirements of Levit- 

* John xii. 31, 6 dp\wv tov Kocrjaov tovtov ; Eph. ll. 2, rbv ap\ovTa T»j? e£ov<xia? tov ae'po? . 

2 xiii. 12, or "the deeds of light " [epya, A, D, E). 

3 Cf. Gal. iii. 27, Xptcrrbv eveSu'cracrfle. 

4 Rom. xiv. 6. The words, " and he who regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth 
not regard it," are omitted by N, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, Yet., It., Vulg., Copt. On the 
other hand, the Syriac has it, and the omission maybe due to the hornceoteleuttn of Qpovel, 
or to doctrinal prejudices, which regarded the clause as dangerous. The clause is far too 
liberal to have been inserted by a second century scribe ; but even if it be omitted, the 
principle which it involves is clearly implied in the first half of the verse, and in the 
previous verse. 

5 Seneca tells us that in his youth he had adopted from his Pythagorean teacher 
Sotion the practice of vegetarianism, but his father made him give it up because it 
rendered him liable to the suspicion of foreign superstitions (probably Judaism). Se* 
Seekers after God, p. 15. 



506 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

ism, and when we find the very same views and practices existing in Rome 
during the next century, 1 it is hardly possible to avoid the suspicion that the 
Judaic Christianity of these " weak " brethren was tinged with those Essene, 
Phrygian, or Pythagorean elements which led them to look on the material 
and the sensuous as something intrinsically dangerous, if not as positively 
evil. Epiphanius says that Ebion visited Rome ; 2 and although it is more 
than doubtful whether there ever was such a person, yet the statement shows 
the prevalence of such views. Now one of the Ebionitic principles was that 
all meat is impure, 3 and in the Clementine Homilies the eating of meat is 
attributed to impure demons and bloodthirsty giants ; and the Apostle Peter 
is made to say to Clement that " he makes use only of bread and olives and 
(sparingly) of other vegetables " 4 — a tradition which we also find attached by 
Clemens of Alexandria to the names of St. Matthew and James the Lord's 
brother, and the latter we are told drank no wine or strong drink. 5 It is very 
possible that St. Paul did not see the necessity of formally warning the Roman 
Christians against the tendency to dualism. This might be the subterranean 
origin of wrong notions long before it had risen into clear consciousness. 
What St. Paul did see was the danger that if " the weak " prevailed, Chris- 
tianity might be frittered away into a troublesome and censorious externalism ; 
or that the " strong " might treat their weaker brethren with a rough and 
self- exalting contempt which would either put force on tender consciences, or 
create a permanent disruption between the different members of the Church. 

He treats the difficulty in the same masterly manner — broad yet sympa- 
thetic, inflexible in convictions yet considerate towards prejudices — which 
he had already displayed in dealing with a similar question in his Epistle 
to the Corinthians. But the difference between the tone adopted in this 
chapter and that in the Epistle to the Galatians is very remarkable, and 
shows the admirable tact and versatility of the Apostle. He is there es- 
tablishing the rights of Christian freedom against the encroachments of 
Pharisaism, so that the assertion of the liberty of the Gentiles was a matter 
of essential importance. He therefore speaks, as it was a duty to speak, 
with an almost rough contempt of attaching any vital importance to " beg- 
garly elements." Here his tone is altogether different, because his object 
is altogether different, as also were his readers. The right to enjoy our 
liberty he can here in the most absolute manner assume. As to the merit 
of the particular scrupulosities which were in vogue among the weak, he 
has no occasion to do more than imply his own indifference. What is here 
necessary is to warn the " strong " not to be arrogant in their condemna- 
tions, and the "weak" not to be supercilious in their self-esteem. He has 
shown the universality of guilt, and the universality of grace, and he has 
now to show the sacred duty of unanimity among those thus universally 

1 The Ebionites regarded the Sabbath as the holiest command of the Jewish religion. 

2 Haer. xxx. 18. 3 Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 15- 

4 Horn. xii. 6. 6 Paedag. ii. 1 ; Euseb. H.E. ii. 2, 3 : Baur, Pond, i. 358. 

« Gal. iii.; v. 1-9; vi. 12,13. 



FEUITS OF FAITH. 607 

called, defendk-g this unanimity against censoriousness on the one hand, and 
against disdain on the other. 

He does not attempt to conceal the bent of his own sympathies ; he de- 
clares himself quite unambiguously on the side of the " strong." The life of 
the Christian is a life in Christ, and rises trans cendently above the minutisB 
of ritual, or the self-torments of asceticism. " The kingdom of God " — such 
is the great axiom which he lays down for the decision of all such questions — 
" is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost." The "strong," therefore, in St. Paul's judgment, were in the right. 
But, for this very reason, it was necessary to warn them against the contemp- 
tuous assertion of their superior wisdom. 

i. Let each party follow their own course if they believe it to be the best, but 
let each abstain from the guilt and folly of condemning the other. God, not man, 
is the judge, by whose judgment each man stands or falls. Nay, he shall stand, for 
God is able to make him stand. Conceited illuminism is as deep an offence against 
charity as saintly self-satisfaction. The first counsel, then, on which he strongly 
insists is mutual forbearance, the careful avoidance of arguments and discussions 
about disputed points. Let there be no intolerant scrupulosity, and no uncharitable 
disdain, but an avoidance of dispute and a reciprocal recognition of honest convic- 
tions. These differences are not about essentials, and it is not for any man to adopt 
a violently dogmatic or uncharitably contemptuous tone towards those who differ 
from himself respecting them. The party-spirit of religious bodies too often finds 
the fuel for its burning questions in mere weeds and straw. * 

ii. The second counsel is the cultivation of careful consideration which shall not 
shock tender consciences ; it is, in short, condescendence towards the weakness of 
others, a willingness to take less than our due, and a readiness to waive our own 
rights, 2 and enjoy as a private possession between ourselves and God the confidence 
of our faith. His own positive and sacred conviction is that these rules about food 
are unessential ; that no food is intrinsically unclean. But if by acting on this con- 
viction we lead others to do the same, in spite of the protest of their consciences, 
then for a paltry self-gratifi cation we are undoing God's work, and slaying a soul 
for which Christ died. 3 Rather than do this, rather than place a needless stumbling- 
block in any Christian's path, it were well neither to eat meat nor to drink wine, 
because Christian love is a thing more precious than even Christian liberty. 4 

iii. His third counsel is the obedience to clear convictions. 5 Happy the man 
who has no scruples as to things intrinsically harmless. But if another cannot 

1 xiv. 1 — 12, 7rpoo-A.a/u.j3aveo-0e, " take by the hand ;" /u.rj el? Sia/cptVet? StaAoytcrju.wi', " not by 
way of criticising for them their scrupulous niceties : ' (Tholuck). 

2 2yyKaTo£acns (see Rom. xv. 1), eAao-o-oOo-flcu (John iii. 30), vo-repeio-flai (Phil. iv. 12 ; 1 
Cor. vi. 7) ; three great Christian conceptions which have in the practice of "religious" 
parties become perilously obsolete. 

3 1 Cor. viii. 13. 4 xiv. 13—21 

5 Augustine's "Omnis infidelium vita, peccatum est" is an instance of the many 
extravagant inferences which are the curse of theology, and which arise from recklessly 
tearing words from the context, and pushing them beyond their legitimate significance. 
We have no right to apply the text apart from the circumstances to which it immediately 
refers. As a universal principle it is only applicable to the party of which the Apostle is 
speaking. "When applied analogically, "faith "can here only be taken to mean "the 
moral conviction of the rectitude of a mode of action" (Chrys., De Wette, Meyer, &c). 
To pervert the meaning of texts, as is done so universally, is to make a bad play upon 
words. Our Art. XIII. does not in the least exclude the possibility of gratia praeveniens 
even in heathens (see Rom. ii. 6 — 15). If Augustine meant that even the morality and 
virtue of pagans, heretics, &c, is sin, his axiom is not only morose and repellent, Phari- 
laical and anti-scriptural, but historically, spiritually, and morally false. 



508 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

emancipate himself from these scruples, however needless, and exhibits in his own 
conduct the same freedom in defiance of his scruples, then he stands self-condemned. 
Why? Because in that case he is acting falsely to that faith which is the ruling 
principle of his Christian life, and whatsoever is not of faith, — whatsoever involves 
the life of self, and not the life of Christ — is sin. 1 

The true principle, then, is that we ought not to please ourselves, even as Christ 
pleased not Himself, hut to hear the infirmities of the weak, and aim at mutual 
edification. This is the lesson of Scripture, and he prays that the God of that 
patience and comfort which it is the object of Scripture to inspire, may give them 
mutual unanimity in Jesus Christ. And addressing alike the "weak" Judaizers 
and the " strong " Gentiles, he concludes his advice with the same general precept 
with which he began, "Wherefore take one another by the hand, as Christ also 
took us by the hand for the glory of God." 2 

And Christ had thus set His example of love and help to both the great divisions 
of the Church. He had become the minister of the circumcision on behalf of 
God's truth, to fulfil the promise made to the fathers ; and to the Gentiles out of 
compassion. Christ therefore had shown kindness to both, and that the Gentiles 
were indeed embraced in this kindness — which, perhaps, in their pride of liberty 
they did not always feel inclined to extend to their weaker brethren — he further 
proves by an appeal to Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms. 3 The last citation 
ends with the words "shall hope," and he closes this section with yet another 
prayer that the God of hope would fill them with all joy and peace in believing, 
that they might abound in hope in the power of the Holy Ghost. 

But once more he takes up the pen to assure them of his confidence in 
them, and to apologise for the boldness of his letter. His plea is that he 
wished to fulfil to the utmost that ministry to the Gentiles which he here calls 
a priestly ministry, because he is as it were instrumental in presenting the 
Gentiles as an acceptable offering to God. 4 Of this Apostolate (giving all 
the glory to God) — of the signs by which it had been accompanied — of the 
width of its range, from Jerusalem to Illyricum — he may make a humble 
boast. 

And he is still ambitious to preach in regions where Christ has not been named. 
He will not stay with them, because he has seen enough of the evil caused by those 
who built on a foundation which they had not laid; but he has often felt a strong 
desire to visit them on his way to Spain, 6 and after a partial enjoyment of their 
society, 6 to be furthered on his journey by their assistance. He has hitherto been 
prevented from taking that journey, but now — since for the present his duties in the 
East are over — he hopes to carry it out, and to gratify his earnest desire to see them. 
At present, however, he is about to start for Jerusalem, to accompany the deputies 
who are to convey to the poor saints there that temporal gift from the Christians of 
Macedonia and Achaia which is after all but a small recognition of the spiritual 
gifts which the Gentiles have received from thorn. When this task is over he will 

1 xiv. 22, 23. It is at this point that some MSS. place the doxology of xvi. 25 — 27 ; 
but this would be a most awkward break between the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, 
and the reasons for regarding the fifteenth chapter as spurious seem to me to be wholly 
inconclusive. 

2 xv. 1 — 8. 3 Deut. xxxii. 43 ; Ps. xviii. 49 ; cxvii. 1 ; Isa. xi. 10. 

4 xv. 16, 'lepovpyovvra. It is a an. \ey6ftevov not due to any sacrificial conception of the 
Christian ministry (of which there is not in St. Paul so much as a single trace), but to 
the particular illustration which he here adopts. 

6 xv. 24 omit eKeva-o^ai Trpbs vp.a<; with all the best MSS. " Having a desire for many 
years past to come to you whenever I journey into Spain." 

6 inb pepovs " non quantum vellem sed quantum liceret " (Grot.). 



FRUITS OF FAITH. 509 

turn his face towards Spain, and visit them on his way, and he is confident that he 
shall come in the fulness of the "blessing of the G-ospef of Jesus Christ. He, there- 
fore, earnestly entreats their prayers that he may he rescued from the perils which 
he knows await him from the Jews in Jerusalem, and that the contribution due to 
his exertions may he favourably received by the saints, that so by God's will he 
may come to them in joy, and that they may mutually refresh each other. 1 " And 
the God of peace be with you all. Amen." 2 

There in all probability ended the Epistle to the Romans. I have already 
given abundant reason in support of the ingenious conjecture 3 that the 
greater part of the sixteenth chapter was addressed to the Ephesian Church. 4 
Even a careless reader could scarcely help observing what we should not at all 
have conjectured from the earlier part of the Epistle that there were schisms 
and scandals (17 — 20) in the Roman Church, and teachers who deliberately 
fomented them, slaves of their own belly, and by their plausibility and 
flattery deceiving the hearts of the simple. 5 Nor, again, can any one miss the 
fact that the position of the Apostle towards his correspondents in verse 19 is 
far more severe, paternal, and authoritative than in the other chapters. If — 
as is surely an extremely reasonable supposition — St. Paul desired other 
Churches besides the stranger Church of Rome to reap the benefit of his 
ripest thoughts, and to read the maturest statement of the Gospel which he 
preached, then several copies of the main part of the Epistle must have been 
made by the amanuenses, of whom Tertius was one, and whose services the 
Apostle was at that moment so easily able to procure. In that case nothing is 
more likely than that the terminations of the various copies should have 
varied with the circumstances of the Churches, and nothing more possible 
than that in some one copy the various terminations should have been care- 
fully preserved. We have at any rate in this hypothesis a simple explanation 
of the three final benedictions (20, 24, 27) which occur in this chapter alone. 

The fullest of the Apostle's letters concludes with the most elaborate of 
his doxologies. 6 

1 XV. 32, kclL <rwarrrav<ru>nai vfj.lv is omitted by B. 

* xv. 9—33. » First made by Schuk. 

4 We may be very thankful for its preservation, as it has a deep personal interest. 
On deaconesses see Bingham i. 334 — 366. Phoebe was probably a widow. Verse 4, 
vneOrfKav, "laid their own necks under tbt axe," a probable aLusion to some risk at 
Corinth (Acts xviii. 12 ; xix. 32). In verse 5 the true reading is 'Ao-<as. Verse 7, 
<rvvo.i.xi}.a.kmTov<; — probably at Ephesus, enl<rt)noi kv toi? 6.tto<tt6Xoi<;, ' ' illustrious among the 
missionaries of the truth " (2 Cor. viii. 23 ; Acts xiv. 4), in the less restricted sense of 
the word. It is hardly conceivable that St. Paul would make it a merit that the 
Apostles knew them and thought highly of them (Gal. i. ii. ) — verse 13. Rufus, perhaps 
one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene (Mark xv. 22) —verse 14. Hermas, not the author 
of The Shepherd, who could hardly have been born at this time. Verse 16, ^CK-qua aytov, 
1 Thess. v. 26 ; 1 Pet. v. 14 ; Luke vii. 45. The attempted identification of Tertius with 
Silas, because the Hebrew for Tertius ('tD'^ttS) sounds like Silas, is one of the imbecilities 
of fanciful exegesis. On such names as Tryphaena and Tryphosa, voluptuous in sound 
and base in meaning, which may have suggested to St. Paul the to-mao-as iv Kvpiw as a 
sort of noble paronomasia, see Merivale, Hist. vi. 260, and Wordsworth, ad loc. 

5 Phil. hi. 2, 18 ; 2 Cor. xi. 20. 

6 "Whether the Epistle proceeded in two forms from the Apostle's hands, the one 
elosing with chapter xiv. and the doxology, the other extended by the addition of the two 
'ast chapters, or whether any other more satisfactory explanation can be offered of the 



510 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

" Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my Gospel, and the 
preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, buried in 
silence in eternal ages, but manifested now and made known by the prophetic 
Scriptures, according to the command of the Eternal God unto obedience to the 
faith to all nations : — To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ — to whom be the 
glory for ever. Amen." 1 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 

" Show me some one person formed according to the principles he professes. 
Show me one who is sick and happy ; in danger and happy ; dying and happy ; 
exiled and happy ; disgraced and happy." — Epictetus. 

It was now about the month of February, A JD. 58, and the work which St. 
Paul had set before him at Corinth was satisfactorily concluded. Having 
been nine months in Europe, 2 he was anxious to get to Jerusalem by the Pass- 
over, and intended to sail straight from Corinth to one of the ports of 
Palestine. Every preparation was made ; it almost seems that he had got on 
board ship ; when he was informed of a sudden 3 plot on the part of the Jews 
to murder him. As to all the details we are left in the dark. We know that 
the previous plot of the Jews, nearly five years earlier, 4 had been foiled by the 
contemptuous good sense of Gallio ; but even if their revenge were otherwise 
likely to be laid aside, we cannot doubt that ample fuel had since been heaped 
upon the smouldering fire of their hatred. From every seaport of the 
iEgean, from the highlands of Asia Minor, from its populous shores, from 
Troas under the shadows of Mount Ida, to Athens under the shadow of Mount 
Pentelicus, they would hear rumours of that daring creed which seemed to 
trample on all their convictions, and fling to the Gentiles their most cherished 
hopes. The Jewish teachers who tried to hound the Judaising Christians 
against St. Paul would stand on perfectly good terms with them, and these 
Judaisers would take a pleasure in disseminating the deadliest misrepresenta- 
tions of Paul's doctrine and career. But apart from all misrepresentation, 
his undeniable arguments were quite enough to madden them to frenzy. We 

phenomenon of omission, repetition, transposition, authenticity, must be left for furthei 
investigation." Westcott (Vaughan's Romans, p. xxv.). One theory is that xii. — xiv, 
were substituted later for xv. xvi., and then both were accumulated in one copy with 
gome modifications. 

1 Cf. Eph. iii. 20, 21. The text, as it stands, involves an anacoluthon, since the & 
should properly be inelvta. Tholuck, &c, think that the Apostle was led by the paren- 
thesis from a doxology to God to a doxology to Christ. It may be that he meant to 
insert the word xap^, but lost sight of it in the length of the sentence. Here, as in 
Hab. iii. G, the word curios is used in two consecutive clauses, where in the first clause 
all are agreed that it cannot mean "endless" since it speaks of things which have 
already come to an end. 

2 He left Ephesus before the Pentecost of A.D. 57. 

3 Acts XX. 3, fxeWovn avayevOai. ■yei'OfAeVijs. 4 A.D. 53. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 511 

may be sure that St. Paul taught as he wrote, and since we have noticed it as 
a characteristic of his intellect that he is haunted by words and expressions, 1 
we might infer, a priori, even if it were not abundantly evident in his 
writings, that he is still more powerfully possessed and absorbed by any 
thoughts which might have been forced into immediate prominence. "We may 
regard it as psychologically certain that his discourses at Corinth were the 
echo of the arguments which fill the two Epistles which he wrote at Corinth ; 
and to the Jews the conclusions which they were meant to establish would be 
regarded as maddening blasphemies. " There is neither Jew nor Gentile " — 
where, then, is the covenant to Abraham and to his seed ? " There is neither 
circumcision nor uncircumcision " — where, then, is Moses and all the splen- 
dour of Sinai ? " Weak and beggarly elements " — are these the terms to 
apply to the inspired, sacred, eternal Thorah, in which God himself meditates, 
which is the glory of the world ? We are not surprised that the Jews should 
get up a plot. Paul, under the aegis of Roman authority, might be safe in 
the city, but they would avenge themselves on him as soon as his ship had 
left the shore. The wealthy Jewish merchants of Corinth would find no diffi- 
culty in hearing of sailors and captains of country vessels who were sufficiently 
dependent on them to do any deed of violence for a small consideration. 

How was the plot discovered ? We do not know. Scenes of tumult, and 
hairbreadth escapes, and dangerous adventures, were so common in St. 
Paul's life, that neither he, nor any one else, has cared to record their details. 
We only know that, after sudden discussion, it was decided, that Paul, 
with an escort of the delegates, quite sufficiently numerous to protect him 
from ordinary dangers, should go round by Macedonia. The hope of reaching 
Jerusalem by the Passover had, of course, to be abandoned ; the only chance 
left was to get there by Pentecost. It was doubtless overruled for good that 
it should be so, for if St. Paul had been in the Holy City at the Passover he 
would have been mixed up by his enemies with the riofc and massacre which 
about that time marked the insane rising of the Egyptian impostor who called 
himself the Messiah. 2 

Of the seven converts 3 who accompanied St. Paul — Sosipater son of 
Pyrrhus, 4 a Beroean, Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica, Gaius of 
Derbe, Timotheus of Lystra, Tychicus and Trophimus of Ephesus, and Luke 
— all except the latter left him apparently at Philippi, and went on to Troas 
to await him there. 5 St. Luke was closely connected with Philippi, where St. 

1 V. supra, pp. 273, 388, 407, 515, 698. 2 Verse 3, tyfrero yv<» m . 

3 In verse 4 the reading, dxpl rijs *A<rias, is not quite certain, since it is omitted in «, B, 
Coptic (both versions), and the JSthiopic. Some, at any rate, of the converts — Luke, 
Aristarchus, and Trophimus, if not others — accompanied him all the way to Jerusalem — 
xxi. 29, xxvii. 2, 1 Cor. xvi. 3, 4. How is it that there were no Corinthian delegates ? 
Had the large promises of Corinth ended, after all, in words ? or did they entrust their 
contributions to some of the other deputies ? 

4 The Hvppov was, perhaps, added to distinguish him from the Sosipater of Bom. xvi. 
21, », A, B, D, E. 

5 Verse 5. If npoo-e\66vTes {a, A, B, E,) be the right reading, Tychicus and Trophimus 
must have met Paul at Troas. 



512 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 

Paul had left him on his first visit, 1 and the two stayed at the Roman colony 
to keep the Passover. Very happy, we may be sure, was that qiaiet time spent 
by St. Paul in the bosom of the Church which he loved best of all — amid the 
most blameless and the most warm-hearted of all his converts. Tears must 
have elapsed before he again spent a Passover in circumstances so peaceful 
and happy. 2 

The eight days of the feast ended in that year on Monday, April 3, and on 
the next day they set sail. Detained by calms, or contrary winds, they took 
five days 3 to sail to Troas, and there they again stayed seven days. 4 The delay 
was singular, considering the haste with which the Apostle was pressing for- 
ward to make sure of being at Jerusalem by Pentecost. It was now about the 
10th of April, and as the Pentecost of that year fell on May 17, St. Paul, 
dependent as he was on the extreme uncertainties of ancient navigation, had 
not a single day to spare. We may be quite sure that it was neither the 
splendour of the town, with its granite temples and massive gymnasium, that 
detained him, nor all the archaic and poetic associations of its neighbourhood, 
nor yet the loveliness of the groves and mountains and gleams of blue sea. 
Although his former visits had been twice cut short — once by the Macedonian 
vision, and once by his anxiety to meet Titus — it is even doubtful whether he 
would have been kept there by the interest which he must have necessarily felt 
in the young and flourishing Church of a town which was one of the very few 
in which he had not been subjected to persecution. The delay was therefore 
probably due to the difficulty of finding or chartering a vessel such as they 
required. 5 

Be that as it may, his week's sojourn was marked by a scene which is 
peculiarly interesting, as one of the few glimpses of ancient Christian worship 
which the New Testament affords. The wild disorders of vanity, fanaticism, and 
greed, which produced so strange a spectacle in the Church of Corinth, would 
give us, if we did not regard them as wholly exceptional, a most unfavourable 
conception of these Sunday assemblies. Very different, happily, is the scene to 
which we are presented on this April Sunday at Alexandria Troas, A.D. 58. 6 

It was an evening meeting. Whether at this period the Christians had 
already begun the custom of meeting twice — early in the morning, before 
dawn, to sing and pray, and late in the evening to partake of the Love Feast 
aud the Lord's Supper, as they did some fifty years after this time in the 
neighbouring province of Bithynia 7 — we are not told. Great obscurity hangs 
over the observance of the Lord's day in the first century. The Jewish 

1 The first person plural is resumed in the narrative at xx. 5, having been abandoned 
at xvi. 17. It is now continued to the end of the Acts, and Luke seems to have remained 
with St. Paul to the last (2 Tim. iv. 11). 

2 Lewin, Fasti Sacri, § 1857. 

3 It had only taken them two days to sail from Troas to Neapolis, the port of Philippi, 
on a former occasion, xvi. 11. 

4 Compare xx. 6, xxi. 4, xxviii. 14. 6 2 Cor. ii. 13. 

6 It was early called Sunday, even by Christians, ty toC 'HKiov Ae-yofxeV/j wep<* (Just. 
Mart. Apol. ii. 228). 

^ Plin. Ep. x. 90. Quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenu-e . . . quibut 



IBE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 513 

Christians doubtless continued to keep the Sabbath, but St. Paul reprobates 
the adoption of any such custom among the Gentiles; and, indeed, his 
language seems to show that he did not regard with favour any observance of 
times or seasons which savoured at all of Sabbatical scrupulosity. 1 All that 
we know is, that from the Resurrection onwards, the first day of the week was 
signalised by special Christian gatherings for religious purposes, and that on 
this particular Sunday evening the members of the Church of Troas were 
assembled, in accordance with their usual custom, to partake of the Love 
Feast, and to commemorate the death of Christ in the Holy Communion. 2 

The congregation may have been all the more numerous because it was 
known that on the next day the Apostle and his little company would leave the 
place. They were gathered in one of those upper rooms on the third storey, 
which are the coolest and pleasantest part of an Eastern house. The labours 
of the day were over, and the sun had set, and as three weeks had now elapsed 
since the full moon of the Passover, there was but a pale crescent to dispel the 
darkness. But the upper room was full of lamps, 3 and in the earnestness of 
his overflowing heart, Paul, knowing by many a mysterious intimation the 
dangers which were awaiting him, continued discoursing to them till midnight. 
On the broad sill of one of the open windows, of which the lattice or enclosing 
shutter had been flung wide open to catch the cool sea breeze, sat a boy named 
Eutychus. 4 The hour was very late, the discourse unusually long, the topics 
with which it dealt probably beyond his comprehension. Though he was 
sitting in the pleasantest place in the room, where he would enjoy all the air 
there was, yet the heat of a crowded meeting, and the glare of the many lamps, 
and the unbroken stream of the speaker's utterance, 5 sent the lad fast asleep. 
The graphic description of St. Luke might almost make us believe that he had 
been watching him, not liking, and perhaps not near enough to awaken him, 
and yet not wholly insensible of his danger, as first of all he began to nod, 
then his head gradually sank down on his breast, and, at last, he fell with a 
rush and cry from the third storey into the courtyard beneath. 6 We can 
imagine the alarm and excitement by which the voice of the speaker was 
suddenly interrupted, as some of the congregation ran down the outside 
staircase 7 to see what had happened. It was dark, 8 and the poor lad lay 

peractis morem sibi discedendi f uisse rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum 
tamen et innoxium. 

» Rom. xiv. 5 ; Gal. iv. 10 ; Col. ii. 16. 

2 This is implied by the expression crvvi]yfx.ivtav itfuav Kkavai aprov. Cf. the Word emovvaywyr), 

Heb. x. 25, and ovva^is. 

3 This is with St. Luke the casual incident mentioned by an eye-witness, on whose 
mind the scene was vividly impressed. The lamps are sufficiently accounted for by the 
darkness, but the mention of them is valuable, as showing how little of secresy or 
disorder attended these late meetings. They had not as yet become subjects of suspicion, 
but it was not long before they did. 

4 It is a common slave name, but nothing more is known of him. 

V er. 9, SiaXeyofxevov tov IlavAou inl 7rA.eiot/. 

6 Vfl. 9. jcaTow^epo/xevos iinvto /3a0ei . . . Karevexdd? airb tov virvou eneaev. Karate pecrOai is 8 

vox solemnis de hac re. Aristot. de Insomniis, iii &c. 

7 ava^aOfiol. 8 Being now late at night, the crescent moon must have set. 

a a 



514 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

senseless, and " was taken up dead." J A cry of horror and wailing rose from 
the bystanders; but Paul, going down-stairs, fell on him, and clasping his 
arms round him, 2 said, " Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." After he 
had calmed the excitement by this remark, he left the lad to the effects of rest 
and quiet, and the kindly care, perhaps, of the deaconesses and other women 
who were present ; for the narrative simply adds that the A postle went up- 
stairs again, and after " breaking the bread," 3 — words descriptive probably of 
the eucharistic consecration — and making a meal, which describes the subse- 
quent Agape, he continued in friendly intercourse with the congregation till 
the dawn of day, and then went out. By that time Eutychus had fully 
recovered. " They led the boy alive " — apparently into the upper chamber — 
" and were not a little comforted." 

Next day the delegates — these " first Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land " 
— went down to their vessel to sail round Cape Lectum, while Paul went by 
land 4 across the base of the promontory to rejoin them at Assos. Whether he 
had friends to visit on the way, or whether he wished to walk those twenty 
miles through the pleasant oak-groves along the good Roman roads in silent 
commune with his own spirit, we do not know. Natures like his, however 
strong may be their yearning for sympathy, yet often feel an imperious 
necessity for solitude. If he had heard the witty application by Stratonicus, 
of Homer's line, 

^Affffov Iff &s tcev daffffov oKedpov repfiaO' forjcu, 

he might, while smiling at the gay jest directed against the precipitous descent 
from the town to the harbour, have thought that for him too — on his way to 
bonds and imprisonment, and perhaps to death itself — there was a melancholy 
meaning in the line. 6 Passing between the vast sarcophagi in the street of 
tombs, and through the ancient gate which still stands in ruin, he made his 
way down the steep descent to the port, and there found the vessel awaiting 
him. St. Luke, who was one of those on board, here gives a page of his diary, 
as the ship winged her way among the isles of Greece. The voyage seems to 
have been entirely prosperous. The north-west wind which prevails at that 
season would daily swell the great main-sail, and waft the vessel merrily 
through blue seas under the shadow of old poetic mountains, by famous cities, 
along the vernal shores. That same evening they arrived at Mitylene, the 
bright capital of Lesbos, the home of Sappho and Alcaeus, and the cradle of 
lyric song. Here they anchored, because the moonless night rendered it unsafe 
to thread their course among the many intricacies of that sinuous coast. Next 

1 De Wette, Olshausen, Meyer, Ewald, and many others, take i/e«pbs to mean " as 
dead," "apparently dead," "in a dead swoon," interpreting this word by St. Paul's 

|ir) 0opv/3etcr0e . . . yap, but the ^yayov . . . £Sivra of VS. 12 seems to show St. Luke's 

meaning. 

2 «7rt7recrwv . . . w^nepika^itv, 1 Kings xvii. 21 ; 2 Kings iv. 34. 

3 Vs. 11. KXacra? rbv aprov, Kal yev<rdixevo<;. 

4 Trefeveii' — possibly, but not necessarily, on foot. 

5 H. vi. 143. The pun may be freely rendered " Go to Assos, if you want to meet 
your fate." The Vulgate, too, confuses the name Assos and the adverb asson ("near") 
in xxvii. 13. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 515 

day they anchored off rocky Chios, whose green fields were the fabled birth- 
place of Homer. 1 Next day they touched for a short time at Samos, and then 
sailed across the narrow channel to anchor for the night in the island-harbour 
of Trogyllium, under the ridge of Mycale, so famous for Conon's victory. 
Next day, sailing past the entrance of the harbour of Ephesus, they came to 
anchor at Miletus. St. Paul would gladly have visited Ephesus if time had 
permitted, but he was so anxious to do all in his power to reach Jerusalem by 
Pentecost, and therefore to avoid all delays, whether voluntary or accidental, 
that he resisted the temptation. At Miletus, however, the vessel had to stop, 
and Paul determined to utilise the brief delay. He had probably arrived 
about noon, and at once sent a messenger to the elders of the Church of 
Ephesus to come and see him. 2 It was but a distance of from thirty to forty 
miles along a well-kept road, and the elders 3 might easily be with him by the 
next day, which, reckoning from his departure at Troas, was probably a 
Sunday. He spent the day in their company, and before parting delivered 
them an address which abounds in his peculiar forms of expression, and gives 
a deeply interesting sketch of his work at Ephesus. 

" Te know," he said, " how from the first day on which I set foot in Asia I 
bore myself with you, serving the Lord with all lowly-mindedness, and tears, 
and trials that happened to me in the plots of the Jews ; 4 how I reserved 
nothing that was profitable, 5 but preached to you, and taught you publicly, 
and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and Greeks repentance 
towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. And now behold I, 
bound in the spirit, 6 am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what may 
happen to me there, save that in every city the Holy Spirit testifies to me, 
saying that bonds and tribulations await me. But I regard it as of no 
moment, nor do I hold my soul so precious to myself 7 as to finish my course, 8 

1 TV<J>Ab$ avijp oiKet Se Xia> epi 7raiTraAoe'o-crr) (dp. TbllC. iii. 104). 

2 It is impossible to determine whether the vessel had been chartered by Paul and 
his companions, or whether they were dependent on its movements. Yerse 16 is not 
decisive. 

3 It is of course known that the words "presbyter" and "bishop" are used inter- 
changeably in the New Testament" (see ver. 28, where the E.Y. has "overseers" for 

bishops '). 'Ettktkottovs tovs npeafivTepovs KaAei a.fi.<p6repa yap elx^v kot eiceivov top Kaipbv rd 

bvofiara (Theodor. ad. Phil. i. 1). 

4 These are not mentioned in the narrative. This is one of the many casual indica- 
tions that St. Luke knew many more particulars than it entered into his plan to detail. 

5 Vs. 20, {.Treo-TeiAajiirji/ (lit. "reefed up"). The nautical word (cf. irXripo^opla, Col. ii. 2, 
iv. 12 ; o-TeAA6jaevoi, 2 Thess. iii. 6 ; 2 Cor. viii. 20), so natural in a speaker who must have 
heard the word every day in his voyage, is very characteristic of St. Paul, who constantly 
draws his metaphors from the sights and circumstances immediately around him. He 
uses it again in vs. 27. These little peculiarities of style are quite inimitable, and, as 
Ewald says, "to doubt the genuineness of this speech is folly itself . " Besides many 
other indications of authenticity, it contains at least a dozen phrases and constructions 
which are more or less exclusively Pauline. 

6 Vs. 22. Though the true order is SeSejueW l-yw, N, A, B, C, E, the emphasis is best 
brought out in English, by putting "I " first. 

7 In the extreme varieties of the MSS. in this clause I follow M, ouSevbs \6yov— bvSk !a>x. 
This is the very spirit of Luther on his way to Worms. 

8 Omit /LteTa xapat with N, A, B, D. It is interpolated from Phil. i. 4 ; Col. i. 11 ; cf . 
2 Tim. iv. 7. 

H H 2 



516 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify 1 the Gospel 
of the grace of God. And now behold I know that ye shall never see my face 
again, all you among whom I passed proclaiming the kingdom. 2 Therefore, I 
call you to witness this very day that I am pure from the blood of all. For I 
reserved nothing, but preached to you the whole counsel of God. Take heed, 
then, to yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost appointed 
you bishops to feed the Church of the Lord 3 which He made His own by His 
own blood. I know that there shall come after my departure grievous wolves 
among you, not sparing the flock ; and from your own selves 4 shall arise men 
speaking perverse things, so as to drag away disciples after them. Therefore 
be watchful, remembering that for three years, night and day, 5 I ceased not 
with tears 6 to admonish each one. And now I commend you to God, and to the 
word of His grace, who is able to build you up, and give you an inheritance 
among all the sanctified. No man's silver or gold or raiment did I covet. 
Yourselves know that to my needs, and to those with me, these hands " — and 

1 The third time that this verb has occurred in these few verses. It is quite true of St. 
Paul that "un mot l'obsede." This is an interesting sign of the genuineness of the 
speech. 

2 St. Paul speaks partly with a view to the dangers he is about to face, partly with 
reference to his intention to go to the far west. Hie otSa was not necessarily infallible 
(compare Phil. i. 25 with ii. 24), and in point of fact it is probable that he did visit 
Ephesus again (1 Tim. i. 3, iii. 14, iv. 12 — 20). But that was long afterwards, and it is 
quite certain that as a body (Trdvres i^els) the elders never saw him again. 

3 I accept the reading Kupiov here with A, C, D, E, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian 
versions, Irenaeus, Didymus, Cyril, Jerome, Augustine, &c, rather than ©eoO, the 
remarkable reading of «, B, the Vulgate, Syriac, Chrysostom, Basil, Ambrose, &c, 
because " the blood of God " is an expression wh'<ch, though adopted — perhaps from the 
variation of this very text — by some of the Fathors (Tert. ad Uxor. ii. 3), the Church 
has always avoided. Athanasius, indeed, distinctly says, ovSa^ov Se alfia 0eov Si'xa <mp/cbs 
TrapaSeSw/cao-iv al ypafyaC. That St. Paul held in the most absolute sense the Divinity of 
the Eternal Son is certain ; but he would never have said ? and never has said, anything 
like "the blood of God," and I cannot but think it much more probable that he would 
have used the uncommon but perfectly natural expression " Church of the Lord," than 
seem to sanction the very startling "blood of God." I cannot attach much, if any, 
importance to the fact that "Church of the Lord" is a less usual combination than 
"Church of God ;" for just in the same way St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Philippians, 
abandons his favourite expression of " the day of the Lord," and uses instead " day of 
Christ " (Phil. i. 10, ii. 16). If he had written ©eov, it seems to me very improbable 
that the reading would have been early tampered with. Such a phrase would rank with 
terms like Adelphotheos and Theotokos, which are at once unscriptural and ecclesiastical, 
whereas, if St. Paul said Kvpiov, the marginal ©eov of some pragmatic scribe might 
easily have obtruded itself into the text. Indeed, the very fact that "Church of the 
Lord " is not Paul's normal phrase may have suggested the gloss. If, however, ©eov 
be the right reading, the nominative to TrepieTroirjo-aro may simply have been suppressed 
by a grammatical inadvertency of the Apostle or his amanuensis, (See further, 
Scrivener, Introd. 540.) The mysterious doctrine of the Trepixoiprjcns is one which the 
Apostle always treats with deepest reverence, and such a collocation as alpa. ©eov would 
have given at least primd facie countenance to all kinds of Sabellian, Eutychian, and 
Patripassian heresies. (I have made some further remarks on this reading in the 
Expositor, May, 1879.) 

4 This sad prediction was but too soon fulfilled (1 Tim. i. 20 ; Rev. ii. 6 ; 1 John ii. 19). 
6 Undoubtedly this expression — though not meant to be taken au pied de la lettire — 

tells against the theory of a visit to Corinth during this period. 

6 Tears are thrice mentioned in this short passage — tears of suffering (19) ; of pastoral 
solicitude (31) ; and of personal affection (37). Monod, Cinq Discours (Les Larrnes de 
St. Paul). 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 517 

there lie held up those thin, toilworn hands before them all — " these hands 
ministered. In all things I set you the example, that, thus labouring, you 
ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how 
He said, ' It is blessed rather to give than to receive.' " x 

After these words, which so well describe the unwearied thoroughness, the 
deep humility, the perfect tenderness, of his Apostolic ministry, he knelt 
down with them all, and prayed. They were overpowered with the touching 
solemnity of the scene. He ended his prayer amidst a burst of weeping, and 
as they bade him farewell— anxious for his future, anxious for their own — 
they each laid their heads on his neck, 2 and passionately kissed him, 3 pained 
above all at his remark that never again should they gaze, as they had gazed 
so often, 4 on the dear face of the teacher who had borne so much for their 
sakes, and whom they loved so well. If Paul inspired intense hatreds, yet, 
with all disadvantages of person, he also inspired intense affection. He 
had — to use the strong expression 5 of St. Luke — to tear himself from them. 
Sadly, and with many forebodings, they went down with him to the vessel, 
which was by this time awaiting him ; and we may be very sure that Paul 
was weeping bitterly as he stepped on board, and that sounds of weeping 
were long heard upon the shore, until the sails became a white speck on the 
horizon, and with heavy hearts the Elders of Ephesus turned away to face 
once more, with no hope of help from their spiritual father, the trials that 
awaited them in the city of Artemis. 

The wind blew full in favour of the voyagers, and before the evening they 
had run with a straight course to Cos. Neither the wines, nor the purple, nor 
the perfumes of Cos, would have much interest for the little band ; 6 but, if 
opportunity offered, we may be sure that " the beloved physician" would not 
miss the opportunity of seeing all that he could of the scientific memorials of 
the Asclepiadse — the great medical school of the ancient world. Next day the 
little vessel rounded the promontory of Cnidus, and sped on for Rhodes, 
where, as they entered the harbour, they would admire the proverbial fertility 
of the sunny island of roses, and gaze with curiosity on the prostrate mass of 
its vast Colossus, of which two legs still stood on their pedestal, 7 though the 
huge mass of bronze had been hurled down by an earthquake, there to stay 
till, thirteen centuries later, they were broken up, and carried away on 900 
camels, to be the ignoble spoil of a Jew. 8 The monstrous image — one of the 
wonders of the world — was a figure of the sun ; and, with whatever lingering 
artistic sympathy it might have been regarded by the Gentile converts, 

1 The only "unwritten saying " (aypa<t>ov S6y/u.a) of our Lord in the New Testament not pre- 
served for us m the Gospels. 

2 cf. Gen. xlv. 14, xlvi. 29. 

3 Kare^tAovv, deosculabantur (cf . Matt. xxvi. 49). 

4 Vs. 38. 6eu>pelv. He had only said bxf/evde (cf. John. xx. 5, 6). The word implies the feel- 
ing here alluded to. 

6 XXi. 1, airocmacrOevTa? an' avTtov (cf. Luke XXii. 41). 

8 Strab. xiv. 2 ; Hor. Od. iv. 13, 13 ; Athen. x. 688 (AIL). 
* Plin. H. N„ xxiv. 18 ; Strab. xiv. 2. 
Cedrenus, Hist. p. 431. 



518 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

St. Paul would perhaps think, with a smile, of Dagon, " when he fell flat, and 
shamed his worshippers," or point to it as a symbol of the coming day when 
all idols should be abolished at the returning dawn of the Sun of Righieous- 
ness. The empire of the sea, which this huge statue had been reared to com- 
memorate, had not passed away more completely than the worship of Apollo 
should pass away ; and to St. Paul the work of Chares of Lindos, spite of all 
its grace and beauty, was but a larger idol, to be regarded with pity, whereas 
the temple reared to that idol by the apostate Idumean usurper who had called 
himself king of the Jews could only be looked upon with righteous scorn. 1 

Next day, passing the seven capes which terminate the mountain ridge of 
" verdant Cragus," and the mouth of the yellow river which gave its name of 
Xanthus to the capital of Lycia, and so catching a far-off glimpse of temples 
rich with the marbles which now adorn our British Museum, the vessel which 
bore so much of the fortune of the future, turned her course eastward to 
Patara. Beneath the hill which towered over its amphitheatre rose also amid 
its palm-trees, the temple and oracle of Apollo Patareus. A single column, 
and a pit, — used possibly for some of the trickeries of superstition, — alone 
remain as a monument of its past splendour ; 2 and it was due in no small 
measure to the life's work of the poor Jewish Apostle who now looked up at 
the vast world-famed shrine, that Christian poets would tell in later days how 

" The oracles are dumb, 

No voice nor hideous hum 
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving ; 

Apollo from his shrine 

Can no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving ; 

No nightly trance or breathed spell 

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell." 

They could now no longer avail themselves of the vessel in which so far 
they had accomplished a prosperous, and, in spite of all misgivings, a happy 
voyage. Either its course ended there, or it would continue to coast along 
the shores of Pamphylia and Cilicia. But here they were fortunate enough 
to find another vessel bound straight for Phoenicia, and they at once went on 
board and weighed anchor. Once more they were favoured by wind and 
wave. Sailing with unimpeded course — through sunlight and moonlight— at 
the rate of a hundred miles a day, they caught sight 3 at dawn of the snowy 
peaks of Cyprus, and passing by Paphos— where Paul would be reminded of 
Sergius Paulus and Elymas — in some four days, they put in at Tyre, where 
their ship was to unload its cargo. The Apostle must have ceased to feel 
anxiety about being at Jerusalem by Pentecost, since, owing to providential 
circumstances, he had now a full fortnight to spare. There were some disciplee 

1 The Pythium. 2 Sprat and Forbes, i. 30 ; ap. C. and H. ii. 232. 

* xxi. 3, avwbo.vivTK t cf. aperire (see Ps. Lucian, Ver. Hist. § 38, p. 687) ; the opposite 
technical term is, kiroKpiirrew, absconder (Thuc. v, 65 ; Yirg. uEn. iii. 275, 291). 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 519 

at T}'re, and St. Paul may hare seen them on previous occasions ; 1 but in so 
populous and busy a town it required a little effort to find them. 2 With them 
Pi nl stayed his usual period of seven days, and they by the Spirit told him 
not to go to Jerusalem. He knew, however, all that they could tell him of 
impending danger, and he too was under the guidance of the same Spirit which 
urged him along — a fettered but willing captive. When the week was over 3 
St. Paul left them ; and so deeply in that brief period had he won their affections, 
that all the members of the little community, with their wives and children, 
started with him to conduct him on his way. Before they reached the vessel 
they knelt down side by side, men and women and little ones, somewhere on 
the surf -beat rocks 4 near which the vessel was moored, to pray together — he for 
them, and they for him — before they returned to their homes ; and he went 
once more on board for the last stage of his voyage from Tyre to Ptolemais, 
the modern Acre. There they finally left their vessel, and went to greet the 
disciples, with whom they stayed for a single day, and then journeyed by land 
across the plain of Sharon — bright at that time with a thousand flowers of 
spring — the forty-four miles which separate Acre from Caesarea. Here St. Paul 
lingered till the very eve of the feast. Eeady to face danger when duty 
called, he had no desire to extend the period of it, or increase its certainty. 
At Caesarea, therefore, he stayed with his companions for several days, and 
they were the last happy days of freedom which for a long time he was 
destined to spend. God graciously refreshed his spirit by this brief interval 
of delightful intercourse and rest. For at Caesarea they were the guests of 
one who must have been bound to Paul by many ties of the deepest sympathy 
— Philip the Evangelist. A Hellenist like himself, and a liberal Hellenist, 
Philip, as Paul would have been most glad to recognise, had been the first to show 
the large sympathy and clear insight, without which Paul's own work would 
have been impossible. It was Philip who had evangelised the hated Samari- 
tans ; it was Philip who had had the courage to baptise the Ethiopian eunuch. 
The lots of these two noble workers had been closely intertwined. It was the 
furious persecution of Saul the Pharisee which had scattered the Church of 
Jerusalem, and thus rendered useless the organisation of the seven deacons. 
It was in flight from that persecution that the career of Philip had been 

» Acts xxvi. 20 ; Gal. i. 21. 

2 xxi. 4, arevpovres tovs /oiaflrj-ras, " Seeking out the disciples," not as in E. Y. "finding 
disciples." 

3 xxi. 5. egapTivai usually means "to refit," but here with ^epasit seems to mean 
"complete." Hesychius makes it equivalent to TeXeciaat, and so Theophylact and 
CEcumenius understood it. Meyer is probably mistaken in giving the word its first 
meaning here. 

4 Ver. 5, alyiaXbv. Cf. xxvii. 39. There is, indeed, a long range of sandy shore 
between Tyre and Sidon, but near the city there are also rocky places. Dr. Hackett, 
ad loc, quotes a strikingly parallel experience of an American missionary, Mr. Schneider, 
at Anitab, near Tarsus : — "More than a hundred converts accompanied us out of the 
city ; and there, near the spot where one of our number had once been stoned, we halted, 
and a prayer was offered, amid tears. Between thirty and forty escorted us two hours 
farther . . . Then another prayer was offered, and with saddened countenances and 
with weeping they forcibly broke away from us. (Cf. iiro<rTra<r6ivTas f ver. 1.) It really 
seemed as though they could not turn back," 



520 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

changed. On the other hand, that new career had initiated the very line of 
conduct which was to occupy the life of Paul the Apostle. As Paul and 
Philip talked together in those few precious hours, there must have flourished up 
in their minds many a touching reminiscence of the days when the light of 
heaven, which had once shone on the face of Stephen upturned to heaven in 
the agony of martyrdom, had also flashed in burning apocalypse on the face 
of a young man whose name was Saul. And besides a community of thoughts 
and memories, the house of Philip was hallowed by the gentle ministries of 
four daughters who, looking for the coming of Christ, had devoted to the 
service of the Gospel their virgin lives. 1 

To this happy little band of believers came down from Judaea the Prophet 
Agabus, who, in the early days of St. Paul's work at Antioch, had warned the 
Church of the impending famine. Adopting the symbolic manner of the 
ancient prophets, 2 he came up to Paul, unbound the girdle which fastened 
his cetoneth, and tying with it his own feet and hands said, " Thus saith the 
Holy Spirit, Thus shall the Jews in Jerusalem bind the man whose girdle this 
is, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." They had long been 
aware of the peril of the intended visit, but no intimation had been given them 
so definite as this, nor had they yet foreseen that a Jewish assault would 
necessarily end in a Roman imprisonment. On hearing it, St. Paul's com- 
panions earnestly entreated him to stay where he was, while they went to 
Jerusalem to convey the Gentile contribution; and the members of the 
Csesarean Church joined their own tears and entreaties to those of his beloved 
companions. Why should he face a certain peril ? Why should he endanger 
an invaluable life ? Since the Spirit had given him so many warnings, might 
there not be even something of presumption in thus exposing himself in the 
very stronghold of his most embittered enemies ? St. Paul was not insensible to 
their loving entreaties and arguments ; there might have been an excuse, and 
something more than an excuse, for him had he decided that it was most unwise 
to persist in his intentions ; but it was not so to be. His purpose was inflexible. 
No voices of even prophets should turn him aside from obedience to a call which 
he felt to be from God. A captive bound to Christ's triumphant chariot-wheel, 
what could he do? What could he do but thank God even if the Gospel, which 
was to some an aroma of life, became to him an aroma of earthly death? 
When the finger of God has pointed out the path to a noble soul, it will not 
swerve either to the right hand or the left. " What are ye doing, weeping 
and breaking my heart? " he said. " I am willing not only to goto Jerusalem 
to be bound, but even to die, for the name of the Lord Jesus." They saw that 
further importunity would be painful and useless — 

" He saw a hand they could not see 
Which beckoned him away, 
He heard a voice they could not hear 
Which would not let him stay." 

> Of. Plin. Ep. x. 96. 2 Cf. 1 Kings xxii. 11 ; Isa. xx. 2 j Jer. xhi 1, &0. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 521 

They desisted and wiped away their tears, saying, "The Lord's will be 
done." 

Too soon the happy days of rest and loving intercourse came to an end. 
It was seventy-five miles, an ordinary three days' journey, from Csesarea to 
Jerusalem. That year the feast began at sunset on "Wednesday, May 17. 1 
The last day at Caesarea was a Sunday. Next day they packed up their 
baggage 2 — and it was precious, for it contained the chaluka — and, accompanied 
by some of the Csesarean converts, who, with multitudes of other Jews, were 
streaming up to Jerusalem on that last day before the feast began, 3 they started 
for the Holy City, with hearts on which rested an ever- deepening shadow. 
The crowd at these gatherings was so immense that the ordinary stranger might 
well fail to find accommodation, and be driven to some temporary booth outside 
the walls. But the brethren had taken care to secure for Paul and his delegates 
a shelter in the house of Mnason, a Cyprian, and one of the original disciples. 
St. Paul seems to have had a sister living at Jerusalem, but we do not know 
that she was a Christian, and in any case her house — which might be well 
known to many Tarsian Jews — would be an uncertain resting-place for an 
endangered man. And so for the fifth time since his conversion Paul re-entered 
Jerusalem. He had rarely entered it without some cause for anxiety, and there 
could have been scarcely one reminiscence which it awoke that was not infinitely 
painful. The school of Gamaliel, the Synagogue of the Libertines, the house 
where the High Priest had given him his commission to Damascus, the spot 
where the reddened grass had drunk the blood of Stephen must all have stirred 
painful memories. But never had he trod the streets of the Holy City with so 
deep a sadness as now that he entered it, avoiding notice as much as possible, 
in the little caravan of Csesarean pilgrims and Gentile converts. He was 
going into a city where friends were few, and where well-nigh every one of 
the myriads among whom he moved was an actual or potential enemy, to whom 
the mere mention of his name might be enough to make the dagger flash from 
its scabbard, or to startle a cry of hatred which would be the signal for a 
furious outbreak. But he was the bearer of help, which was a taugible proof 
of his allegiance to the mother church, and the brethren whom he saw that 
evening at the house of Mnason gave him a joyous welcome. It may have 
cheered his heart, for a moment, but it did not remove the deep sense that he 
was in that city which was the murderess of the Prophets. He knew too well 
the burning animosity which he kindled, because he remembered too well what 
had been his own, and that of his party, against the Christian Hellenists of 
old. The wrath which he had then felt was now a furnace heated sevenfold 
against himself. 

The next day till sunset was marked by the ceremonies of the feast, and the 

1 Fasti Sacri, No. 1857. 

2 Verse 15. Leg. eina-icevaa-dfievoi., N, A, B, E, G, and a mass of cursives. In the 
E. Y. "carriages" means "baggage :" cf. Judges xviii. 21; 1 Sam. xvii. 22; Isa. x. 28. 
"We trussed up our fardeles," Gene v. Vers. 

3 That St. Paul had only arrived on the very eve of the feast may be at once inferred 
from Acts xxiv. 11. 



522 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

greater part of it was spent by St. Paul and his little company in an assembly 
of the elders, who met to receive him under the presidency of James. 1 The 
elders were already assembled when the visitors came in, and we may imagine 
that it was with something more than a thrill of curiosity — that it must have 
been with an almost painful shyness — that " timid provincial neophytes " like 
Timothy and Trophimus (the latter especially, an uncircumcised Gentile, whom 
his teacher had encouraged to regard himself as entirely emancipated from the 
Jewish law) — found themselves in the awful presence of James, the Lord's 
brother — James, the stern, white-robed, mysterious prophet, and the conclave 
of his but half-conciliated Judaic presbyters. No misgiving could assail them 
in their own free Asiatic or Hellenic homes ; but here in Jerusalem, in u the 
Holy, the Noble city," under the very shadow of the Temple, face to face with 
zealots and Pharisees, it required nothing less than the genius of a Paul to claim 
without shadow of misgiving that divine freedom which was arraigned in the 
name of a history rich in miracles, and a whole literature of inspired books, 
That free spirit was a lesson which the Jews themselves as a body could not 
learn. It required, indeed, the earthquake shock which laid their temple in 
ruins, and scattered their nationality to the four winds of heaven, effectively 
to teach them the futility of the convictions to which they so passionately 
clung. They would have resisted without end the logic of argument had not 
God Himself in due time refuted their whole theology by the irresistible logic 
of facts. The destruction of Jerusalem did more to drive them from an im- 
memorial " orthodoxy " than the Epistles of St. Paul himself. 

As we read the narrative of the Acts in the light of the Epistles, it is diffi- 
cult to resist the impression that the meeting between the Apostle and the 
Elders of Jerusalem was cold. It is, of course, certain that the first object of 
the meeting was the presentation of the contribution from which Paul had 
hoped so much. One by one he would call forward the beloved delegates, 
that they might with their own hands lay at the feet of James the sums of 
money which his Gentile Churches had contributed out of their deep poverty, 
and which in many and many a coin bore witness to weeks of generous self- 
denial. There lay all this money, a striking proof of the faithfulness with 
which Paul, at any rate, had carried out his share of the old compact at Jeru- 
salem, when— almost by way of return for concessions which the Judaisers had 
done their best to render nugatory — the Three had begged him to be mindful 
of the poor. It must have been a far larger bounty than they had any reason 
to expect, and on this occasion, if ever, we might surely have looked for a 
little effusive sympathy, a little expansive warmth, on the part of the com- 
munity which had received so tangible a proof of the Apostle's kindness. Yet 
we are not told about a word of thanks, and we see but too plainly that Paul's 

1 As none of the Twelve are mentioned, it is probable that none were present. The 
twelve years which, as tradition tells us, had been fixed by Christ for their stay in Jeru- 
salem, had long elapsed, and they were scattered on their various missions to evangelise 
the world. St. Luke was aware of the contributions brought by St. Paul (xxiv. 17), 
though he does not mention them here. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 523 

hardly disguised misgiving as to the manner in which his gift would be 
accepted * was confirmed. Never in any age have the recipients of alms at 
Jerusalem been remarkable for gratitude. 2 "Was the gratitude of the Zealots 
and Pharisees of the community extinguished in this instance by the fact that 
one of the bags of money was carried by the hands of an uncircumcised Gen- 
tile ? Had it been otherwise, nothing would have lain more entirely in the 
scope of St. Luke's purpose to record. Though some at least of the brethren 
received Paul gladly, the Elders of the Church had not hurried on the previous 
evening to greet and welcome him, and subsequent events prove too clearly 
that his chief reward lay in the sense of having done and taught to his con- 
verts what was kind and right, and not in any softening of the heart of the 
Judaic Christians. Gratitude is not always won by considerateness. The 
collection for the saints occupies many a paragraph in St. Paul's Epistles, as 
it had occupied many a year of his thoughts. But there is little or no 
recorded recognition of his labour of love by the recipients of the bounty 
which but for him could never have been collected. 

When the presentation was over, Paul narrated in full detail 3 the work he 
had done, and the Churches which he had confirmed or founded in that third 
journey, of which we have seen the outline. What love and exultation should 
such a narrative have excited ! All that we are told is, that " they, on hearing 
it, glorified God, and said " — what ? The repetition, the echo, of bitter and 
even deadly reproaches against St. Paul, coupled with a suggestion which, 
however necessary they may have deemed it, was none the less humiliating. 
" You observe, brother, how many myriads of the J ews there are that have 
embraced the faith, and they are all zealots of the Law." The expression is a 
startling one. Were there, indeed, at that early date " many myriads " of 
Jewish Christians, when we know how insignificant numerically were the 
Churches even at such places as Rome and Corinth, and when we learn how 
small was the body of Christians which, a decade later, took refuge at Pella 
from the impending ruin of Jerusalem? If we are to take the expression 
literally — if there were even as many as two myriads of Christians who were 
all zealous for the Law, it only shows how fatal was the risk that the Church 
would be absorbed into a mere slightly-differentiated synagogue. At any rate* 
the remark emphasised the extreme danger of the Apostle's position in that 
hotbed of raging fanaticism, especially when they added, " And they " — all 
these myriads who have embraced the faith and are zealots of the Law! — "have 
been studiously indoctrinated 4 with the belief about you, that you teach 
Apostasy from Moses, telling all the Jews of the dispersion not to cir- 
cumcise their children, and not to walk in obedience to the customs. What 
then is the state of affairs ? That a crowd will assemble is quite certain ; for 

1 Rom. xv. 31. 

2 "Witness the treatment in recent days of Sir M. Montefiore and Dr. Frankl, after 
conferring on them the largest pecuniary benefits. 

8 XXL 19, Kaff ev iaacTTOv. 

4 Ver. 21, KaTTjxij^io-av. "Very much stronger than the E. Y., "they are informed." 



524 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

they will hear that you have come. At once then do what we tell yon. We 
have four men who have a vow upon them. Take them, he purified with 
them, and pay their expenses that they may get their heads shaved. All will 
then recognise that there is nothing in all which has been so carefully incul- 
cated into them about you, but that you yourself also walk in observance of 
the Law. But as regards the Gentiles that have embraced the faith, we 
enjoined their exemption from everything of this kind, deciding only that 
they should keep themselves from meat offered to idols, and blood, and 
strangled, and fornication." 

What did this proposal mean ? It meant that the emancipation from the 
vow of the Nazarite could only take place at Jerusalem, and in the Temple, 
and that it was accompanied by offerings so costly that they were for a poor 
man impossible. A custom had therefore sprung up by which rich men 
undertook to defray the necessary expenses, and this was regarded as an act 
of charity and piety. The Jews, indeed, looked so favourably on a species of 
liberality which rendered it possible for the poor no less than the rich to make 
vows at moments of trial and danger, that when Agrippa I. paid his first visit 
to Jerusalem, he had paid the expenses which enabled a large number of 
Nazarites to shave their heads, 1 not only because he wished to give an ostenta- 
tious proof of his respect for the Levitical law, but also because he knew that 
this would be a sure method of acquiring popularity with the Pharisaic party. 
The person who thus defrayed the expenses was supposed so far to share the 
vow, that he was required to stay with the Nazarites during the entire week, 
which, as we gather from St. Luke, was the period which must elapse between 
the announcement to the priest of the termination of the vow, and his formal 
declaration that it had been legally completed. 2 For a week then, St. Paul, if 
he accepted the advice of James and the presbyters, would have to live with 
four paupers in the chamber of the Temple which was set apart for this pur- 
pose ; and then to pay for sixteen sacrificial animals and the accompanying 
meat offerings ; and to stand among these Nazarites while the priest offered 
four he-lambs of the first year without blemish for burnt offerings, and four 
ewe-lambs of the first year without blemish for sin offerings, and four rams 
without blemish for peace offerings ; and then, to look on while the men's 
heads were being shaved and while they took their hair to burn it under the 
boiling cauldron of the peace offerings, and while the priest took four sodden 
shoulders of rams and four unleavened cakes out of the four baskets, and four 
unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and put them on the hands of the Naza- 
rites, and waved them for a wave -offering before the Lord — which, with the 
wave-breads and the heave-shoulders, the priest afterwards took as his own 
perquisites. And he was to do all this, not only to disprove what was 

1 Jo8. Alltt. XIX. 6, § 1, el? 'lepoa6kvfia eX0tbv x a P ia " rr )pt° v '> e£eir\rjpio<Te flverias ovBev rQv Kara 
fftfuov anokinuv. Sib koI Na^ipaiwv fvpa<r0ai Sie'ra^e iJ.a\a (rvxvovs. 

2 Neither the Talmud nor the Pentateuch mentions this circumstance. Numb. vi. 9, 
10 refers only to the cases of accidental pollution during the period of the vow. It may 
have been on the analogy of this rule that a week was fixed as the period of purification. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 525 

undoubtedly a calumny if taken strictly — namely, that he had taught the Jetrs* 
apostasy from Moses (as though his whole Gospel was this mere negation !) — 
but also to prove that there was no truth in the reports about him, but that he 
also was a regular observer of the Law. 

That it was an expensive business was nothing. Paul poor as he had now 
become, could not, of course, pay unless he had the money wherewith to pay 
it ; and if there were any difficulty on this score, its removal rested with those 
\* ho made the proposal. But was the charge against him false in spirit as 
well as in letter ? Was it true that he valued, and — at any rate, with anything 
approaching to scrupulosity — still observed the Law ? Would there not be in 
such conduct on his part something which might be dangerously misrepresented 
as an abandonment of principle ? If those Judaisers on whom he did not 
spare to heap such titles as " false apostles," " false brethren," " deceitful 
workers," "dogs," "emissaries of Satan," "the concision," 1 had shaken the 
allegiance of his converts by charging him with inconsistency before, would 
they not have far more ground to do so now ? It is true that at the close of 
his second journey he had spontaneously taken on himself the vow of the 
Nazarite. But since that time circumstances had widely altered. At that 
time the animosity of those false brethren was in abeyance ; they had not 
dogged his footsteps with slander ; they had not beguiled his converts into 
legalism ; they had not sent their adherents to undo his teaching and persuade 
his own churches to defy his authority. And if all these circumstances were 
changed, he too was changed since then. His faitli had never been the 
stereotype of a shibboleth, or the benumbing repetition of a phrase. His life, 
like the life of every good and wise man, was a continual education. His views 
during the years in which he lived exclusively among Gentile churches 
and in great cities had been rendered clearer and more decided. Not to speak 
of the lucid principles which he had sketched in the Epistles to the Corinthians, 
he had written the Epistle to the Galatians, and had developed the arguments 
there enunciated in the Epistle to the Romans. It had been the very object of 
those Epistles to establish the nullity of the Law for all purposes of justification. 
The man who had written that the teaching of the Judaisers was a quite 
different gospel to his, and that any one who preached it was accursed 2 — who 
had openly charged Peter with tergiversation for living Judaically after having 
lived in Gentile fashion 3 — who had laid it down as his very thesis that " from 
works of Law no flesh shall be justified " 4 — who had said that to build again 
what he destroyed was to prove himself a positive transgressor 5 — who had 
talked of the Law as "a curse" from which Christ redeemed us, and declared 
that the Law could never bring righteousness 6 — who had even characterised 
that Law as a slavery to " weak and beggarly elements " comparable to the 
rituals of Cybele worship and Moon worship, and spoken of circumcision as 
taing in itself no better than a contemptible mutilation" — who had talked 

" 2 Cor. xi. 13 ; Gal. ii. 4 ; Phil. iii. 2 ; 2 Cor. xi. 13. 2 Gal. i. 6-9. 

8 Id. iL 14 ; supra, p. 250. 4 Id. ii. 16. 5 Id. ii. 18. 

6 Rom. iii. 20 ; Gal. ii. 16. 7 Phil. iii. 2 ; Gal. v. 12. 



526 . THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

again and again of being dead to the Law, and openly claimed fellowship 
rather with the Gentiles, who were the spiritual, than with the rejected and 
penally blinded Jews, who were but the physical descendants of Abraham — 
was this the man who could without creating false impressions avoid danger 
of death, which he had braved so often, by doing something to show how 
perfectly orthodox he was in the impugned respects ? A modern writer has 
said that he could not do this without untruth; and that to suppose the 
author of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians standing seven days, oil- 
cakes in hand, in the Temple vestibule, and submitting himself to all thr 
manipulations with which Rabbinic pettiness had multiplied the Mosaic 
ceremonials which accompanied the completion of the Nazaritic vow — to suppose 
that, in the midst of unbelieving Priests and Levites, he should have patiently 
tolerated all the ritual nullities of the Temple service of that period, and 
so have brought the business to its tedious conclusion in the elaborate manner 
above described, "is just as credible as that Luther in his old age should 
have performed a pilgrimage to Einsiedeln with peas in his shoes, or that 
Calvin on his deathbed should have vowed a gold-embroidered gown to the 
Holy Mother of God." 1 

But the comparison is illusory. It may be true that the natural tempera- 
ment of St. Paul — something also, it may be, in his Oriental character- 
inclined him to go much farther in the way of concession than either Luther 
or Calvin would have done; but apart from this his circumstances were 
widely different from theirs in almost every respect. We may well imagine 
that this unexpected proposal was distasteful to him in many ways; it is 
hardly possible that he should regard without a touch of impatience the 
tedious ceremonialisms of a system which he now knew to be in its last 
decadence, and doomed to speedy extinction. Still there were two great 
principles which he had thoroughly grasped, and on which he had consistently 
acted. One was acquiescence in things indifferent for the sake of charity, so 
that he gladly became as a Jew to Jews that he might save Jews ; the other 
that, during the short time which remained, and under the stress of the 
present necessity, it was each man's duty to abide in the condition wherein he 
had been called. He was a Jew, and- therefore to him the Jewish ceremonial 
was a part of national custom and established ordinance. For him it had, at 
the very lowest, a civil if not a religious validity. If the Jews misinterpreted 
his conduct into more than was meant, it would only be a misrepresentation 
like those which they gratuitously invented, and to which he was incessantly 
liable. Undoubtedly during his missionary journey he must again and again 
have broken the strict provisions of that Law to the honour and furtherance 
of which he had devoted his youth. But though he did not hold himself 

1 Hausrath (p. 453), who, however, erroneously imagines that Paul had himself on 
this occasion the vow of a Nazarite upon him. The person who paid the expense of the 
Nazarite had not, I imagine, to maTce offerings for himself — at least it is nowhere so 
stated— though we infer that he lived with the Nazarites during the period of their 
seclusion, and in some undefined way shared in their purification. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 527 

bound to do all that the Law and the Rabbis required, yet neither did lie feel 
himself precluded from any observance which was not wrong. His objection 
to Levitism was not an objection to external conformity, but only to that 
substitution of externalism for faith to which conformity might lead. He did 
not so much object to ceremonies as to placing any reliance on them. He 
might have wished that things were otherwise, and that the course suggested 
to him involved a less painful sacrifice. He might have been gladder if the 
Elders had said to him, " Brother, you are detested here ; at any moment the 
shout of a mob may rise against you, or the dagger of a Sicarius be plunged 
into your heart. "We cannot under such circumstances be responsible for 
your life. You have given us this splendid proof of your own loyalty and of 
the Christian love of your converts. The feast is over. 1 Retire at once with 
safety, and with our prayers and our blessings continue your glorious work." 
Alas ! such advice was only a " might have been." He accepted the suggestion 
they offered, and the very next day entered the Temple with these four 
Nazarites, went through whatever preliminary purification was deemed neces- 
sary by the Oral Law, and gave notice to the priests that from this time they 
must begin to count the seven days which must pass before the final offerings 
were brought and the vow concluded. 2 

If the Elders overrated the conciliatory effect of this act of conformity, 
they had certainly underrated the peril to which it would expose the great 
missionary who, more than they all, had done his utmost to fulfil that last 
command of Christ that they should go into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature. The city was full of strangers from every region of 
the world, and the place where of all others they would delight to congregate 
would be the courts of the Temple. Even, therefore, if St. Paul, now that 
the storms of years had scarred his countenance and bent his frame, was so 
fortunate as to remain unrecognised by any hostile priest who had known him 
in former days, it was hardly possible that every one of the thousands whom 
he had met in scores of foreign cities should fail to identify that well-known 
face and figure. It would have been far safer, if anything compelled him to 
linger in the Holy City, to live unnoticed in the lowly house of Mnason. He 
might keep as quiet as he possibly could in that chamber of the Nazarites ; 

1 The Pentecost only lasted one day. 

2 In some such way I understand the obscure and disputed expressions of ver. 26; but 
even with the Talmudic treatise Nazir beside us, we know too little of the details to be 
sure of the exact process gone through, or of the exact meaning of the expressions used- 
Some take dyvto-flets and ayvta-^bs to mean that St. Paul took on him the Nazarite vow 
with them (cf. Numb. vi. 3, 5, LXX.). This seems to be impossible, because thirty days 
is the shortest period mentioned by the Mishna for a temporary vow. Mr. Lewin and 
others have conjectured that he was himself a Nazarite, having taken the vow after his 
peril at Ephesus, as on the previous occasion after his peril at Corinth ; and that this 
was the reason why he was so anxious to get to Jerusalem. But if so, why did not St. 
Luke mention the circumstance as he had done before ? And if so, why was it necessary 
to pay the expenses of these four Nazarites when the fulfilment of his own personal vow 
would have been a sufficient and more striking proof of willingness to conform to Mosaism 
in his personal conduct ? Moreover, the proposal of the Elders evidently came to St. Paul 
unexpectedly. 



528 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

but even if, during those seven days of enforced idleness, he confined himsell 
there to the utmost extent, and even if the other Nazarites abstained from 
divulging the secret of a name so famous, it was impossible that he should 
escape the eyes of the myriads who daily wandered through the Temple courts 
and took part in its multitudinous ceremonies. 

For the Jews at that period were in a most inflammable state of mind, and 
the tremors of the earthquake were already felt which was soon to rend the 
earth under their feet, and shake their Temple and city into irretrievable ruin. 
On the death of Herod Agrippa I., 1 Claudius, thinking that his son was too 
young to succeed to the government of so turbulent a people, kept him under 
his own eye at Rome, and appointed Cuspius Fadus to the Procuratorship of 
Judaea. To secure an additional hold upon the Jews, he ordered that the 
crown of Agrippa, and, what was of infinitely greater importance, the "golden 
robes " of the High Priest, should be locked up under the care of the Romans 
in the Tower of Antonia. So deep was the fury of the Jews at the thought 
that these holy vestments should be under the impure care of Gentiles, that 
the order could only be enforced by securing the presence at Jerusalem of 
C. Cassius Longinus, the Prsefect of Syria, with an immense force. Claudius 
almost immediately afterwards cancelled the order, at the entreaty of a 
deputation from Jerusalem, supported by the influence of the young Agrippa. 
Claudius had owed to Agrippa's father his very empire, and since the youth 
inherited all the beauty, talent, and versatility of his family, he was a great 
favourite at the Imperial Court. Fadus had been succeeded by Tiberius 
Alexander, a nephew of Philo, 2 who was peculiarly hateful to the Jews 
because he was a renegade from their religion. He was superseded by 
Cumanus, and about the same time Agrippa II. was invested with the little 
kingdom of Chalcis, vacant by the death of his uncle Herod, and also with 
the functions of guarding the Temple and the Corban, and nominating to the 
High Priesthood. 3 The Procuratorship of Cumanus marked the commence- 
ment of terrible disturbances. At the very first Passover at which he was 
present an event occurred which was a terrible omen of the future. Just as 
at this day the Turkish soldiers are always prepared to pour down from the 
house of the Turkish Governor on the first occurrence of any discord between 
the Greek and Latin Churches, so it was the custom of the Roman com- 
mandant of the Tower of Antonia to post detachments of soldiers along the 
roof of the cloister which connected the fortress with the Temple area — ready 
at any moment to rush down the stairs and plunge into the very midst of 
the crowded worshippers. What occurred on this occasion was singularly 
characteristic. While standing there at guard, one of the Roman soldiers, 
weary of having nothing to do, and disgusted with watching what he despised 
as the mummeries of these hateful Jews, expressed his contempt for them by 
a gesture of the most insulting indecency. 4 Instantly the Jews were plunged 
into a paroxysm of fury. They cursed the new Procurator, and began to peft 

1 A.D. 44. 2 JosepllUS calls him eavixaattoraros (c. Ap. i. 2). 

• A.D. 49. « Job. B. J. ii. 12, § 1; Aatt. xx. 5, § 3. 



'.TOE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 529 

the soldiers with stones, which seem to have been always ready to hand 
among this excitable race. Fearing that the Antonia detachment wonld be 
too weak to cope with so savage an onslaught, Cumanus marched his entire 
forces ronnd from the Prsetorium. At the clash of their footsteps, and the 
gleam of their swords, the wretched unarmed mass of pilgrims was struck 
with panic, and made a rush to escape. The gates of the Temple were choked 
up, and a multitude, variously stated at ten and at twenty thousand, was 
trampled and crushed to death. 

This frightful disaster was followed by another tragedy. An imperial 
messenger was robbed by bandits at Bethhoron, not far from Jerusalem. 
Furious at such an insult, Cumanus made the neighbouring villages re- 
sponsible, and in sacking one of them a Roman soldier got hold of a copy of 
the Scriptures, and burnt it before the villagers with open blasphemies. 
The horror of the insult consisted in the fact that the sacred roll contained 
in many places the awful and incommunicable Name. As they had done 
when Pilate put up the gilt votive shields in Jerusalem, and when Caligula 
had issued the order that his image should be placed in the Temple, the 
Jews poured in myriads to Csesarea, and prostrated themselves before the 
tribunal of the Procurator. In this instance Cumanus thought it best to 
avert dangerous consequences by the cheap sacrifice of a common soldier, and 
the Jews were for the time appeased by the execution of the offender. 

Then had followed a still more serious outbreak. The Samaritans, 
actuated by the old hatred to the Jews, had assassinated some Galilsean 
pilgrims to the Passover at En Gannim, the frontier village of Samaria which 
had repulsed our Lord. 1 Unable to obtain from Cumanus — whom the Sama- 
ritans had bribed — the punishment of the guilty village, the Jews, secretly 
countenanced by the High Priest Ananias, and his son Ananus, flew to arms, 
and, under the leadership of the bandit Eleazar, inflicted on the Samaritans a 
terrible vengeance. Cumanus, on hearing this, marched against them and 
routed them. A renewal of the contest was prevented by the entreaties of 
the chief men at Jerusalem, who, aware of the tremendous results at issue, 
hurried to the battle-field in sackcloth and ashes. Meanwhile the Prsefect of 
Syria, Titus Ummidius Quadratus, appeared on the scene, and, after hearing 
both sides, found Cumanus and his tribune Celer guilty of having accepted a 
bribe, and sent them to Rome with Ananias and Ananus to be tried by the 
Emperor. 2 Jonathan, one of the very able ex-High Priests of the astute 
house of Annas, was sent to plead the cause of the Jews. At that time 
Agrippina was all-powerful with the Emperor, and the freedman Pallas all- 
powerful both with him and with Agrippina, who owed her elevation to his 
friendly offices. The supple Agrippa introduced Jonathan to Pallas, and 
it seems as if a little compact was struck between them, that Pallas should 

1 Luke ix. 53. 

2 The discrepancies in this story as told by Josephus in B. J. ii. 12, § 5, and Antt. 
xx. 6, § 2, are glaring, yet no one doubts either the honesty of Josephus or the general 
truth of the story. How scornfully would it have been rejected as a myth or an inven 
tion if it had occurred in the Gospels ! 

I X 



580 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

induce the Emperor to decide in favour of the Jews, and that Jonathan should 
petition him on behalf of the Jews to appoint to the lucrative Procuratorship 
his brother Felix. The plot succeeded. The Samaritans were condemned; 
their leaders executed; Cumanus banished; Celer sent to Jerusalem to be 
beheaded; Ananias and Ananus triumphantly acquitted; and A.D. 52, six 
years before St. Paul's last visit to Jerusalem, Felix — like his brother, an 
Arcadian slave — who had taken the name of Antonius in honour of his 
first mistress, and the name of Claudius in honour of his patron — became 
Procurator of Judgea. 1 

At first the new Procurator behaved with a little decent reserve, but it 
was not long before he began to show himself in his true colours, and with 
every sort of cruelty and licentiousness " to wield the power of a king with 
the temperament of a slave." After his emancipation he had been entrusted 
with a command in a troop of auxiliaries, and acting with the skill and promp- 
titude of a soldier, he had performed a really useful task in extirpating the 
bandits. Yet even the Jews murmured at the shameless indifference with 
which this Borgia of the first century entrapped the chief bandit Eleazar into 
a friendly visit, on pretence of admiring his skill and valour, and instantly 
threw him into chains, and sent him as a prisoner to Rome. They were still 
more deeply scandalised by his intimacy with Simon Magus, who lived with 
him at Csesarea as a guest, and by whose base devices this "husband or 
adulterer of three queens " succeeded in seducing Drusilla, the beautiful 
sister of Agrippa II. — who had now come as a king to Judaea — from her 
husband Aziz, King of Emesa. A crime of yet deeper and darker dye had 
taken place the very year before Paul's arrival. Jonathan, who was often 
bitterly reminded of his share in bringing upon his nation the affliction of 
a Procurator, who daily grew more infamous from his exactions and his 
savagery, thought that his high position and eminent services to Felix himself 
entitled him to expostulate. So far from taking warning, Felix so fiercely 
resented the interference that he bribed Doras, a friend of Jonathan's, to get 
rid of him. Doras hired the services of some bandits, who, armed with sicae, 
or short daggers, stabbed the priestly statesman at one of the yearly feasts. 
The success and the absolute impunity of the crime put a premium upon 
murder ; assassinations became as frequent in Jerusalem as they were at Rome 
during the Papacy of Alexander YI. The very Temple was stained with 
blood. Any one who wanted to get rid of a public or private enemy found it 
a cheap and easy process to hire a murderer. It is now that the ominous 
term sicarius occurs for the first time in Jewish history. 

This had happened in A.D. 57, and it was probably at the Passover of 
A.D. 58 — only seven weeks before the time at which we have now arrived — 
that the Egyptian Pseudo-Messiah had succeeded in raising 30,000 followers, 
with no better pretensions than the promise that he would lead them to the 
Mount of Olives, and that the walls of Jerusalem should fall flat before hira. 



THE LAST JOtJENET TO JERUSALEM. 531 

Four thousand of these poor deluded wretches seem actually to have accom- 
panied him to the Mount of Olives. There Felix fell upon them, routed them 
at the first onslaught, killed four hundred, took a multitude of prisoners, and 
brought the whole movement to an impotent conclusion. The Egyptian, how- 
ever, had by some means or other made good his escape — was at this moment 
uncaptured — and, in fact, was never heard of any more. But the way in 
which followers had flocked in thousands to so poor an impostor showed the 
tension of men's minds. 

Such was the condition of events — in so excited a state were the leaders 
and the multitude — at the very time that St. Paul was keeping himself as 
quiet as possible in the chambers of the Nazarites. Four days had already 
passed, and there seemed to be a hope that, as the number of pilgrims began 
to thin, he might be safe for three more days, after which there would be 
nothing to prevent him from carrying out his long-cherished wish to visit 
Rome, and from thence to preach the Gospel even as far as Spain. Alas ! hb 
was to visit Rome, but not as a free man. 

For on the fifth day there were some Jews from Ephesus and other cities 
of Asia — perhaps Alexander the coppersmith was one of them — in the Court 
of the Women, and the glare of hatred suddenly shot into the eyes of one of 
these observers as he recognised the marked features of the hated Shaul. He 
instantly attracted towards him the attention of some of the compatriots to 
whom Paul's teaching was so well known. The news ran in a moment through 
the passionate, restless, fanatical crowd. In one minute there arose one of 
those deadly cries which are the first beginnings of a sedition. These Asiatics 
sprang on Paul, and stirred up the vast throng of worshippers with the cry, 
" Israelites ! help ! This is the wretch who teaches all men everywhere against 
the people, and the Thorah, and the Temple. Ay, and besides that, he brought 
Greeks into the Temple, and hath polluted this holy place." Whether they 
really thought so or not we cannot tell, but they had no grounds for this mad 
charge beyond the fact that they had seen the Ephesian Trophimus walking 
about with Paul in the streets of Jerusalem, and supposed that Paul had 
taken him even into the holy precincts. To defile the Temple was what every 
enemy of the Jews tried to do. Antiochus, Heliodorus, Pompey, had pro- 
faned it ; and very recently the Samaritans had been charged with deliberately 
polluting it by scattering dead men's bones over its precincts. Instantly the 
rumour flew from lip to lip that this was Shaul, of whom they had heard — 
Paul, the mesith — Paul, one of the Galilsean Minim — one of the believers in 
" the Hnng " — Paul, the renegade Rabbi, who taught and wrote that Gentiles 
were as good as Jews — the man who blasphemed the Thorah — the man whom 
the synagogues had scourged in vain — the man who went from place to place 
getting them into trouble with the Romans ; and that he had been caught 
taking with him into the Temple a Gentile dog, an uncircumcised ger. 1 The 

1 Had he done this he would hare incurred the censure in Ezek. xliv. 7 ; cf. Eph. ii. 
14. The following remarkable passage of the Talmud is a self-condemnation by the Jewish 
teachers :— " What," it is asked, " was the cause of the destruction of the first Temple? 



532 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

punishment for that crime was death — death by the full permission of the 
Romans themselves ; death even against a Roman who should dare to set foot 
beyond the Chel. They were now in the Court of the Women, but they only 
had to go through the Corinthian gate, and down the fifteen steps outside of 
it, to come to the Chel — the " middle- wall of partition," that low stone balus- 
trade with obelisks, on each of which was engraved on stone tablets the 
inscription in Greek and Latin that " No alien luust set foot within that 
enclosure on pain of certain death." 1 Here, then, was a splendid opportunity 
for most just vengeance on the apostate who taught apostasy. A rush was 
made upon him, and the cry " To the rescue ! " echoed on all sides through the 
streets. 2 To defend himself was impossible. What voice could be heard 
amid the wild roar of that momentarily increasing hubbub ? Was this to be 
the end ? Was he to be torn to pieces then and there in the very Temple 
precincts ? If he had been in the court below, that would have been his 
inevitable fate, but the sacredness of the spot saved him. They began drag- 
ging him, vainly trying to resist, vainly trying to speak a word, through the 
great " Beautiful " gate of Corinthian brass, and down the fifteen steps, while 
the Levites and the Captain of the Temple, anxious to save the sacred en- 
closure from one more stain of blood, exerted all their strength to shut the 
ponderous gate behind the throng which surged after their victim. 3 But 
meanwhile the Roman centurion stationed under arms with his soldiers on the 
roof of the western cloisters, was aware that a wild commotion had suddenly 
sprung up. The outburst of fury in these Oriental mobs is like the scream of 
mingled sounds in a forest which sometimes suddenly startles the deep still- 
ness of a tropic night. The rumour had spread in a moment from the Temple 
to the city, and streams of men were thronging from every direction into the 
vast area of the Court of the Gentiles. In another moment it was certain 
that those white pillars and that tessellated floor would be stained with blood. 
Without a moment's delay the centurion sent a message to Lysias, the com- 
mandant of Antonia, that the Jews had seized somebody in the Temple, and 
were trying to kill him. The Romans were accustomed to rapid movements, 
taught them by thousands of exigencies of their career in hostile countries, 

The prevalence of idolatry, adultery, and murder. . . . But what was the cause of 
the destruction of the second Temple, seeing that the age was characterised by study of the 
Law, observance of its precepts, and the practice of benevolence ? It was groundless 
Juitred ; and it shows that groundless hatred is equal in heinousness to idolatry, adultery, 
and murder combined " (Joma, f. 9, 2). As specimens of the groundless and boundless 
hatred of the Talmudists to Christians, see Abhoda Zarah, f. 26, 1, 2 (Amsterdam 
edition) ; Maimonides, Hilch. Accum, § 9. 

i The Vn- ( Jos - 2*. «7. v. 5, § 2 ; vi. 2, § 4 ; Antt. xv. 11, § 5.) The discovery of one 
of these inscriptions by M. Clermont Ganneau — an inscription on which the eyes of our 
Lord Himself and of all His disciples must have often fallen — is very interesting. He 
found it built into tbe walls of a small mosque in the Via Dolorosa (Palestine Exploration 
Fund Report, 1871, p. 132). Paul had not indeed actually brought any Gentile inside the 
Chel ; but to do so ideally and spiritually had been the very purpose of his life. V. infra, 
ad Eph. ii. 14 

2 Xxi. 30, e/civyjflr) t/ 7roAts 0A17, ko.1 iftvevo (rwdpo/M-if. 

* Job. B J. vi. 5, § 3 ; c Ap. ii. 9. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 533 

but nowhere more essential than in a city which Praefect after Piaofect and 
Procurator after Procurator had learnt to detest as the head-quarters of 
burning, senseless, and incomprehensible fanaticism. A single word was 
enough to surround Lysias with a well- disciplined contingent of centurions 
and soldiers, and he instantly dashed along the cloister roof and down the 
stairs into the Court of the Gentiles. The well-known clang of Roman arms 
arrested the attention of the mob. They had had some terrible warnings very 
lately. The memory of that awful day, when they trampled each other to 
death by thousands to escape the cohort of Oumanus, was still fresh in their 
memory. They did not dare to resist the mailed soldiery of their conquerors. 
Lysias and his soldiers forced their way straight through the throng to the 
place where Paul was standing, and rescued him from his enraged opponents. 
When he had seized him, and had his arms bound to two soldiers by two chains, 
he asked the question, " Who the man might be, and what he had done? " ] 
Nothing was to be learnt from the confused cries that rose in answer, and, in 
despair of arriving at anything definite in such a scene, Lysias ordered him 
to be marched into the barracks. 2 But no sooner had he got on the stairs which 
led up to the top of the cloister, and so into the fortress, 3 than the mob, afraid 
that they were going to be baulked of their vengeance, made another rush at 
him, with yells of " Kill him ! kill him ! " 4 and Paul, unable in his fettered 
condition to steady himself, was carried off his legs, and hurried along in the 
arms of the surrounding soldiers. He was saved from being torn to pieces 
chiefly by the fact that Lysias kept close by him ; and, as the rescue-party 
was about to disappear into the barracks, Paul said to him in Greek, " May 
I speak a word to you ? " " Can you speak Greek ? " asked the commandant 
in surprise. " Are you not then really that Egyptian 5 who a little while ago 
made a disturbance, 6 and led out into the wilderness those 4,000 sicarii?" 7 
" No," said Paul ; "lama Jew, a native of Tarsus, in Cilicia, a citizen of 

* XXI. 33, Tts av etrj, Kal ri etrnv 7re7roiTjKoJ?. 2 napefj.^o\-q. 

8 Fort Antonia was a four-square tower, at the N.W. angle of the Temple area, with 
a smaller tower fifty cubits high at each corner except the southern, where the tower was 
seventy cubits high, with the express object of overlooking everything that went on in 
the Temple courts. Stairs from these towers communicated with the roofs of two por- 
ticoes, on which at intervals (8uo-Ta.iJ.evoi) stood armed Roman soldiers at the times of the 
great festivals, to prevent all seditious movements (Jos. B. J. v. 5, § 8 ; Antt. xx. 5, § 3). 

4 Cf . Luke xxiii. 18, and the cry of Pagan mobs, olpe tovs afleous. 

5 Yer. 38, oix apa oil el 6 Ai-yvn-Tto? . . . ; One hardly sees why Lysias should have 
inferred that the Egyptian could not speak Greek, but he may have known that this was 
the fact. Since the Egyptian had only escaped a few months before, and the mass of the 
people — never favourable to him — would be exasperated at the detection of his impos- 
ture, the conjecture of Lysias was not surprising. 

6 amoraTcocras. Cf . xvii. 6 ; Gal. v. 12. 

' Ver. 38, tovs TeTpa/aerxiAiovs av<$pas twv <rt/capiwv. Josephus (Antt. xx. 8, § 6) says that 
Felix, when he routed them, killed 400 and took 200 prisoners. In B. J. ii. 13, § 5, he 
says that he collected 30,000 followers, and led them to the Mount of Olives from the 
wilderness, and tbat the majority of them were massacred or taken prisoners. Most 
critics only attach importance to such discrepancies when they find or imagine them in 
the sacred writers. For the sicarii, see Jos. B. J. ii. 13, § 3. He says tbat they mur- 
dered people in broad day, and in the open streets, especially during the great feasts, and 
that they carried their daggers concealed under their robes. 



534 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

no undistinguished city, 1 and, I entreat you, allow me to speak to the 
people." 

It was an undaunted request to come from one whose life had just been 
rescued, and barely rescued, from that raging mob, and who was at that 
moment suffering from their rough treatment. Most men would have been 
in a state of such wild alarm as to desire nothing so much as to be hurried out 
of sight of the crowd. Not so with St. Paul. Snatched from his persecutors 
after imminent risk — barely delivered from that most terrifying of all forms 
of danger, the murderous fury of masses of his fellow-men — he asks leave 
not only to face, but even to turn round and address, the densely-thronging 
thousands, who were only kept from him by a little belt of Roman swords. 2 

Lysias gave him leave to speak, and apparently ordered one of his hands 
to be unfettered ; and taking his stand on the stairs, Paul, with uplifted arm, 
made signals to the people that he wished to address them. 3 The mob 
became quiet, for in the East crowds are much more instantly swayed by 
their emotions than they are among us ; and Paul, speaking in Syriac, the 
vernacular of Palestine, and noticing priests and Sanhedrists among the 
crowd, began — 

"Brethren and Fathers, 4 listen to the defence I have now to make to 
you!" 

The sound of their own language, showing that the speaker was at any rate 
no mere Hellenist, charmed their rage for the moment, and produced a still 
deeper silence. In that breathless hush Paul continued his speech. It was 
adapted to its object with that consummate skill which, even at the most 
exciting moments, seems never to have failed him. While he told them the 
truth, he yet omitted all facts which would be likely to irritate them, and 
which did not bear on his immediate object. That object was to show that 
he could entirely sympathise with them in this outburst of zeal, because 
he had once shared their state of mind, and that nothing short of divine 
revelations had altered the course of his religion and his life. He was, 
he told them, a Jew, 6 born indeed in Tarsus, yet trained from his earliest 
youth in Jerusalem, at the feet of no less a teacher than their great living 
Rabban Gamaliel ; that he was not merely a Jew, but a Pharisee who had 
studied the inmost intricacy of the Halacha ; 6 and was so like themselves in 
being a zealot for God, that he had persecuted " this way " to the very death, 

1 oil* aarinov TroAecos (Eur. Ion. 8). It was avrovofLos, and a ju.TjTpd7roA.1s, and had a famous 
university. 

2 Knox, who thought that Paul did wrong to take the vow, says, "He was brought 
Into the most desperate danger, God designing to show thereby that we must not do 
evil that good may come." 

3 Ver. 40, Kareo-eto-e rfj x«pl. Cf. xii. 17 ; xix. 33 ; xxi. 40. Cf. Pers. iv. 5, " Calidus 
fecisse silentia turbae Majestate manus." 

4 See St. Stephen's exordium (vii. 2). 

6 xxii. 3, ai/iip 'Ioi/8ato«. To Lysias he had used the general expression avflpwTros "Iou8. 
(xxi. 39). 

6 xxii. 3, Karb. i»cpt/3eiav toO 7raTpwov vo/xov. Cf. xxvi. 5 ; Jos. B. J. ii. 8, § 18. This 
' ' accuracy " corresponds to the Hebrew tsedakah, and the Talmudic dikdukey ('pvtpl), 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 535 

haling to prison not only men, but even women ; in proof of which he appealed 
to the testimony of the ex- High Priest Theophilus, 1 and many still surviving 
members of the Sanhedrin who had given him letters to Damascus. What, 
then, had changed the whole spirit of his life ? Nothing less than a Divine 
vision of Jesus of Nazarath, which had stricken him blind to earth, and bidden 
him confer with Ananias. 2 He does not tell them that Ananias was a Chris- 
tian, but — which was no less true — that he was an orthodox observer of the 
Law, for whom all the Jews of Damascus felt respect. Ananias had healed 
his blindness, and told him that it was " the God of our fathers," who fore- 
ordained him to know His will and see " the Just One," 3 and hear the 
message from His lips, that he might be for Him " a witness to all men " of 
what he had heard and seen. He then mentions his baptism and return to 
Jerusalem, and, hurrying over all needless details, comes to the point that, 
while he was worshipping — now twenty years ago — in that very Temple, he 
had fallen into a trance, and again seen the risen Jesus, who bade him 
hurry with all speed out of Jerusalem, because there they would not receive 
his testimony. But so far from wishing to go, he had even pleaded with 
the heavenly vision that surely the utter change from Saul the raging per- 
secutor — Saul who had imprisoned and beaten the believers throughout the 
synagogues — Saul at whose feet had been laid the clothes of them that 
slew His witness 4 Stephen — the change from such a man to Saul the 
Christian and the preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — could not fail 
to win credence to his testimony. But He who spake to him would not 
suffer him to plead for a longer opportunity of appealing to his fellow- 
countrymen. Briefly but decisively came the answer which had been the 
turning-point for all his subsequent career — " Go, for I will send thee far away 
to the Gentiles ! " 

That fatal word, which hitherto he had carefully avoided, but which it 
was impossible for him to avoid any longer, was enough. Up to this point 
they had continued listening to him with the deepest attention. Many of 
them were not wholly unacquainted with the facts to which he appealed. His 
intense earnestness and mastery over the language which they loved charmed 
them all the more, because the soldiers who stood by could not understand a 
word of what he was saying, so that his speech bore the air of a confidential 
communication to Jews alone, to which the alien tyrants could only listen 
with vain curiosity and impatient suspicion. Who could tell but what some 
Messianic announcement might be hovering on his lips ? Might not he who 
was thrilling them with the narrative of these visions and revelations have 
some new ecstasy to tell of, which should be the signal that now the supreme 
hour had come, and which should pour into their hearts a stream of fire so 

1 v. supra, p. 100. 

* The narratives of St. Paul's conversion in ix., xxii., xxvi. are sufficiently considered 
and "harmonised." — not that they really need any harmonising — in pp. 107 — 112. 

8 " The Just One." See the speech of Stephen (vii. 52). 

4 /nopTvs, not yet "martyr," as in Rev. xvii. 6. (Clem. Ep. 1 Cor, v.) But St, Paul 
irould here have used the word edh, "witness" 



536 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

intense, so kindling, that in the heat of it the iron chains of the Romans 
shonld be as tow ? But was this to be the climax ? Was a trance to be 
pleaded in defence of the apostasy of the renegade ? "Was this evil soul to be 
allowed to produce holy witness for his most flagrant offences ? Were they 
to be told, forsooth, that a vision from heaven had bidden him preach to 
" sinners of the Gentiles," and fling open, as he had been doing, the hallowed 
privileges of the Jews to those dogs of the uncircuincision ? All that strange 
multitude was as one ; the same hatred shot at the same instant through all 
their hearts. That word " Gentiles," confirming all their worst suspicions, 
fell like a spark on the inflammable mass of their fanaticism. No sooner was 
it uttered 1 than they raised a simultaneous yell of "Away with such a wretch 
from the earth ; he ought never to have lived ! " 2 

Then began one of the most odious and despicable spectacles which the 
world can witness, the spectacle of an Oriental mob, hideous with impotent 
rage, howling, yelling, cursing, gnashing their teeth, flinging about their arms, 
waving and tossing their blue and red robes, casting dust into the air by hand- 
fuls, with all the furious gesticulations of an uncontrolled fanaticism. 3 

Happily Paul was out of the reach of their personal fury. 4 It might goad 
them to a courage sufficient to make them rend the air with their cries of 
frenzy, and make the court of the Temple look like the refuge for a throng of 
demoniacs ; but it hardly prompted them to meet the points of those Roman 
broadswords. In great excitement, the commandant ordered the prisoner to 
be led into the barracks, and examined by scourging; for, being entirely 
ignorant of what Paul had been saying, he wanted to know what further he 
could have done to excite those furious yells. The soldiers at once tied his 
hands together, stripped his back bare, and bent him forward into the position 
for that horrid and often fatal examination by torture which, not far from that 
very spot, his Lord had undergone. 5 Thrice before, on that scarred back, had 
Paul felt the fasces of Roman lictors ; five times the nine-and-thirty strokes of 
Jewish thongs ; here was a new form of agony, the whip — the horribile flagellum 
— which the Romans employed to force by torture the confession of the truth. 6 
But at this stage of the proceedings, Paul, self-possessed even in extremes, 
interposed with a quiet question. It had been useless before, it might be 
useless now, but it was worth trying, since both the soldiers and their officers 
seem already to have been prepossessed by his noble calm and self-control in 

* xxil. 22, rfKovov Se avTov a\pi- rovrov rov \6yov, tcai €irr\pav ttjv <$>uivr\v avrwv Aeyoires, k.t.A. 

2 Ver. 22, ov KaJ&nw. «, A, B, C, D, E, G. 

3 xxii. 23. On the sudden excitability of Eastern mobs, and the sudden calm which 
often follows it, see Palest. £xplor. Fund for April, 1879, p. 77. 

4 St. James had spoken of the "many myriads " (Acts xxi. 20) of Jews who, though 
zealots for the Law, had embraced the faith. How came it that not one of these "many 
myriads " lifted an arm cr raised a voice to liberate St. Paul from the perils into which 
he had been brought by religious hatred greedily adopting a lying accusation ? 

5 xxii. 25, npoerewev avrbu toZs iixao-iv— 1 ' stretched him forward with the thongs" to 
prepare him for examination by being scourged with fxaortyes. The word ifiavra seem? 
never to mean a scourge. 

« Hef Life of Christ, I. 187 j II, 380, 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 53*7 

the midst of dangers so awful and so sudden. He therefore asked in a quiet 
voice, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a Roman who has not been tried P" 
The question was addressed to the centurion who was standing by to see that 
the torture was duly administered, and he was startled by the appeal. This 
was evidently no idle boaster ; no man who would invent a privilege to escape 
pain or peril. Few under any circumstances would ever venture to invent the 
proud right of saying Civis Romanus Sum, 1 for the penalty of imposture 
was death; 2 and the centurion had seen enough to be quite sure that this 
prisoner, at any rate, was not the man to do so. He made the soldiers stop, 
went off to the commandant, and said to him, with something of Roman blunt- 
ness, " What are you about ? 3 This man is a Roman." This was important. 
If he was a Roman, the Chiliarch had already twice broken the law which 
entitled him to protection ; for he had both bound him and, in contravention 
of an express decree of Augustus, had given orders to begin his examination 
by putting him to the torture. Moreover, as being one who himself placed 
the highest possible value on the jus civitatis, he respected the claim. Hurry- 
ing to him, he said — ■ 

" Tell me, are you a Roman P *' 

"Yes." 

But Lysias, as he looked at him, could not help having his doubts. He 
was himself a Greek or Syrian, who had bought the franchise, and thereupon 
assumed the prsenomen Claudius, at a time when the privilege was very 
expensive. 4 Whether Paul was a Roman or not, he was clearly a Jew, and no 
less clearly a very poor one : how could he have got the franchise ? 

"I know how much it cost me 5 to get this citizenship," he remarked, in a 
dubious tone of voice. 

" But I have been a citizen from my birth," was the calm answer to his 
unexpressed suspicion. 

The claim could not be resisted. Paul was untied, and the soldiers dropped 
their scourges. But Lysias was not by any means free from anxiety as to the 
consequences of his illegal conduct. 6 Anxious to rid his hands of this 
awkward business in a city where the merest trifles were constantly leading to 

1 Cic. in Verr. v. 63. 2 At any rate in certain cases. Suet. Claud. 25. 

3 Ver. 26, ri /ae'AAeis TroietV. The opa is omitted in «, A, B, C, E. 

4 Some ten years before this time it had, however, become much cheaper. Messalina, 
the infamous wife of Claudius, who was put to death A.D. 48, openly sold it, first, at 
very high terms, but subsequently . so cheap that Dion Cassius (ix. 17) says it could be 
bought for one or two broken glasses. 

5 Ver. 28, 'Eyu> o!Sa noa-ov, D. Though unsupported by evidence, the colloquialism 
sounds very genuine. Perhaps Lysias had bribed one of Claudius's freedmen, who made 
money in this way. 

fi Ver. 29. There is a little uncertainty as to what is meant by e<j>o07?0>j . . on fy abrov 
SeSeKuis. If it means the chaining him with two chains (xxi. 33), Lysias did not at any 
rate think it necessary to undo what he had once done, for it is clear that Paul remained 
chained (xxii. 30, eKvcrev avrw). I therefore refer it to the binding with the thongs 
(ver. 25), by which Lysias seems to have broken two laws : (1) The Lex Porcia (Cic. pro 
Babirio, 3 ; in Verr. v. 66) ; (2) " Non esse a tormentis incipiendum Div. Augustus 
constituit " {Digest. Leg. 48, tit. 18, c. 1). 



538 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

most terrible consequences, he told the chief priests to summon next day a 
meeting of the Sanhedrin in order to try the prisoner. 

The Sanhedrin met in full numbers. They no longer sat in the Lishcath 
Haggazzith, the famous hall, with its tessellated pavement, which stood at the 
south side of the Court of the Priests. 1 Had they still been accustomed to 
meet there, Lysias and his soldiers would never have been suffered to obtrude 
their profane feet into a chamber which lay within the middle wall of partition 
— beyond which even a Procurator dare not even have set a step on pain of 
death. But at this period the Sanhedrin had probably begun their meetings 
in the Chanujoth, or " booths," the very existence of which was a proof of the 
power and prosperity of "the Serpent House of Hanan." 2 To this place 
Lysias led his prisoner, and placed him before them. The Nasi, or President, 
was, as usual, the High Priest. 3 The preliminary questions were asked, and 
then Paul, fixing on the assembly his earnest gaze, 4 began his defence with the 
words, "Brethren, my public life has been spent in all good conscience 
towards God till this day." 6 Something in these words jarred particularly on 
the mind of the High Priest. He may have disliked the use of the term 
" brethren," an address which implied a certain amount of equality, instead of 
one of those numerous expressions of servility which it was only fitting that a 
man like this should use to the great assembly of the wise. But Paul was no 
Am-ha-arets, on the contrary, he was as much a Habbi, as much a ChaJcam, as 
the best " remover of mountains " among them all, and it may have been that 
he designedly used the term " brethren " instead of " fathers " because he too 
had been once a Sanhedrist. The bold assertion of perfect innocence further 
irritated the presiding Nasi, and he may have felt, somewhat painfully, that 
his own public life had not by any means been in all good conscience either 
towards God or towards man. This High Priest, Ananias, the son of 
Nebedoeus, 6 who had been appointed by Herod of Chalcis, was one of the 
worst, if not the very worst specimen of the worldly Sadducees of an age in 
which the leading hierarchs resembled the loosest of the Avignon cardinals, or 
of the preferment-hunting bishops in the dullest and deadest period of 
Charles the Second or George the First. 7 History records the revengeful un- 

i See Lightfoot, Hor. Heir. i. 1,105. 

2 V. supra, pp. 86, 93. Life of Christ, I. 77 ; II. 337. Jost, Gesch. i. 145 ; 
Herzfeld, Gesch. i. 394. By this time, A.D. 58, the change had undoubtedly taken 
place. 

3 Endless mistakes have apparently arisen from confusing the President of the 
Sanhedrin with the President of the Schools. The subject is very obscure ; but while 
undoubtedly the title of Nasi, or President of the Sanhedrin, was borne by great Rabbis 
like Hillel, Simeon, and Gamaliel, no less undoubtedly the High Priest — unless most 
flagrantly incompetent — presided as Nasi at the judicial meetings of the Sanhedrin, 
regarded as a governing body. 

4 xxiii. 1, arej/tVas. Cf. Luke iv. 20 ; Acts x. 4 ; xiii. 9. 

6 7T67roA«Vev/xat (Phil. i. 27 ; Jos. Vit. § 49 ; 2 Mace. vi. 1). Besides the general assertion 
ol his innocence, he may mean that, whatever he had taught to the Gentiles, he had 
lived as a loyal Jew. 

e On this man see Jos. Antt. xx. 5, § 2; G, §§ 2, 3; 8, § 8; 9, § 2; B. J. ii. 17, § 9. 

7 No wonder that in these days there lay upon the Jews an abiding sense of the 
irrath of God against their race. No wonder that the Talmud records the legends how 



THE LAST J0T7KNET TO JERUSALEM. 539 

wisdom of his conduct towards the Samaritans, and the far from noble means 
which he took to escape the consequences of his complicity in their massacre. 
The Talmud adds to our picture of him that he was a rapacious tyrant who, in 
his gluttony and greed, reduced the inferior priests almost to starvation by 
defrauding them of their tithes ; 1 and that he was one of those who sent his 
creatures with bludgeons to the threshing-floors to seize the tithes by force. 2 
He held the highpriesthood for a period which, in these bad days, was 
unusually long. 3 a term of office which had, however, been interrupted by his 
absence as a prisoner to answer for his misconduct at Borne. On this occasion. 
thanks to an actor and a concubine, he seems to have gained his cause, 4 but he 
was subsequently deposed to make room for Ishmael Ben Phabi. and few 
pitied him when he was dragged out of his hiding-place in a sewer to perish 
miserably by the daggers of the Sicarii. whom, in the days of his prosperity, 
he had not scrupled to sanction and employ. 5 

His conduct towards St. Paul gives us a specimen of his character. 
Scarcely had the Apostle uttered the first sentence of his defence when, with 
disgraceful illegality, Ananias ordered the officers of the court to smite him on 
the mouth. 6 Stung by an insult so flagrant, an outrage so undeserved, the 
naturally choleric temperament of Paul flamed into that sudden sense of anger 
which ought to be controlled, but which can hardly be wanting in a truly noble 
character. No character can be perfect which does not cherish in itself a 
deeply-seated, though perfectly generous and forbearing, indignation against 
intolerable wrong. Smarting from the blow, " God shall smite thee," he 
exclaimed, " thou white-washed wall ! " What! Dost thou sit there judging 
me according to the Law, and in violation of law biddest me to be smitten?" 8 

at this time the sacred light, which wag to burn all night on the candlestick {ner 
ma'arabi), was often quenched before the daybreak ; how the red tongue of cloth round 
the neck of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement was no longer miraculously turned 
to white ; how the huge brazen Nikanor-gate of the Temple, which required twenty 
Levites to shut it every evening, opened of its own accord ; and how Johanan Ben 
Zacchai exclaimed, on hearing the portent, " Why wilt thou terrify us, Temple ? ~We 
know that thou art doomed to ruin." 

1 The Talmud tells us that when this person was High Priest the sacrifices were 
always eaten up, so that no fragments of them were left for the poorer priests (Pesachhn, 
57,1). (Gratz, iii. 279.) 

2 Pesachim, ubi supra. St. Paul might well have asked him, 6 05eAvo- o-ofievos to. e»'S<o\a, 

iepocrvXeis (Eom. ii. 22.) 

3 From A. D. 48 to AD. 59. The voyage as a prisoner to Eome was in AD. 52. 

* Wieseler Chron. d, Ap. Zeit, 76. 5 Jos. Antt. xx. 9, § 2 ; B. J. ii 17, § 9. 

6 To this style of argument the Jews seem to have been singularlv prone (cf . Luke 
vi. 29 ; John xviii. 22 ; 2 Cor. xi. 20 ; 1 Tim. iii. 3 ; Tit. i. 7). This brtitality illustrates 
the remark in Joma, 23, 1, Sota, 47, 2, that at that period no one cared for anything but 
externalism, and that Jews thought more of a pollution of the Temple than they di<l 
of assassination (Gratz, iii. 322). 

7 xxiii . 3, Totxe K.e<ovLafj.eve. Cf. Matt, xxiii. 27, to^oi Ke/covuijuevot. Dr. Plumptr© 
compares Jeffreys' treatment of Baxter. 

s For a Jew to order a Jew to be struck on the cheek was peculiarly offensive. " He 
that strikes the cheek of an Israelite strikes, as it were, the cheek of the Shechinah," for 
it is said (Prov. xx. 25), " He that strikes a man ; * {i.e., an Israelite who alone deserves 
the name ; Eashi quotes Babha Metsia, f . 114, col. 2), strikes the Holy One. Sanhedr. 
f. 58, coL 2, s'r = cheekbone, and ttpo, "to strike," in Syriac {collidere, cf. Dan. v. 6; 
Buxtorf, Lex Chctfd, s. v.), as well as to snare. 



540 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PA1TT.. 

The language has been censured as unbecoming in its violence, and has been 
unfavourably compared with the meekness of Christ before the tribunal of his 
enemies. "Where," asks St. Jerome, "is that patience of the Saviour, who — 
as a lamb led to the slaughter opens not his mouth — so gently asks the smiter, 
1 If I have spoken evil, bear witness to the evil ; but if well, why smitest thou 
me ? ' "We are not detracting from the Apostle, but declaring the glory sf 
God, who, suffering in the flesh, reigns above the wrong and frailty of the 
flesh." 1 Tet we need not remind the reader that not once or twice only did 
Christ give the rein to righteous anger, and blight hypocrisy and insolence 
with a flash of holy wrath. The bystanders seem to have been startled by the 
boldness of St. Paul's rebuke, for they said to him, " Dost thou revile the 
High Priest of God ? " The Apostle's auger had expended itself in that one 
outburst, and he instantly apologised with exquisite urbanity and self-control. 
" I did not know," he said, " brethren, that he is the High Priest ; " adding 
that, had he known this, he would not have addressed to him the opprobrious 
name of "whited wall," because he reverenced and acted upon the rule of 
Scripture, " Thou shalt not speak ill of a ruler of thy people." 2 

It has been thought very astonishing that St. Paul should not know that 
Ananias was the High Priest, and all sorts of explanations have consequently 
been foisted into his very simple words. These words cannot, however, mean 
that he was unable to recognise the validity of Ananias's title ; 3 or that he had 
spoken for the moment without considering his office ; 4 or that he could not 
be supposed to acknowledge a high priest in one who behaved with such 
illegal insolence. 5 Considering the disrepute and insignificance into which 
the high-priesthood had fallen during the dominance of men who would only, 
as a rule, take it for a short time in order to " pass the chair; " 6 considering 
that one of these worldly intruders took to wearing silk gloves that he might 
not soil his hands with the sacrifices ; considering, too, that the Romans and 
the Herods were constantly setting up one and putting down another at their 
own caprice, and that the people often regarded some one as the real high priest, 
who was no longer invested with the actual office ; considering, too, that in 
such ways the pontificate of these truckling Sadducees had sunk into a mere 
simulacrum of what once it was, and that the real allegiance of the people had 
been completely transferred to the more illustrious Rabbis — it is perfectly 
conceivable that St. Paul, after his long absence from Jerusalem, 7 had not, 

1 Adv. Pelag. iii. 1. 

2 Ex. xxii. 28, LXX. (cf. 2 Pet. ii. 10). Under the good breeding of the answer we 
notice the admirable skill which enabled Paul thus to show at once his knowledge of and 
his obedience to the Law, for the supposed apostasy from which he was impugned. 

3 Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Kuinocl, Baumgarten. 

4 Bengel (non veniebat mihi in mentem), Wetstein, Bp. Sanderson (non noveram, non 
satis attente consideravi), Bp. Wordsworth, &c. 

6 Calvin. 

6 The Jews themselves take this view of them. Gratz (iii. 322) refers to Pesachim, 
57, 1, Joma, 23, 1, which speaks of their narrowness, envy, violence, love of precedence, 
&o. ; Josephus {Antt. xx. 8, § 8, 9, § 4) speaks of their impudence and turbulence (see Lift 
of Christ, II. 329—342). 

1 This is the view of Chrysostom. 



THE LAST JOTJRNET TO JERUSALEM. 541 

during the few and much occupied days which had elapsed since his return, 
given himself the trouble to inquire whether a Kamhit, or a Boethusian, or a 
Oanthera was at that particular moment adorned with the empty title which 
he probably disgraced. He must, of course, have been aware that the high 
priest was the Nasi of the Sanhedrin, but in a crowded assembly he had not 
noticed who the speaker was. Owing to his weakened sight, all that he saw 
before him was a blurred white figure issuing a brutal order, and to this 
person, who in his external whiteness and inward worthlessness thus reminded 
him of the plastered wall of a sepulchre, he had addressed his indignant 
denunciation. That he should retract it on learning the hallowed position of 
the delinquent, was in accordance with that high breeding of the perfect 
gentleman which in all his demeanour he habitually displayed. 

But while we can easily excuse any passing touch of human infirmity, if 
such there were, in his sudden vehemence, we cannot defend his subsequent 
conduct at that meeting. Surely it was more than pardonable if on that day 
he was a little unhinged, both morally and spiritually, by the wild and awful 
trials of the day before. In the discussion which was going on about his 
case, his knowledge of the Sanhedrin, of which he had been a member, enabled 
him easily to recognise that his judges were still mainly divided into two 
parties — the Sadducean priests and the Pharisaic elders and scribes. The 
latter were the more popular and numerous, the former were the more wealthy 
and powerful. Now St. Paul well knew that these two parties were separated 
from each other by an internecine enmity, which was only reconciled in the 
presence of common hatreds. He knew, too, that one main point of conten- 
tion between them arose from questions about the Unseen World, and the life 
beyond the grave. 1 Seeing, therefore, that he would meet with neither justice 
nor mercy from that tribunal, he decided to throw among them the apple of 
discord, and cried out amid the Babel of tongues, " Brethren, I am a 
Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am being judged about the hope and 
resurrection of the dead." The plan showed great knowledge of character, 
and the diversion thus caused was for the time eminently successful ; but was 
it worthy of St. Paul ? Undoubtedly there were points in common between 
him and the Pharisees. " They taught a resurrection of the dead : so did he. 
They taught the coming of the Kingdom of God : so did he. They taught 
the Advent of the Messiah : so did he. They taught an intercourse of God 
with men by the medium of angels, dreams, and visions : so did he. He 
shared with the Pharisees exactly those doctrines, on account of which he was 
regarded by the Sadducees as a seducer of the people." This is true ; but, on 
the other hand, his belief in the risen Messiah was not the point on which he 
was mainly being called in question. 2 That belief, had it stood alone, would 

» Matt. xxii. 28 ; Jos. B. J. ii. 8, § 16 ; Antt. xviii. 1, § 4. 

2 Reuss, whose Actes des Apdtres I had not read till these pages were written, takes a 
very similar view, p. 218. Yet it is, of course, possible that St. Paul's exclamation may 
have been justified by some circumstances of the discussion which have not been pre* 
gerved in the narrative. 



542 THE LIFE AND WORK OE ST. PATJX* 

have been passed over by the Saiihedrin as, at the worst, a harmless delusion. 
Nay, some of the Pharisaic Sanhedrists may even have been nominally 
Christians. 1 But the fury against St. Paul was kindled by the far more 
burning questions which arose out of his doctrine of th.9 nullity of the Law, 
and the admission of the Gentiles to equal privileges with the seed of Abraham. 
Did not, then, the words of the Apostle suggest a false issue ? And had he 
any right to inflame an existing animosity ? 2 And could he worthily say, 
"lama Pharisee ? " Was he not in reality at variance wii'i the Pharisees 
in every fundamental particular of their system ? Is not the Pharisaic spirit 
in its very essence the antithesis of the Christian ? 3 Did not the two greatest 
Epistles which he had written prove their whole theology, as such, to be false 
in every line ? Was it not the very work of his life to pull down the legal 
prescriptions around which it was their one object to rear a hedge ? Had not 
they been occupied — as none knew better than himself — in riveting the iron 
fetters of that yoke of bondage, which he was striving to shatter link by link ? 
Was there not the least little touch of a suggestio falsi in what he said ? Let 
us make every possible deduction and allowance for a venial infirmity ; for a 
sudden and momentary " oeconomy," far less serious than that into which his 
great brother- Apostle had swerved at Antioch ; and let us further admit that 
there is a certain nationality in the chivalry of rigidly minute and scrupulously 
inflexible straightforwardness, which is, among Northern nations, and among 
the English in particular, the hereditary result of centuries of training. Let 
ns also acknowledge, not without a blush of shame, that certain slight 
managements and accommodations of truth have in later ages been reckoned 
among Christian virtues. Tet, after all these qualifications, we cannot in 
this matter wholly see how St. Paul could say without qualification, in 
such an assembly, "I am a Pharisee." If we think him very little to 
blame for his stern rebuke of the High Priest; if, referring his conduct 
to that final court of appeal, which consists in comparing it with the 
precepts and example of his Lord, we can quite conceive that He who called 
Herod " a fox " would also have called Ananias " a whited wall ; " on the 
other hand, we cannot but think that this creating of a division among 
common enemies on the grounds of a very partial and limited agreement with 
certain other tenets held by some of them, was hardly worthy of St. Paul ; 
and knowing, as we do know, what the Pharisees were, we cannot imagine his 
Divine Master ever saying, under any circumstances, " I am a Pharisee." 
Moreover, the device, besides being questionable, was not even politic. It 



1 Acts xv. 5. 

2 Those who, in the teeth of all Scripture, will not believe that an Apostle can make 
a mistake, have built disastrous conclusions on this action of St. Paul's, quoting it to 
sanction the Machiavellian policy of the Romans, " Divide et impera." Corn, a Lapide, 
on tliis passage, says, " Bellum haereticorum est pax ecclesiae," — a maxim on which the 
Romish Church has sometimes acted (see Wordsworth, ad loc). On the other hand, 
Luther says, with his robust good sense, "Non mihi placet studium illud sanctas nimia 
efferendi et excusandi si sacrae scripturae vim negat." 

a Matt, xxiii. 25, 27 ; John xii. 43 : Rom. ii. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 543 

added violence to a yet more infuriated reaction in men who felt tLat they 
had been the victims of a successful stratagem, and in the remark of St. Paul 
before the tribunal of Felix x I seem to see — though none have noticed it — a 
certain sense of compunction for the method in which he had extricated him- 
self from a pressing danger. 

But, as we have said, the stratagem was for the time almost magically 
successful. Paul's enemies were instantly at each other's throats. The High 
Priest, Ananias, was so singularly detested by the Pharisaic party that 
centuries afterwards the tradition still lingered of his violence and greed. 2 
There rose a sudden uproar of angry voices, and. the scribes, who sided with 
the Pharisees, started up in a body to declare that Paul was innocent. " We 

find the defendant not guilty ; but if a spirit or angel spoke to him ? " 3 

Again the Jews, even these distinguished Hierarchs and Rabbis, showed their 
utter incapacity for self-control. Even in the august precincts of the 
Sanhedrin the clamour was succeeded by a tumult so violent that Paul was 
once more in danger of being actually torn to pieces, this time by learned ani 
venerable hands. Claudius Lysias. more and more amazed at the imprar 
ticability of these Jews, who first unanimously set upon Paul in the Temple 
and half of whom in the Sanhedrin appeared to be now fighting in his defence 
determined that his fellow- citizen should not at any rate suffer so ignob.' ' 
a fate, and once more ordered the detachment of soldiers to go down to snatch 
him from the midst of them, and lead him to the one spot in Jerusalem where 
the greatest living Jew could alone find security — the barracks of foreign 
conquerors. 

St. Paul might well be exhausted and depressed by the recurrence, on two 
consecutive days, of such exciting scenes, and even a courage so dauntless as his 
could not face unshaken this continual risk of sudden death. The next day 
was again to bring a fresh peril ; but before it came, God in His mercy, who 
had ever encouraged His faithful servant at the worst and darkest crises, sent 
him a vision which saved him from all alarm as to his actual life for many a 
long and trying day. As at Jerusalem on his first visit, and as at Corinth, and 
as afterwards on the stormy sea, the Lord stood by him and said, " Cheer 
thee, Paul ; for as thou didst bear witness respecting me at Jerusalem, so must 
thou also bear witness at Rome." 

The dawn of the next day sufficed to prove that his manoeuvre in the 
Sanhedrin had only won a temporary success at the cost of a deeper 
exasperation. So unquenchable was the fury against him, and so inflamed 
was the feeling of disappointment that Lysias should have snatched him away 
from their revenge, that in the morning no less than forty Jews bound 

1 Acts xxiv. 21, which I take to be a confession of his error on this occasion. 

2 Derenbourg, Palest. § 31. 

3 The expression is an aposiopesis, or suppression of the apodosis, not uncommon 
after el, as suggesting an alternative. See my Brief Greek Syntax, § 309. The 
ut) eeofxaxo}fj.ev of the Received Text (omitted in x, A, B, C, E, the iEthiopic, the Coptic, 
&o. ) is a glass from chap. v. 39. Chrysostom fills up the sentence with noiov eynkinxa, 
" What sort of charge is that?" 



544 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

themselves with a terrible cherem not to eat or drink till they had killed hin. { 
The Jews, like some Christians in the worst days of Christendom, believed it* 
the divine right of assassination as the means of getting rid of a tyrant or an 
apostate. 2 Their penal blindness had deceived them into the sanetification of 
religious murder. How dark a picture does it present to us of the state 
of Jewish thought at this period that, just as Judas had bargained with the 
chief priests for the blood-money of his Lord, so these forty sicarii went, not 
only without a blush, but with an evident sense of merit, to the hostile section 
of the Sanhedrin, to suggest to them the concoction of a lie for the facilitation 
of a murder. " We are bound under a curse not to touch food till we slay 
Paul. Do you then, and the Sanhedrin, give notice to the commandant to 
bring him down to you, under pretext of a more accurate inquiry into his case. 
We, before he gets near you, are prepared to slay him." So far from rejecting 
the suggestion with execration, as many a heathen would have done, these 
degenerate Jews and worldly priests agreed to it with avidity. But a secret 
known to forty conspirators, and requiring the complicity of an indefinite 
number more, is no secret at all. There were sure to be dark hints, ominous 
gestures, words of ill-concealed triumph, and, indeed, so unanimous among 
the orthodox Jews, and even, we fear, among some nominal Jewish 
Christians, was the detestation of the man who taught "apostasy from 
Moses," that in most circles there was no need for any pretence of 
concealment. When St. Peter had been in prison, and in peril of 
execution, the Christian community of Jerusalem had been in a ferment 
of alarm and sorrow, and prayer had been made day and night without ceasing 
to God for him ; but St. Peter, and especially the St. Peter of that early period, 
was regarded with feelings very different from those with which the Judaic 
believers looked on the bold genius whose dangerous independence treated 
Mosaism and its essential covenant as a thing of the past for converted 
Gentiles. We hear of no prayer from any one of the Elders or the " many 
myriads " on behalf of St. Paul. He owed to a relative, and not to the 
Church, the watchful sympathy which alone rescued him from murder. He 
had a married sister living in Jerusalem, who, whether she agreed or not with 
the views of her brother — and the fact that neither she nor her family are 
elsewhere mentioned, and that St. Paul never seems to have put up at her 
house, makes it at least very doubtful — had yet enough natural affection to 
try to defeat a plot for his assassination. Most gladly would we have known 
something further about the details. All that we are told is, that the son of 
this lady, apparently a mere boy, on hearing of the intended ambuscade, went 
at once to the barracks of Fort Antonia, and gaining ready access to his uncle, 
who, as an untried Roman citizen, was only kept in custodia militaris, 
revealed to him the plot. The Apostle acted with his usual good sense and 
promptitude. Sending for one of the ten centurions of the garrison, he said 

1 For instances of a similar cherem, see 1 Sam. xiv. 24 ; Jos. Antt. 8, § 3, &o. 
» Oanhcdr. 9; Jos. Antt. xii. 6, § 2 ; Pliilo, De Sacrif. p. 855. 



THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 545 

to him, "Lead this youth to the commandant, for he has something to tell 
him. " x The centurion went immediately to Lysias, and said, " The prisoner 
Paul called me to him, and asked me to lead this yonth to you, as he has some- 
thing to say to you." There is a touch of very natural kindness in the way in 
which the Roman officer received the Jewish boy. Seeing, perhaps, that he 
was nervous and flustered, both from the peril to which he was subjecting 
himself by revealing this secret — since suspicion would naturally fall on him — 
and also by finding himself in the presence of the most powerful person in 
Jerusalem, the military delegate of the dreaded Procurator — Lysias took him 
by the hand, and walking with him to a place where they were out of earshot, 
began to ask him what his message was. The youth told him that he would 
immediately receive a request from the Sanhedrin to summon a meeting next 
day, and bring Paul once more before them to arrive at some more definite 
result ; and that more than forty sicarii had agreed on time and place to 
murder his prisoner, so that the only way to defeat the plot was to refuse the 
request of the Sanhedrin. Lysias saw the importance of the secret, and 
instantly formed his plans. He told the youth not to mention to any one that 
he had given him information of the conspiracy, and, summoning two cen- 
turions, ordered them to equip two hundred legionaries, seventy cavalry 
soldiers, two hundred lancers, 2 with two spare horses, to be ready to escort Paul 
safely to Csesarea that very evening at nine o'clock. He was extremely glad 
to get rid of a prisoner who created such excitement, and who was the object 
of an animosity so keen that it might at any moment lead to a riot. At that 
day, too, charges of bribery flew about in the most dangerous manner. Celer, 
a Roman knight of far higher rank than himself, had actually been dragged 
by Jews round the walls of Jerusalem, and finally beheaded, for receiving a bribe 
from the Samaritans. 3 Agrippa I. had been dismissed from Antioch ; and no 
less a person than the Procurator Cumanus had been imprisoned and dis- 
graced. So corrupt was the Roman administration in the hands of even the 
hi^hist officials, that if Paul were murdered Lysias might easily have been 
charged with having accepted a bribe to induce him to connive at this 
nefarious conspiracy. 4 There was now sufficient pretext to send Paul away 
6wiftly and secretly, and so get rid of an embarrassing responsibility. At 
nine that evening, when it was dark and when the streets would be deserted, 
the large escort of four hundred and seventy soldiers — an escort the necessity 
of which shows the dangerous condition of the country, and the extent of 
Lysias's alarm — stood ready at the gate of the barracks ; and before the tramp 
of horse and foot began to startle the silent city, the commandant handed to 

1 The minuteness of the narrative, perhaps, indicates that St. Luke, who sougnt for 
information from all sources, had received the story from the youth himself. 

2 Se£toA.a6oi, Vulg. lancearii. The only passage to throw light on the word is one 
adduced by Meyer from Constantine the Porphyrogenete, which proves nothing. A reads 
Sef i6/3oA.oi. One explanation is gens du train — men who held a second horse by the right 
hand. 

3 Jos. Antt. xx. 6, § 3 ; B. J. ii. 12, § 7. 

4 One of the cursives (137) actually adds e^ojSrjflr? yap ju^ore apiracravTes ivrbv oi 'IovfiaToi 
•iroKTctroxn koX aiiros ju.eTa£v ey/cAjjju,a €\y ws xPVI xaTa elAij^ws. 

J J 



*4f> THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

the centurion in command a letter which, in its obvious genuineness, exhibits 
a very dexterous mixture of truth and falsehood, and by no means bears out 
the representation that Lysias was a stupid person. It was one of those 
abstracts of criminal charges called elogia, which it was the custom to write 
in submitting a prisoner to the cognisance of a superior judge; and it was 
ingeniously framed with a view to obviate beforehand any possible charge of 
illegal conduct towards a Roman citizen. The conduct of Lysias, though a 
little hasty at first, had however been, on the whole, both kind and honour- 
able; and he would probably be assured by St. Paul that, so far as he was 
concerned, he might lay aside all anxiety as to any proceedings intended to 
vindicate the inalienable rights conferred by the citizenship. 

The letter ran as follows : — 

" Claudius Lysias to his Excellency the Procurator Felix, greeting. 

" The prisoner whom I send to you is one who was seized by the Jews, and 
was on the point of being killed by them when I came down upon them with 
my forces, and rescued him on being informed that he was a Roman. As I 
wanted to know further the reason why they accused him, I took him down 
into their Sanhedrin, and found that he was being accused of questions of 
their law, but had against him no charge which deserved death or chains. 
But on receiving secret intimation of a plot which was to be put in force 
against him, I immediately sent him to you, at the same time giving notice to 
his accusers also to say all they had to say about him in your presence. Fare- 
well!" 

Paul was mounted on one of the horses provided for him, and the escort 
rode rapidly through the disturbed country, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, with 
a sharp look-out against any ambuscade. After that, being too numerous and 
well-armed to have any dread of mere brigands, they went at their ease along 
a Roman road, the thirty-five miles to Antipatris. 1 Here they rested for the 
remainder of the night. Next day the four hundred legionaries and lancers 
marched back to Jerusalem, while the mounted soldiers rode forward on the 
remaining twenty- five miles to Csesarea. St. Paul thus entered Csesarea with 
a pomp of attendance very unlike the humble guise in which he had left it, 
amid the little caravan of his fellow- Christians. They entered the town in 
broad daylight, and so large a body passing through the streets must have 
attracted many curious eyes. How must Philip and the other Christians of 
Csesarea have been startled to recognise the rapid fulfilment of their fore- 
bodings as they saw the great teacher, from whom they had parted with so 
many tears, ride through the streets, with his right hand chained to the arm 
of a horseman, amid a throng of soldiers from the garrison of Antonia ! That 
ride, in the midst of his Roman body-guard, was destined to be his last 
experience of air and exercise, till — after two years of imprisonment — hie 
voyage to Rome began. 

» Kefr Saba ; Jos. Antt. vi. 5, § 2. 



PAUL AND FELIX. 547 

The centurion and his prisoner were at once introduced into the presence 
of Felix. Felix read the letter of Lysias, and after "briefly inquiring to what 
province Paul belonged, and being told he was a Oilician, he said, " I will hear 
out your case when your accusers have arrived." 1 He then handed Paul over 
to a soldier to "be kept in one of the guard-rooms attached to the old Herodian 
palace which now formed the splendid residence of the Procurators of Judaea. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

PAUL AND FELIX, 



"Antonius Felix, per omnem saevitiam et libidinem, jus regium servili ingenio 
exercuit." — Tac. Hist. v. 9. 

" Jam pridem Judaeae impositus . ■ . et cuncta malefacta sibiimpune ratus." — 
Ann. xii. 54. 

A Roman judge to whom a prisoner had been sent with an elogium was 
bound, if possible, to try him within three days. Felix, however, had to send 
a message to Jerusalem, and fix a time for the case to come on, in order that 
the accusers might be present ; and as the journey took nearly two days, 
it was the fifth day after St. Paul's arrival at Csesarea that he was brought 
to trial. The momentary diversion in his favour, of which by this time the 
Pharisees were probably ashamed, had settled into an unanimous hatred, and 
the elders, probably of both parties, hurried down to accuse their adversary. 
Ananias in person accompanied them, eager for revenge against the man 
who had compared him to a plastered sepulchre. It must have been intensely 
disagreeable to these dignified personages to be forced to hurry on a fatiguing 
journey of some seventy miles from the religious to the political capital of 
Judsea, in order to induce a Gentile dog to give up an apostate mesith to 
their jurisdiction ; but the Sanhedrists, smarting under defeat, would not be 
likely to leave any stone unturned which should bring the offender within 
reach of vengeance. 

They wished to make sure of the extradition of their victim, and being 
little able to plead either in Greek or Latin, and more or less ignorant 
of the procedure in Roman courts, they gave their brief to a provincial 
barrister named Tertullus. Everything was done with due formality. They 
first lodged their complaint, and then the prisoner was confronted with them 
that he might hear, and if possible refute, their accusations. Tertullus was 
evidently a practised speaker, and St. Luke has faithfully preserved an outline 
of his voluble plausibility. Speaking with politic complaisance as though he 
were himself a Jew, he began by a fulsome compliment to Felix, which served 
as the usual captatio henevolentiae. Alluding to the early exertions of Felix 
against the banditti and the recent suppression of the Egyptian false Messiah, 

1 " Qui cum elogio mittuntur ex integro audiendi sunt." 
J J 2 



548 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

he began to assure his Excellency, with truly legal rotundity of verbiage, of 
the quite universal and uninterrupted gratitude of the Jews for th6 peace 
which he had secured to them, and for the many reforms 1 which had been 
initiated by his prudential wisdom. The real fact was that Felix was most 
peculiarly detested, and that though he had certainly suppressed some 
brigands, yet he had from the earliest times of his administration distinctly 
encouraged more, 2 and was even accused of having shared their spoils with 
Ventidius Cumanus when he had the separate charge of Samaria. 3 He then 
apologised for intruding ever so briefly on his Excellency's indulgent forbear* 
ance, but it was necessary to trouble him with three counts of indictment 
against the defendant — namely, that first, he was a public pest, who lived by 
exciting factions among all the Jews all over the world ; secondly, that he 
was a ringleader of the Nazarenes ; and thirdly, that he had attempted to 
profane the Temple. They had accordingly seized him, and wanted to judge 
him in accordance with their own law ; but Lysias had intervened with much 
violence and taken him from their hands, ordering his accusers to come before 
the Procurator. By reference to Lysias 4 his Excellency might further 
ascertain the substantial truth of these charges. When the oration was over, 
since there were no regular witnesses, the Jews one after another " made a 
dead set " against Paul, 6 asseverating the truth of all that Tertullus had 
stated. 

Then the Procurator, already impatient with the conviction that this was, 
as Lysias had informed him, some Jewish squabble about Mosaic minutiae, 
flung a haughty nod to the prisoner, in intimation that he might speak. 
St. Paul's captatio benevolentiae was very different from that of Tertullus. 
It consisted simply in the perfectly true remark that he could defend himself 
all the more cheerfully before Felix from the knowledge that he had now been 
Procurator for an unusual time, 6 and could therefore, from his familiarity with 
Jewish affairs, easily ascertain that it was but twelve days 7 since the Pentecost, 
to which feast he had come, not only with no seditious purpose, but actually 
to worship in Jerusalem ; and that during that time he had discoursed with no 
one, and had on no occasion attracted any crowd, or caused any disturbance, 
either in the Temple or in the Synagogues, or in any part of the city. He, 

1 xxiv. 2, Siopflw/xa-jw, n, A, B, E. The other reading KaropOuindTuv is a more general 
expression. 

2 Jos. Antt. xx. 8, S 5; B. J. ii. 13, § 3; Euseb. H. E. ii. 20—22. 

3 Jos. Antt. xx. 8, | 9 ; Tac. Ann. xii. 54, " quies provinciae reddita." 

4 This entire clause (Acts xxiv. 6 — 8) is omitted from ko.1 Kara down to enl a£ in N, 
A, B, G, H, and in the Coptic, Sahidic, Latin, and other versions. If it be an inter- 
polation, the nap' oZ must refer to Paul, but there are great difficulties either way, 
and verse 22 is in favour of their genuineness. On the other hand, if genuine, why 
should the passage have been omitted? D, which has so many additions, is here 
deficient. 

6 Ver. 9, ovventfevro. N, A, B, E, G, H. 

6 xxiv. 10, e< noWdv erCiv, since A.D. 52, i.e. six years. "Non ignoravit Paulus arteno 
rhetorum movere laudando." (Grot. ). 

7 L Arrival. 2. Interview with James, &c. 3 — 7. "Vow and arrest. 8. Sanhedrin. 
9. Conspiracy. 10. Arrival at Caesarea. 11, 12. In custody. 13. Trial. 



PAUL AND FELIX. 549 

therefore, met the first and third counts of the indictment with a positive 
contradiction, and challenged the Jews to produce any witnesses in confirma- 
tion of them. As to the second count, he was quite ready to admit that he 
belonged to what they called a sect ; but it was no more an illegal sect than 
those to which they themselves belonged, since he worshipped the God whom, 
as a Jew, he had been always taught to worship — frankly accepted their entire 
Scriptures — and believed, exactly as the majority of themselves did, in a resur- 
rection of the just and unjust. In this faith it had always been his aim to 
have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man. He had 
now been five years absent from Jerusalem, and on returning with alms for 
the poor of his people, and offerings for the Temple, they found him in the 
Temple, a quiet and legally purified worshipper. For the riot which had 
ensued he was not responsible. It had been stirred up by certain Asiatic 
Jews, who ought to have been present as witnesses, and whose absence was 
a proof of the weakness of the case against him. But if their attendance 
could not be secured, he called upon his accusers themselves to state the 
result of their trial of him before the Sanhedrin, and whether they had a 
single fact against him, unless it were his exclamation as he stood before 
them, that he was being tried about a question of the resurrection of the 
dead. 

The case had evidently broken down. St. Paul's statement of facts 
directly contradicted the only charge brought against him. The differences 
of doctrine between the Jews and himself were not in any way to the point, 
since they affected questions which had not been touched upon at all, and of 
which the Roman law could take no cognisance. It was no part of his duty 
to prove the doctrine of the Nazarenes, or justify himself for having embraced 
it, since at that time it had not been declared to be a religio illicita. Of this 
fact Felix was perfectly aware. He had a more accurate knowledge of " that 
way " than the Jews and their advocate supposed. 1 He was not going, there- 
fore, to hand Paul over to the Sanhedrin, which might be dangerous, and would 
certainly be unjust ; but at the same time he did not wish to offend these 
important personages. He therefore postponed the trial — rem amjpliavit — 
on the ground of the absence of Lysias, who was a material witness, promising, 
however, to give a final decision whenever he came down to Csesarea. Paul 
was remanded to the guard-room, but Felix gave particular instructions to the 
centurion 2 that his custody was not to be a severe one, and that his friends 
were to be permitted free access to his prison. St. Luke and Aristarchns 
certainly availed themselves of this permission, and doubtless the heavy hours 
were lightened by the visits of Philip the Evangelist, and other Christians 
of the little Csesarean community to whom Paul was dear. 3 

1 Xxiv. 22, aiepL^e(rrepov. 

* Ter. 23, tu> kKa.7ov~6.pxrr— the centurion who was present at the trial ; not at all neces- 
ttrily, or even probably, the centurion who had escorted him from Antipatris to Csesarea. 

3 It seems to have been about this time that Felix used the machinations of Simon 
Magus to induce Drusilla, the younger sister of Agrippa IL } to elope from her husband 



550 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

On his return to Csesarea with his wife Drusilla, and apparently in order 
to gratify her curiosity to see and hear a person whose strange history and 
marvellous powers were so widely known, Felix once more summoned Paul 
into his presence, and bade him discourse to them about his beliefs. Right 
nobly did Paul use his opportunity. Felix was a Gentile, and was moreover 
his judge, and it was no part of St. Paul's duty to judge those that are 
without. Had he assumed such a function, his life must have become one 
incessant and useless protest. And yet, with perfect urbanity and respect 
for the powers that be, he spoke of the faith in Christ which he was bidden 
to explain, in a way that enabled him to touch on those virtues which were 
most needed by the guilty pair who listened to his words. The licentious 
princess must have blushed as he discoursed of continence ; the rapacious and 
unjust governor as he spoke of righteousness — both of them as he reasoned of 
the judgment to come. Whatever may have been the thoughts of Drusilla, 
she locked them up in her own bosom; but Felix, less accustomed to such 
truths, was deeply agitated by them. As he glanced back over the stained 
and guilty past, he was afraid. He had been a slave, in the vilest of all 
positions, at the vilest of all epochs, in the vilest of all cities. He had crept 
with his brother Pallas into the position of a courtier at the most morally 
degraded of all courts. He had been an officer of those auxiliaries who were 
the worst of all troops. What secrets of lust and blood lay hidden in his 
earlier life we do not know ; but ample and indisputable testimony, Jewish 
and Pagan, sacred and secular, reveals to us what he had been — how greedy, 
how savage, how treacherous, how unjust, how steeped with the blood of 
private murder and public massacre — during the eight years which he had 
now spent in the government, first of Samaria, then of Palestine. There were 
footsteps behind him ; he began to feel as though " the earth were made of 
glass." He could not bear the novel sensation of terror which crept over him, 
or the reproaches of the blushing, shamefaced spirit which began to mutiny 
even in such a breast as his. He cut short the interview. " Go," he said, 
" for the present ; I will take some future opportunity to summon you to a 
hearing." Even his remorse was not purely disinterested. Paul had indeed 
acquired over him some of that ascendency which could hardly fail to be won 
by so lofty a personality ; and Felix, struck by his bearing, his genius, his 

Aziz, and to become his wife. It was a strange thing, and one which must have required 
all the arts of Simon to effect, that this young and beautiful princess, who was at this 
time only twenty years old, should have abandoned all her Jewish prejudices, and risked 
the deadliest abhorrence of her race, by leaving a prince who loved her, and had even 
been induced to accept circumcision to gratify her national scruples, in order to form an 
adulterous connexion with a cruel and elderly profligate, who had been nothing better 
than a slave. Felix would never have dreamt for one moment of making for her sake 
the immense sacrifice which Aziz had accepted, and which her previous lover, the Prince 
of Commagene, had refused. Such, however, were the subtle arts of the Cyprian sorcerer, 
and such the Greek-like facinations of the seducer, that he had gained his end, and how 
tli us still further obliterated the memories of his servile origin by marrying a third princess. 
"Trium reginarurn maritum aut adulterum " (Suet. Claud. 28). Another of his wives 
was also a Drusilla, daughter of Juba, King of Mauretania, anil granddaughter of Antony 
aiid Cleopatra. The third is unknown. 



PAUL AND FELIX. 551 

moral force, seiit for him not unfrequently to converse with him respecting 
his beliefs. But this apparent interest in religious subjects was, in reality, 
akin to that vein of superstition which made him the ready dupe of Simon 
Magus, 'and it did not exclude a certain hankering after a bribe, which he 
felt sure that Paul, who had brought considerable sums of money to Jeru- 
salem, could either procure or give. He took care to drop hints which should 
leave no doubt as to his intentions. But Paul was innocent, and neither 
would he adopt any illicit method to secure his liberty, nor in any case would 
he burden the affection of his converts to contribute the ransom which he was 
too poor to offer. He did not wish by dubious human methods to interfero 
with God's plan respecting him, nor to set a questionable example to the 
future libellatici. He therefore declined to take the hints of Felix, and two 
years glided away, and he was still in prison. 

Towards the end of that time he must have been startled by a terrible 
clamour in the streets of Csesarea. Disputes, indeed, were constantly occur- 
ring in a city composed half of Jews and half of Greeks, or Syrians, between 
whom there was a perpetual feud for precedence. All the splendour of the 
place — its amphitheatre, its temples, its palaef — was due to the passion for 
building which animated the first Herod. 1 ha Jewish population was large 
and wealthy, and since their king had done so much for the town, they claimed 
it as their own. It was quite true that, but for Herod, Csesarea would never 
have been heard of in history. Its sole utility consisted in the harbour which 
he had constructed for it at enormous cost of money and labour, and which 
was extremely needed on that inhospitable coast. But the Greeks maintained 
that it was their town, seeing that it had been founded by Strato, and called 
Strato's Tower until Herod had altered the name in his usual spirit of flattery 
towards the Imperial House. Towards the close of Paul's imprisonment, the 
Greeks and Jews came to an open quarrel in the market-place, and the 
Greeks were being worsted in the combat by their enraged adversaries, when 
Felix appeared with his cohorts and ordered the Jews to disperse. As his 
command was not instantly obeyed by the victorious party, Felix, who like all the 
Romans sided with the Gentile faction, let loose his soldiers upon them. The 
soldiers were probably not Romans, but provincials. 1 They were therefore 
delighted to fall on the Jews, many of whom were instantly put to the sword. 
Not content with this, Felix, whose dislike to the whole race only deepened 
every year, allowed them to plunder the houses of the wealthier Jews. 2 This 
crowning act of injustice could not pass unnoticed. Felix, indeed, as Tacitus 
tells us, had so long learnt to rely on the overwhelming influence of Pallas 
over Claudius, that he began to think that he might commit any crime he 
liked without being called to question. But Claudius had now been dismissed 

1 There were no Jews among them, because no Jew could serve in the army without 
a constant necessity of breaking the rules of his religion, so that on this ground they 
were exempted from the liability to conscription. 

2 The scent s which took place on this occasion were analogous to those which hap 
pened at Alexandria under Flaccus. 



552 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

to his apotheosis by the poisoned mushrooms of Agrippiiia, and the influence 
both of Pallas and Agrippina was on the wane. The Jews laid a formal 
impeachment against Felix for his conduct at Csesarea. and he was recalled to 
answer their complaints. Accompanied by Drusilla and Simon Magus, who 
had by this time assumed the position of his domestic sorcerer, he sailed to 
Italy, and his very last act was one of flagrant injustice. He had already 
abused the power of a provincial governor by delaying the trial of Paul for 
two years. It was a defect in Roman law that, though it ordered the imme- 
diate trial of a prisoner sent to a superior court with an elogium, it laid down 
no rule as to the necessary termination of his trial, and thus put into the 
hands of an unjust Praefect a formidable instrument of torture. Paul had 
now languished for two full years in the Herodian palace, and Felix had not 
decided his case. Philo mentions a similar instance in which Flaccus kept 
Lampo for two years in prison at Alexandria J ona charge of laesa majestas, 
in hopes of breaking his heart by a punishment worse than death. Felix had 
no such object, for he seems to have felt for Paul a sincere respect ; but since 
Paul would not offer a bribe, Felix would not set him free, and — more the 
slave of self-interest than he had ever been the slave of Antonia — he finally 
left him bound in order to gratify the malice of the Jews whom he thus 
strove, but quite vainly, to propitiate. He thought that he could, perhaps, 
settle some awkward items of their account against him by sacrificing to their 
religious hatreds a small scruple on the score of justice. Perhaps this was 
the last drop in the overflowing cup of his iniquity. How he closed his bad 
career we do not know. It required the utmost stretch of the waning 
influence of his brother Pallas to save him from the punishment which his 
crimes had deserved ; and, although he was not put to death or banished, he 
had to disgorge the greater portion of his ill-gotten wealth. Drusilla had one 
son by her marriage with him, and this son, whose name was Agrippa, 
perished in the eruption of Vesuvius nineteen years after these events. 2 
Felix himself vanishes henceforth into obscurity and disgrace. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

ST. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA II. 



" When I consider this Apostle as appearing either before the witty Athenians, or 
before a Roman Court of Judicature, in the presence of their great men and ladies, I see 
how handsomely he accommodateth himself to the apprehension and temper of these 
politer people." — Shaftesbury, Characteristics, i. 30. 

The successor of Felix was Porcius Festus (A.D. 60), 3 who, though he too 
was probably of no higher rank than that of a f rcedman, was a far worthier 
and more honourable ruler. His Procuratorship was of very brief duration, 

1 Philo in Flacc. xvi. 2 A.D. 79. Jos. Antt. xx. 7, § 2. 

3 This furnishes one of the few certain points de rep&re for the precise chronology of 
the Acts. He died the next year, 



8T. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA II. 553 

and he inherited the government of a country in which the wildest anarchy 
was triumphant, and internecine quarrels were carried on in the bloodiest 
spirit of revenge. Had he been Procurator for a longer time, difficult as was 
the task to hold in the leash the furious hatreds of Jews and Gentiles, he 
might have accomplished more memorable results. The sacred narrative dis- 
plays him in a not un favourable light, and he at any rate contrasts most 
favourably with his immediate predecessor and successor, in the fact that he 
tried to administer real justice, and did not stain his hands with bribes. 1 

His first movements show an active and energetic spirit. He arrived in 
Palestine about the month of August, and three days after his arrival at 
Csesarea went direct to Jerusalem. One of the first questions which he had 
to face was the mode of dealing with St. Paul. Two years of deferred hope, 
and obstructed purposes, and dreary imprisonment had not quenched the 
deadly antipathy of the Jews to the man whose free offer of the Gospel to 
the Gentiles seemed to them one of the most fatal omens of their impending 
ruin. The terrible fight in the market-place between Jews and Syrian 
Greeks, which had caused the disgrace of Felix, had left behind it an un- 
appeased exasperation, and the Jews of Csesarea were unanimous 2 in demand- 
ing the immediate punishment of Paul. When Festus reached Jerusalem 
the same cry 3 met him, and the death of Paul was demanded, not only by 
the mob, but by deputations of all the chief personages in Jerusalem, headed 
by Ishmael Ben Phabi, the new High Priest. 4 We have seen already that 
the Jews, with great insight into human nature, eagerly seized the first op- 
portunity of playing upon the inexperience of a newly-arrived official, and 
moulding, him if possible, while he was likely to be most plastic in his 
desire to create a favourable impression. But Festus was not one of the base 
and feeble Procurators who would commit a crime to win popularity. The 
Palestinian Jews soon found that they had to do with one who more resem- 
bled a Gallio than a Felix. The people and their priests begged him as an 
initial favour not to exempt Paul's case from their cognisance, but to bring 
him to Jerusalem, that he might once more be tried by the Sanhedrin, when 
they would take care that he should cause no second fiasco by turning their 
theologic jealousies against each other. Indeed, these sacerdotalists, who 
thought far less of murder than of a ceremonial pollution, 5 had taken care 
that if Festus once granted their petition, their hired assassins should get rid 
of Paul on the road " or ever he came near." Festus saw through them 
sufficiently to thwart their design under the guise of a courteous offer that, 
as Paul was now at Csesarea, he would return thither almost immediately, 
and give a full and fair audience to their complaints. On their continued 
insistence Festus gave them the haughty and genuinely Roman reply that, 

1 Jog. Antt. xx. 8, § 9 ; 9, §1; B. J. ii. 14, § 1. 

2 Acts XXV. 24, airav to 7tAt)0os t&v 'lovSaittv . . . ev9d£e. S Id. , €7ri/3owi>Tey. 

4 He had been appointed by Agrippa II., A.D. 59. 

5 See Sota, f. 47, 2 ; TosiftaSota, c. 14 ; J<ma t f. 23, 1 j Jot. B. J. passim. (Gratz, 
iii. 321, seqq.) 



554 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

whatever their Oriental notions of justice might he, it was not the custom of 
the Romans to grant any person's life to his accusers by way of doing a favour, 
but to place the accused and the accusers face to face, and to give the accused 
a full opportunity for self-defence. The High Priest and his fellow-conspi- 
rators, finding that they could not play either on the timidity of Festus or his 
complaisance, had to content themselves once more with organising a powerful 
deputation to carry out the accusation. Eight or ten days afterwards Festus 
returned to the palace at Caesarea, and the very next day took his seat on the 
tribunal to hear the case. The Jews had not again hired a practised barrister 
to help them, and the trial degenerated into a scene of passionate clamour, in 
which St. Paul simply met the many accusations against him by calm denials. 
The Jews, tumultuously surrounding the tribunal, reiterated their accusa- 
tions of heresy, sacrilege, and treason ; but as not a single witness was forth- 
coming, Paul had no need to do more than to recount the facts. This time the 
Jews seem to have defined the old vague charge that Paul was a stirrer-up of 
sedition throughout the Diaspora, by trying to frighten Festus, as they had 
frightened Pilate, with the name of Caesar ; 1 but Festus had too thorough a 
knowledge of the Roman law not to see, through all this murky storm of rage, 
the two plain facts, that he was trying a false issue, since the inquiry really 
turned on matters which affected the arcana of Jewish theology ; and that 
even if there was a grain of truth in the Jewish accusations, Paul had not 
been guilty of anything approaching to a capital crime. "Wishing to put au 
end to the scene — for nothing was more odious to the dignity of a well-trained 
Roman than the scowling faces, and gleaming eyes, and screaming interpel- 
lations of despised Orientals — Festus asked Paul whether he was willing to 
go up to Jerusalem, and be tried before the Sanhedrin under his protection. 2 
This was practically a proposal to transfer the question back from the Roman 
to the Jewish jurisdiction. But Paul knew very well that he had far more 
chance of justice at the hands of the Romans than at the hands of Jews, 
whose crimes were now dragging Jerusalem to her destruction. Jewish 
tribunals had invariably and even savagely condemned him ; Gentile tribunals 
— Gallio, the Politarchs, the Asiarchs, Lysias, Felix, Festus, even the 
" Praetors," at Philippi, and at last even the monster Nero — always saw and 
proclaimed his innocence. But he was sick of these delays ; sick of the fierce 
reiteration of calumnies which he had ten times refuted ; sick of being made 
the bone of contention for mutual hatreds ; sick of the arbitrary caprice of 
provincial governors. Terrible as the black dungeon of Machaerus to the free 
soul of the Baptist, must have been the dreary barracks of Caesarea to the 
ardent zeal of Paul. How he must have hated that palace, dripping with the 
blood of murdered Herods, and haunted by the worst memories of their 
crimes ! How tired he must have been of the idleness and the ribaldries of 

1 Acts xxv. 8. 

2 This must be the meaning of en efiov, xxv. 9. There could be no conceivable object 
in taking Paul to Jerusalem, unless it were to have him once more tried by the Sanhedrin ; 
but of course Festus could not preside at a meeting of the Sanhedrin, though he might 
be present (somewhat as Lysias was), and see that the accused received fair treatmeat. 



ST. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA II. 555 

provincial soldiers, and the tumultuous noises of collision between Jews and 
Gentiles which were constantly resounding in those ill-managed streets! 
Doubtless his imprisonment had been a period of deep inward calm and 
growth. He knew that his course was not yet over. He was awaiting the ful- 
filment of God's will. He saw that he had nothing more to hope for from 
High Priests or Procurators, and seized his opportunity. As a Eoman citizen 
he had one special privilege — that right of appeal to Caesar, which was still 
left as the venerable trophy of popular triumph in the struggles of centuries. 
He had only to pronounce the one word Apjpello, and every enemy would, for 
a time, be defeated, who was now thirsting for his blood. 1 He determined to 
exercise his privilege. The Procurator was but a shadow of the Caesar. His 
offer sounded plausibly fair, but perhaps Paul saw through it. "I am stand- 
ing," he said, " at Caesar's tribunal. There, and not before the Sanhedrin, I 
ought to be judged. Even you, O Festus ! know full well that I never 
in any respect wronged the Jews. If I am an offender, and have committed 
any capital crime, it is not against them, but against the Empire ; and if 
I am found guilty, I do not refuse to die. But if all the accusations which 
these bring against me are nothing, no one can sacrifice me to them as a 
favour." And then he suddenly exclaimed, " Caesarem appello ! " 

The appeal was a surprise ; even Festus, who meant well and kindly, 
though perhaps with a touch of natural complaisance towards his new sub- 
jects, was a little offended by it. It was not agreeable to have his jurisdiction 
superseded by an " appeal " to a superior on the very first occasion that he took 
his seat on the tribunal. Paul had not yet had time to learn his character. 
He might doubtless have trusted him more, if he had known him better ; but 
matters had fallen into a hopeless imbroglio, and perhaps Paul had some in- 
ward intimation that this, at last, was God's appointed way in which he was 
to visit Italy, and to bear witness at Rome. 

The appeal at once put an end to all the proceedings of the court. Festus 
held a very brief consultation with his consiliarii — or council of his assessors 
— as to whether the appeal was legally admissible or not. The case was too 
clear to admit of much doubt under this head, and, after a moment's delay, 
Festus exclaimed, in words which, however brusquely spoken, must have 
thrilled the heart of more than one person in that assembly, and most of all 
the heart of the Apostle himself, " Caesarem appellasti ; ad Caesarem ibis." 
Perhaps Festus avenged his momentarily wounded vanity by the thought, 
"* You little know what an appeal to Caesar means ! " 

Of course some days must elapse before an opportunity would occur to 
send Paul from Caesarea to Italy. A ship had to be provided, and other 
prisoners had to be tried whom it might be necessary to remand to the 
Emperor's decision. The delay was a providential one. It furnished Paul 
with a happy opportunity of proclaiming the truths and the arguments of 
Christianity in the presence of all the Jewish and Gentile magnates of the 

1 By the Lex Julia De Appellations Of. Plin. Epp. x. 97. 



556 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAtrt.. 

capital and of the last scions of that Iduraean house of brilliant adventurers 
who had allied themselves with the Asinonsean princes, and worn the title of 
Jewish kings. 

For only a day or two had elapsed after the appeal, when Agrippa II., the 
last of the Herods, and his sister Berenice came down to Csesarea to pay their 
respects to the new Procurator. It was a compliment which they could never 
safely omit, and we find that they paid similar visits to each Procurator in 
succession. The regal power of Agrippa, such as it was, depended on no 
popular support, but simply and solely on the will of the Emperor. As a 
breath had made him first king of Chalcis (A.D. 48), then of the tetrarchy of 
Philip (A.D. 52), and finally of various other cities (A.D. 55), so on any day 
a breath might unmake him. He was not, like his father, " the king of the 
Jews," and therefore St. Luke, with his usual accuracy in these details, only 
calls him " the king ; " but as he had succeeded his uncle Herod of Chalcis in 
the guardianship of the Temple, with its sacred robes, and the right of nomi- 
nations to the High-priesthood, he practically became a mere gilded instrument 
to keep order for the Romans, and it was essential for him to remain on good 
terms with them. 1 They in their turn found it desirable to flatter the harm- 
less vanities of a phantom royalty. 

During the visit of Agrippa and Berenice to Festus, he took the oppor- 
tunity of referring to the perplexing case of the prisoner Paul. He told 
Agrippa of the fury which seemed to inspire the whole Jewish people at the 
mention of his name, and of the futile results of the trial just concluded. 
However much the Jews might try to misrepresent the real questions at issue, 
it was clear that they turned on Mosaic technicalities, 2 and " on one Jesus who 
was dead, whom Paul alleged to be alive " 3 — matters about which Festus had 
no jurisdiction, and could not be supposed to know anything. The prisoner, 
however, had refused to be tried again by the Sanhedrin, and had appealed to 
the decision of the Augustus. 

" I should have liked myself also to hear this person," said Agrippa. 4 
Festus eagerly closed with the wish, and fixed the next day for the gratifica- 
tion of the king's fancy. 

It was not, as is commonly represented, a new trial. That would have 
been, on all grounds, impossible. Agrippa was without judicial functions, 
and the authority of the Procurator had been cut short by the appeal. It was 
more of the nature of a private or drawing-room audience — a sort of show 
occasion designed for the amusement of these princely guests, and the idle 

1 The Romans would have resented any neglect towards their representative, as much 
as we should resent the conduct of Scindiah or Holkar if they entered the district of one 
of our Indian Residents without paying their respects. 

2 xxv. 19. The use of the phrase, nepl Tfjs iSUs Seio-iSat/xoinas, "about their own religious 
matters " (cf. xvii. 22), shows sufficiently that among Gentiles Agrippa was accustomed 
to speak of his religion quite in the tone of a man of the world. 

:i St. Luke and the early Christians were far too much in earnest in their belief to 
make them shrink in the least from recording the scorn with which it was spoken of. 

4 xxv. 22, "E(iov\6(t.r i u Kai avrbs ; of. Gal. iv. 20. It might, however, mean, "I, too, 
was feeling a personal desire," 



ST. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA II. 557 

aristocracy of Caesarea, both Jewish and Gentile. Festus ordered the 
auditorium to be prepared for the occasion, and invited all the chief officers 
of the army, and the principal inhabitants of the town. The Herods were 
fond of show, and Festus gratified their humour by a grand processional 
display. He would doubtless appear in his scarlet paludament, with his full 
attendance of lictors and body-guard, who would stand at arms behind the 
gilded chairs which were placed for himself and his distinguished visitors. 
We are expressly told that Agrippa and Berenice went in state to the 
Prsetorium, she, doubtless, blazing with all her jewels, and he in his purple 
robes, and both with the golden circlets of royalty around their foreheads, and 
attended by a suite of followers in the most gorgeous apparel of Eastern 
pomp. It was a compliment to the new governor to visit him with as much 
splendour as possible, and both he and his guests were not sorry to furnish a 
spectacle which would at once illustrate their importance and their mutual 
cordiality. Did Agrippa think of his great-grandfather Herod, and the 
massacre of the innocents ? of his great-uncle Antipas, and the murder of 
John the Baptist ? of his father Agrippa I., and the execution of James the 
Elder ? Did he recall the fact that they had each died or been disgraced, 
soon after, or in direct consequence of, those inflictions of martyrdom ? Did 
he realise how closely, but unwittingly, the faith in that " one Jesus " had 
been linked with the destinies of his house? Did the pomp of to-day remind 
him of the pomp sixteen years earlier, when his much more powerful father 
had stood in the theatre, with the sunlight blazing on the tissued silver of his 
robe, and the people shouting that he was a god ? l Did none of the dark 
memories of the place overshadow him as he entered that former palace of his 
race ? It is very unlikely. Extreme vanity, gratified self-importance, far 
more probably absorbed the mind of this titular king, as, in all the pomp of 
phantom sovereignty, he swept along the large open hall, seated himself with 
his beautiful sister by the Procurator's side, and glanced with cold curiosity 
on the poor, worn, shackled prisoner — pale with sickness and long imprison- 
ment — who was led in at his command. 

Festus opened the proceedings in a short, complimentary speech, in which 
he found an excuse for the gathering, by saying that on the one hand the Jews 
were extremely infuriated against this man, and that on the other he was 
entirely innocent, so far as he could see, of any capital crime. Since, however, 
he was a Roman citizen, and had appealed to Caesar, it was necessary to send 
to " the Lord " 2 some minute of the case, by way of elogium, and he was 
completely perplexed as to what he ought to say. He was, therefore, glad of 
the opportunity to bring the prisoner before this distinguished assembly, that 
they, and especially King Agrippa, might hear what he had to say for himself, 
and so, by forming some sort of preliminary judgment, relieve Festus from 
the ridiculous position of sending a prisoner without being able to state any 
definite crime with which he had been charged. 

» A.D. 44. It was now A.D. 60. * xxv. 26. 



558 THE LIFE AND WORK 0F ST. PAUL. 

As no accusers were present, and this was not in any respect a judicial 
assembly, Agrippa, as the person for whom the whole scene was got up, told 
Paul that he was allowed to speak about himself. Had the Apostle been of 
a morose disposition he might have despised the hollowness of these mock 
proceedings. Had he been actuated by any motives lower than the highest, 
he might have seized the opportunity to flatter himself into favour in the 
absence of his enemies. But the predominant feature in his, as in the very 
greatest characters, was a continual seriousness and earnestness, and his only 
desire was to plead not his own cause, but that of his Master. Festus, with 
the Roman adulation, which in that age outran even the appetite of absolutism, 
had used that title of "the Lord," which the later Emperors seized with 
avidity, but which the earliest and ablest of them had contemptuously refused. 1 
But Paul was neither imposed upon by these colossal titles of reverence, nor 
daunted by these pompous inanities of reflected power. 

There is not a word of his address which does not prove how completely 
he was at his ease. The scarlet sagum of the Procurator, the fasces of the 
lictors, the swords of the legionaries, the gleaming armour of the Chiliarchs, 
did not for one moment daunt him, — they were a terror, not to good works, 
but to the evil ; and he felt that his was a service which was above all sway. 

Stretching out his hand in the manner familiar to the orators whom he had 
often heard in Tarsus or in Antioeh, 2 he began by the sincere remark that 
he was particularly happy to make his defence before King Agrippa, not — 
which would have been false — for any special worth of his, but because the 
prince had received from his father — whose anxiety to conform to the Law, 
both written and oral, was well known — an elaborate training in all matters 
of Jewish religion and casuistry, which could not fail to interest him in a 
question of which he was so competent to judge. He begged, therefore, for 
a patient audience, and narrated once more the familiar story of his conversion 
from the staudpoint of a rigid and bigoted Pharisee to a belief that the Mes- 
sianic hopes of his nation had now been actually fulfilled in that Jesus of 
Nazareth, whose followers he had at first furiously persecuted, but who had 
won him, by a personal revelation of His glory, to the knowledge that He had 
risen from the dead. Why should that belief appear incredible to his hearers ? 
It once had been so to himself ; but how could he resist the eye-witness of a 
noonday vision? and how could he disobey the heavenly voice which sent 
him forth to open the eyes both of Jews and Gentiles, that they might turn 
from darkness to light, and the power of Satan unto God, that, by faith in 
Jesus, they might receive remission of sins and a lot among the sanctified ? 
He had not been disobedient to it. In Damascus, in Jerusalem, throughout 
all Judaea, and subsequently among the Gentiles, he had been a preacher of 
repentance and conversion towards God, and a life consistent therewith. 
This was why the Jews had seized him in the Temple and tried to tear him 

i Suet. Oct 59 ; Tiber. 27 ; Domit. 13. 

2 Plut. Caes., p. 729; Appul. Metam. ii, "porrigit dextram et ad instar oratoruro 
conformat articidum. " 



ST. PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA It 559 

to pieces; but in this and every clanger God Lad helped him, and the testimony 
which he bore to small and great was no blasphemy, no apostasy, bnt simply 
a truth in direct accordance with the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, 
that the Messiah should be liable to suffering, and that from His resurrection 
from the dead a light should dawn to lighten both the Gentiles and His 
people. 

Paul was now launched on the full tide of that sacred and impassioned 
oratory which was so powerful an agent in his mission work. He was deliver- 
ing to kings and governors and chief captains that testimony which was the 
very object of his life. "Whether on other topics his speech was as con- 
temptible as his enemies chose to represent, we cannot say ; but on this topic, 
at any rate, he spoke with the force of long familiarity, and the fire of intense 
conviction. He would probably have proceeded to develop the great thesis 
which he had just sketched in outline — but at this point he was stopped short. 
These facts and revelations were new to Festus. Though sufficiently familiar 
with true culture to recognise it even through these Oriental surroundings, 
he could only listen open-mouthed to this impassioned tale of visions, and 
revelations, and ancient prophecies, and of a Jewish Prophet who had been 
crucified, and yet had risen from the dead and was Divine, and who could 
forgive sins and lighten the darkness of Jews as well as of Gentiles. He 
had been getting more and more astonished, and the last remark was too 
much for him. He suddenly burst out with the loud and excited interruption, 
"You are mad, Paul; 1 those many writings are turning your brain." His 
startling ejaculation checked the majestic stream of the Apostle's eloquence, 
but did not otherwise ruffle his exquisite courtesy. " I am not mad," he 
exclaimed with calm modesty, giving to Festus his recognised title of "your 
Excellency ; " " but I am uttering words of reality and soberness." But Festus 
was not the person whom he was mainly addressing, nor were these the 
reasonings which he would be likely to understand. It was different with 
Agrippa. He had read Moses and the Prophets, and had heard, from multi- 
tudes of witnesses, some at least of the facts to which Paul referred. To him, 
therefore, the Apostle appealed in proof of his perfect sanity. " The king," 
he said, " knows about these things, to whom it is even with confidence that 
I am addressing my remarks. I am sure that he is by no means unaware of 
any of these circumstances, for all that I say has not been done in a corner." 
And then, wishing to resume the thread of his argument at the point where 
it had been broken, and where it would be most striking to a Jew, he asked — 

" King Agrippa, dost thou believe the Prophets ? I know that thou 
believest." 

Bat Agrippa did not choose to be entrapped into a discussion, still less 
into an assent. Not old in years, but accustomed from his boyhood to an 
atmosphere of cynicism and unbelief, he could only smile with the good- 
natured contempt of a man of th^ »vorld at the enthusiastic earnestness which 

i Wisd. v. 4 ; 2 Cor. v. 13. There is an iambic rhythm in Festus's interpellation which 
makes it sound like a Quotation. 



560 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

could even for a moment fancy that he would be converted to the heresy of 
the Nazarenes with their crucified Messiah! Yet he did not wish to be 
uncourteous. It was impossible not to admire the burning zeal which neither 
stripes nor prisons could quench — the clear-sighted faith which not even such 
a surrounding could for a moment dim. 

" Tou are trying to persuade me offhand to be ' a Christian ! ' " * he said, 
with a half-suppressed smile ; and this finished specimen of courtly eutrajpelia 
was his bantering answer to St. Paul's appeal. Doubtless his polished remark 
on this compendious style of making converts sounded very witty to that 
distinguished company, and they would with difficulty suppress their laughter 
at the notion that Agrippa, favourite of Claudius, friend of Nero, King of 
Chalcis, Ituraea, Trachonitis, nominator of the High Priest, and supreme 
guardian of the Temple treasures, should succumb to the potency of this 
" short method with a Jew." That a Paul should make the king a Christian (!) 
would sound too ludicrous. But the laugh would be instantly suppressed in 
pity and admiration of the poor but noble prisoner, as with perfect dignity 
he took advantage of Agrippa' s ambiguous expression, and said, with all the 
fervent sincerity of a loving heart, " I could pray to God that whether ' in 
little ' or 'in much,' 2 not thou only, but even all who are listening to me 
to-day might become even such as I am — except," he added, as he raised his 
fettered hand — "except these bonds." They saw that this was indeed no 
common prisoner ; one who could argue as he had argued, and speak as he 
had spoken; one who was so filled with the exaltation of an inspiring idea, so 
enriched with the happiness of a firm faith and a peaceful conscience, that 
he could tell them how he prayed that they all — all these princely and dis- 
tinguished people — could be even such as he — and who yet in the spirit of 
entire forgiveness desired that the sharing in his faith might involve no share 
in his sorrows or misfortunes — must be such a one as they never yet had seen 
or known, either in the worlds of Jewry or of heathendom. But it was useless 
to prolong the scene. Curiosity was now sufficiently gratified, and it had 
become clearer than ever that though they might regard Paul the prisoner 
as an amiable enthusiast or an inspired fanatic, he was in no sense a legal 
criminal. The king, by rising from his seat, gave the signal for breaking up 
the meeting ; Berenice and Fesius, and their respective retinues, rose up at 
the same time, and as the distinguished assembly dispersed they were heard 

1 evb\[ya>, "in brief," "in few words "(cf. vpoeypa^a ev oAiyo), Eph. iii. 3), "tout d'un 
coup." It cannot mean "almost," which would be nap oXiyoi/, or bkiyov Set . On the 
conatm involved in the present nei6et<;, see my Brief Greek Syntax, § 136. But it is very 
doubtful whether we have got Agrippa's real remark. A reads neieji (Lachm.), and 
perhaps ireiOeis may have come from an original irelBei, "you are persuading yourself " 
(cf. cw ireiBofuu, ver. 20); for instead of yevea-Gat, the reading of n, A, B is nolrioai, which 
with 7rei0ei? is unintelligible. From the confusion of readings we might almost con- 
jecture that Agrippa ironically said, ^e xpioTiai/bv jron»<reis — "you'll soon be making me — a 
Christian I " 

2 St. Chrysostom thinks that St. Paul mistook Agrippa's meaning, and, from ignor- 
ance of colloquial Greek (?), supposed him to mean "almost." But Eph. iii. 3 is enough 
to disprove thia. 






JO- 









s 



A 



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»■>■■'»•$<• ; -ti'Pijio.cUv^. 




X X*BJ^, 







N,.»V..vlK .!■ .ll..u..uvrn. 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 561 

remarking on all sides that Paul was undeserving of death, or even of imprison- 
ment. He had made, in fact, a deeply favourable impression. Agrippa's 
decision was given entirely for his acquittal. "This person," he said to 
Festus, u might have been permanently set at liberty, if he had not appealed 
to Caesar." Agrippa was far too little of a Pharisee, and far too much of a 
man of the world, not to see that mere freedom of thought could not be, and 
ought not to be, suppressed by external violence. The proceedings of that 
day probably saved St. Paul's life full two years afterwards. Festus, since 
his own opinion, on grounds of Roman justice, were so entirely confirmed 
from the Jewish point of view by the Protector of the Temple, could hardly 
fail to send to Nero an elogium which freely exonerated the prisoner from 
every legal charge ; and even if Jewish intrigues were put in play against 
him, Nero could not condemn to death a man whom Felix, and Lysias, and 
Festus, and Agrippa, and even the Jewish Sanhedrin, in the only trial of the 
case which they had held, had united in pronouncing innocent of any capita] 
crime. 



CHAPTER XLHI. 

THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 

" Non vultus mstantis tyranni 
Mente quatit solida, nee Auster 
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae." — Hor. Od. 
tl The flattering wind that late with promised aid 
From Candia's bay the unwilling ship betrayed, 
No longer fawns, beneath the fair disguise, 
But like a ruffian on his quarry flies." 

Falconer, Shipwreck, canto ii. 

At the earliest opportunity which offered, St. Paul, and such other prisoners 1 
as were waiting the result of an appeal, were despatched to Italy under the 
charge of Julius, a centurion of an Augustan cohort. This Augustan cohort 
may either be some local troop of soldiers of that name stationed at Csesarea, 
since the name " Augustan " was as common as " Royal " among us ; or they 
may have belonged to the body of Augustani — veterans originally enrolled 
by Augustus as a body-guard ; 2 or they may have been the Praetorian guards 
themselves, who occasionally, though not frequently, were sent out of Italy 
on imperial missions. 3 It is not, however, said that Julius was accompanied 
by his cohort, and it is not at all impossible that he may have been sent with 
a few of those chosen soldiers of the most distinguished Roman regiments 

1 xxvii. 1. eTe'pov? is not necessarily used with classical accuracy to denote "prisoners 
of a different class " (Luke viii. 3; Mark xv. 41). 

2 It certainly was not a cohort of "Sebasteni," i.e., natives of Sebaste, the naire 
which Herod had given to Samaria (Jos. B. J. ii 12, § 5). 

3 Pliny, H. N. vi. 35. (Lewin, ii 183.) 

K K 



662 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATHL. 

to give eclat to the arrival of Festus in one of the wealthiest but most dis- 
affected of imperial provinces. 1 If this were the case, Julius may very well 
have been that Julius Prisons who afterwards rose to the splendid position 
of one of the two Prasfects of the Praetorians, and committed suicide on the 
disgraceful overthrow of his patron. 2 We see enough of him during this 
voyage to lead us to believe that he was a sensible, honourable, and kindly man. 

Roman soldiers were responsible with their own lives for the security of 
their prisoners, and this had originated the custom — so painful to the prisoners, 
and all the more painful because so necessarily irritating to the legionaries — 
of keeping the prisoners safe by chaining them with a long light chain by 
the right wrist to the left wrist of soldiers, who relieved each other in turn. 
It may be imagined how frightfully trying it must have been to have no 
moment and no movement free, and to be fettered in such horrible proximity 
to a man who would certainly have been an uneducated specimen of the lowest 
classes, and who, surrounded from boyhood upwards by rough and demoralis- 
ing companionships, might be a coarse and loose provincial, or a morose and 
brutal peasant from the dregs of the Italian population. It is tolerably certain 
that ashore prisoners were not allowed to go anywhere without this galling 
protection, but we may hope that they were not always subject to it in the 
narrow fetid cribs and hatchways of the huge, rolling, unwieldy merchantmen 
in which their compulsory voyages had to be performed. 

Since Festus had arrived in Palestine towards the end of June, it must 
now have been late in August, and the time was rapidly drawing on in which 
ancient navigation was closed for the year. Every day made the weather 
more uncertain and the voyage more perilous, and since time was pressing, 
Julius, to whom the commission was entrusted, embarked his prisoners on 
board a coasting merchantman of the Mysian town of Adramyttium. As the 
vessel would touch at the chief ports on the west of Asia, there was every 
possibility of their finding a ship at Ephesus, or at some nearer port, in which 
they could perform the rest of their voyage; but if not, Julius might, as a 
last resource, march his soldiers and their prisoners from Adramyttium to 
Troas, and thence sail to JSTeapolis, whence he could proceed along the great 
Egnatian Road, already so familiar to St. Paul, through Philippi and Thes- 
salonica to Dyrrhachium. Dyrrhachium and Brundusium were to the Romans 
what Calais and Dover are to the English; and after crossing the .iEgean, 
Julius would march along the Appian Hoad — in a reverse order through the 
scenes described with such lively humour by Horace in his Iter ad Brundusium 
— till his journey ended at Rome. This was the route traversed by St. Ignatius 
and his "ten leopards" who conducted him to his martyrdom, and in his dis- 
agreeable connexion with whom he says that he fought with wild beasts all 
the way. It is, however, most unlikely that a land journey entered into the 
immediate plans of Julius. As he had several prisoners under his chargo, 
each of whom would require ten soldiers to relieve guard, such a journey 

1 More strictly Vrocuratorship. St. Luke, however, uses the general word inapxuu 

2 Tac. Hist. ii. 92 j iv. 11. "Pudoremagis quain necessitate." 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 568 

would be inexpressibly tedious and extremely expensive; and Julius might 
rely with tolerable certainty on finding some vessel which was bound from 
one of the great emporiums of Asia for the capital of the world. 

St. Paul was spared one at least of the circumstances which would have 
weighed most heavily on his spirits — he was not alone. Luke and Aristarchus 
accompanied him, aud, whether such had been their original intention or not, 
both were at any rate driven by stress of circumstances to remain with him 
during great part of his Roman imprisonment. They, no doubt, were pas^ 
sengers, not prisoners, and they must either have paid their own expenses, 1 
or have been provided with money for that purpose by Christians, who knew 
how necessary was some attendance for one so stricken with personal infirmities 
as their illustrious Apostle. 

The voyage began happily and prosperously. The leading westerly wind 
was so far favourable that the day after they started they had accomplished 
the sixty-seven miles which lay between them and the harbour of Sidon. 
There they touched, and Julius, who can hardly have been absent from the 
brilliant throng who had listened to Paul's address before Agrippa, was so 
indulgently disposed towards him that he gave him leave — perhaps merely 
on parole — to land and see his friends who formed the little Christian com- 
munity of that place. This kindness was invaluable to St. Paul. The two 
years' imprisonment must have told unfavourably upon his health, and he 
must have been but scantily provided with the requisites for a long voyage. 
The expression used by St. Luke that Julius allowed him to go to his friend 
and "be cared for," 2 seems to imply that even during that one day's voyage 
he had suffered either from sea-sickness or from general infirmity. The day 
at Sidon was the one happy interlude which was to prepare him for many 
anxious, miserable, and storm-tossed weeks. 

For from that day forward the entire voyage became a succession of delay** 
and accidents, which, after two months of storm and danger, culminated in 
hopeless shipwreck. No sooner had they left the harbour of Sidon than they 
encountered the baffling Etesian winds, which blow steadily from the north- 
west. This was an unlooked-for hindrance, because the Etesians usually cease 
to blow towards the end of August, and are succeeded by south winds, on 
which the captain of the merchantman had doubtless relied to waft him back 
to his port of Adramyttium. His natural course would have been to sail 
straight across from Sidon to Patara, leaving Cyprus on the starboard ; but 
the very winds which sped St. Paul so blithely along this course to his 
Csesarean imprisonment more than two years before, were now against his 
return, and the vessel had to sail towards Cape Pedalium, the south-eastern 
promontory of Cyprus, hugging the shore under the lee of the island as fai 
as Cape Dinaretum. 3 On rounding this cape they could beat to windward 

Luke, as a physician, might easily have procured a free passage. 

2 XXvii. 3, e7rt/xeA.eta? ruXelv. 

s vTreTrAivf-tmev, " we sailed under the lee of," i.e., in this instance, "we left, Cyprus on 
the left." Observe that in this narrative alone there are no less than thirteen different 
expressions for " sailing." 
KK 2 



564 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTI* 

by the aid of land-breezes and westward currents right across the sea which 
washes the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia, until they dropped anchor in the 
mouth of the river Andriacus, opposite to a hill crowned with the magnificent 
buildings of Myra, the former capital of Lycia. 1 

Here they were fortunate — or, as it turned out, unfortunate — enough to 
find a large Alexandrian wheat- ship, 2 which had undergone the common fate 
of being driven out of the direct course by the same winds which had baffled 
the Adramyttian vessel, and which now intended to follow the usual alter- 
native of creeping across the iEgean from island to island, northward of 
Crete, and so to the south of Cythera, and across to Syracuse. 3 This 
vessel, built for the purposes of the trade which supplied to all Italy the staff 
of life, could easily provide room for the centurion with his soldiers and 
prisoners, and such passengers as chose to accompany them. They were, 
therefore, shifted into this vessel, and sailed for Cnidus, the last point at 
which they could hope for any help from the protection of the shore with its 
breezes and currents. The distance between the two spots is only one hundred 
and thirty miles, and under favourable circumstances they might have got 
to their destination in twenty-four hours. But the baffling Etesians still 
continued with unseasonable steadiness, and to reach even to Cnidus occupied 
many weary and uncomfortable days. And when they got off the beautiful 
and commodious harbour they were destined to a fresh and bitter disappoint- 
ment, for they could not enter it. Had they been able to do so the season 
was by this time so far advanced, and the wind was so steadily adverse, that 
we can hardly doubt that, unless they continued their journey by land, they 
would either have waited there for a more favourable breeze, or decided to 
winter in a port where there was every pleasant requisite at hand for the 
convenience of so large a vessel, and its numerous crew. Since, however, 
the wind would neither suffer them to put in at Cnidus, 4 nor to continue 
their direct voyage, which would have passed north of Crete, the only alter- 
native left them was to make for Cape Salmone, at the eastern end of the 
island, and there sail under its lee. To get to Salmone was comparatively 
easy ; but when they had rounded it they had the utmost difficulty in creeping 
along the weather shore until they came to a place called Fair Havens, a little 
to the east of Cape Matala, and not far from an obscure town of the name 
of LasEea. While the wind remained in its present quarter it was useless to 
continue their voyage, for beyond Cape Matala the shore trends sharply to 
the north, and they would have been exposed to the whole force of the Etesians, 

» Cf. Time. viii. 35. 

2 The Emperor Titus (Suet. Vit. 5) did the same on his return from Palestine (cf. Jos. 
B. J. vii. 2 ; Tac. H. iv. 81). At this period that part of the Mediterranean is almost 
always stormy (Falconer, Dissert., p. 16). 

3 It will, of course, be borne in mind that (1) they had no compass ; and (2) could not 
work to windward. The Cilician land breeze, which had helped the Adramyttian vessel 
to Myra, was quite local. Compare Socr. H. E. ii. 24 ; Sozomen, vi. 25 (speaking of the 
voyage of Athanasius from Alexandria to Rome). Wetst. 

4 xxvii. 7, m Trpoo-eui/Tos toO ai/e>ov. It is not said that they got to Cnidua, but only that 
they got "opposite to " or " off " it, and that with difficulty. 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 565 

with a lee shore on which they would inevitably have been dashed to pieces. 
At Fair Havens, therefore, they were obliged to put in, and wait for a change 
of wind. Time passed, and found them still windbonnd. It was now getting 
towards the close of September. At Fair Havens St. Paul and any Jewish 
Christians on board would probably keep the Kippor, or great day of Atone- 
ment, 1 the one fast in the Jewish calendar, which this year fell on September 
24. The autumnal equinox passed. The Feast of Tabernacles passed, and 
perhaps some of the sailors regarded with superstitious terror the partial 
eclipse which occurred on that evening. The Jewish season for navigation 
was now over, 2 but the Gentiles did not regard the sea as closed until 
November ll. 3 Discussions took place as to whether they should winter 
where they were or choose the first favourable chance of pushing on round 
Cape Matala to Port Phcenix, which lay only thirty-four miles beyond it. 
St. Paul, whose remarkable ascendency had already displayed itself, was 
allowed to give his opinion, and he gave it emphatically in favour of staying 
where they were. " Sirs," 4 he said, " I perceive that this voyage will certainly 
result in violent weather, and much loss not only of the cargo and of the ship, 
but even of our lives." His opinion was entitled to great weight, because his many 
voyages had made him thoroughly familiar with the winds and dangers of a 
sea in which he had thrice been shipwrecked, and had once floated for a night 
and a day. The captain, however, and the owner of the vessel gave their 
opinion the other way; and it must be admitted that they had much to urge. 
Fair Havens afforded a shelter from the norwester which had so long been 
prevalent, but it was entirely unprotected against east winds, and indeed 
lay open to most points of the compass. It would, therefore, be a dangerous 
haven in which to pass the winter, and it was further unsuitable because the 
place itself was a poor one, not quite close even to the town of Lasaea, and 
offering no means of employment or amusement for the soldiers and sailors. 
It would have been a serious matter to spend three or four months in a place 
so dreary and desolate, and it seemed worth while, if possible, to get to Port 
Phcenix. That town, the modern Lutro, which they could reach in a few 
hours' sail, enjoyed the advantage of the only harbour on the south of Crete 
which is safe in all weathers, and which was therefore a familiar resort of 
Alexandrian corn-ships. Its harbour was closed and protected by a little 
island, and was described by those who advocated its claims as "looking 
towards Libs and towards Caurus," or, as we should say, towards the south- 
west and the north-west. It has greatly puzzled commentators to account 
for this expression, seeing that the entrance to the harbour of Lutro (which 
is undoubtedly the ancient Phoenix) looks towards the east, and its two 
openings a* the extremities of its sheltering island look precisely in the 

1 It was observed on the tenth of Tisri, which in this year (A.D. 60) fell at the 
autumnal equinox. 

2 Sept. 28. See Lewin, Fasti Sacri, § 1899; and VArt de verifier les Dates, iv., p. 51. 

3 See Schoettgen, Eor. Hebr. ad loc; Plin. H. N. ii. 47; Veget. De Re Milit. v. 9. 
♦ "Avtyest " gentlemen," as in xiv. 15, xis. 25 ; not /cvpioi, as in Acts xvj. 30, 



566 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 

opposite directions, namely, north-east and south-east. The explanatu n of 
this singular anomaly is not to be sought in grammatical illustrations, but in 
the subjectivity of the sailors, who simply regard the bearings of the harbour 
from the directions in which they sail into it, and might say, for instance, that 
a harbour " looked towards " the north, if they could only sail into it by 
turning their prow northward; just as farther on in the chapter they speak 
of " some land approaching them," when in reality they are approaching some 
land. 1 But besides the security of Port Phoenix, it was evidently a far more 
desirable place for nearly three hundred people to winter in than the com- 
paratively obscure and lonely Fair Havens, and on both these grounds it 
seemed to be worth a slight risk to reach it. These arguments- won the 
adhesion of the majority, and the centurion, with whom the decision rested, 
decided that this should be done. St. Paul claimed no inspiration for the 
solemn advice he gave, 2 and of course there was a fair chance of safely travers- 
ing so short a distance. Yet results proved that his advice was right. Fair 
Havens, though not a first-rate harbour, is yet partially protected by reefs 
and islets, and though it might not be wholly safe to winter there, yet the 
risk was much smaller than that which must be incurred by doubling Cape 
Matala, and so getting possibly seized in the grasp of one of the prevalent 
and sudden northerly gales, which would drive the ship into almost certain 
destruction. But there is a gambling element in human nature, and the 
centurion, at any rate, could hardly avoid following the opinion of the 
experts, whose interests were so deeply concerned, in preference to that of 
a prisoner, whose knowledge was not professional and who had so much less 
at stake. 

It was not long before the wished-for opportunity occurred. 3 A soft south 
wind sprang up, and gladly weighing anchor, they hoisted the great mainsail, 
took their boat in tow. sailed close along the shore to the point of Cape Matala, 
and then gaily prepared for a delightful run of a few hours to the beautiful 
and hospitable harbour for which they were abandoning the dull, dreary Lassea. 
Now at last a little gleam of prosperity seemed to have shone on their tedious 
and unfortunate voyage. Perhaps they had a good-natured laugh against Paul 
the prisoner for advice which would have made them throw away a golden 
chance. But, alas ! the gentle breathing of the south wind in the sails and 
cordage was but a siren song which had lured them to their destruction. They 
had not long passed the cape, when a tempestuous typhoon 4 — such as often in 
those latitudes succeeds a brief spell of the south wind — burst down from the 
Cretan Ida, and smote with terrible fury on the hapless vessel. The ancient 
name of this "Levanter," as it is now called, was probably Euroaquilo, a name 

1 See further, Smith, p. 49. a Ver. 10, flewpw. 

3 Ver. 13, apavres acraov vapekeyomo tt,v KprjTTji/. The E.V. misses the exact force of the 
aorist vtrmrvevaavTO^ 

4 The word n/<£a>vuc&s describes the circular whirling of the clouds caused by the meet- 
ing of the S. and the E.N.E. winds. See Plin. //. N. ii. 48, "praecipua navigantum 
pestis;" A. Gell. xix. 1. Thi wind is exactly what might have been expected 
(Purdy, Sailing Directory, ii. 61 ; Smith, Voy. and Shipwreck, p. 412). 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 



567 



which exactly describes its direction, since we see from St. Luke's subsequent 
remarks that it must have been an east-north-easter, which, indeed, continued 
to blow during the remainder of their voyage. 1 From the first moment that 
this fatal blast rushed down from the hills and seized the wheat-ship in its grasp, 2 
the condition of the vessel was practically hopeless. It was utterly impossible 
for her— it would have been impossible for the finest made vessel — to " look the 
wind in the face." 3 The suddenness and fury of the blow left the sailors not 
one moment to furl the mainsail, or to do anything but leave the ship to be 
driven madly forward before the gale, 4 until after a fearful run of twenty-three 
miles they neared the little island of Olauda, 5 and ran in under its lee. Happily 
the direction of the wind, and the fact — in which we see the cleai hand of 
Providence — that the storm had burst on them soon after they had rounded 
Cape Matala, and not a little later on in their course, had saved them from being 
dashed upon the rocks and reefs, which He more to the north-west between both 
Candia and Clauda; but their condition was, in other respects, already 
dangerous, if not quite desperate. The ships of the ancients had one main- 
mast and one mainsail ; any other masts or rigging were comparatively small 
and insignificant. Hence the strain upon the vessel from the leverage of the 
mast was terrific, and it was impossible that the Alexandrian ship, however 
stoutly built, should have scudded with her huge sail set in the grasp of a 
typhoon, without her timbers starting. It is evident that she had already 
sprung a serious leak. There was no available harbour in the little island, and 
therefore the captain, who seems to have shown the best seamanship which was 
possible in his age, took advantage of the brief and partial lull which was 
afforded them by the shelter of the island to do the two things which were 
most immediately necessary — namely, first to secure the means of escape, for 
some at any rate of the crew, in case the vessel foundered, and next to put off: 
that catastrophe as long as possible. He therefore gave orders at once to hoist 
the boat on board, and so secure it from being staved in. But this was a task 



1 Evpa/cv'Xwv, A, B, Sahid., Copt., Smith, p. 59. It was thus a "point wind." If 
anything is to be said for the very ill-supported ~Evpoickv8u>v of the Syriac, we can only 
regard the word as surfrappe by Greek sailors (see Language and Languages, p. 119). 

2 Ver. 14, ej3oAev KaT ai/rrjs may mean either "struck against her," the conception of a 
ship being in all languages feminine, and vavs being 
the prevalent substantive in the mind of the writer, 
though throughout the narrative he always uses to 
■xkolov, except in verse 41 ; or it may mean, no less 
correctly, " down from it ," namely "Crete," which 
is the substantive immediately preceding. But that 
the former is the right translation in this instance 
is certain, because efiakev could not be used with 
nothing to follow it. The reader will more easily 
follow the details of the voyage, if he will compare W.[-= 
the map with the directions indicated on this 1 
compass. \ 

3 avrobeakixziv. Eyes were painted on the prow 
(Eustath. ad II. xiv. 717). 

4 One of the Cursives (137) adds ava-Tsikavre? rh. 
larta. 

5 Clauda j B, Kav8i; Plin. iv. 20; Gaudus, Gozzo, 




568 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

by no means easy. The boat, which they had so securely towed astern in what 
they meant to be a sort of gala trip to Port Phoenix, had now been hurled af *er 
them through twenty miles of their swirling wake, and must therefore have 
been sorely battered, and perhaps half water-logged ; and though they were 
now in slightly smoother water, yet such was the violence of the gale that it 
was difficult to perform the simplest duty. They managed, however — and 
Luke was one of those who lent a hand in doing it 1 — to heave the boat on board 
as a last resource in the moment of peril ; and then the sailors proceeded to 
adopt the rough and clumsy method in use among the ancients to keep a vessel 
together. This consisted in undergirding, or, to use the modern and technical 
term for a practice which is now but rarely resorted to, in "/rapping" it, by 
passing stout hawsers several times under the prow, and tying them as tightly 
as possible round the middle of the vessel. 2 They had thus met the two most 
pressing dangers, but a third remained. There was no place into which they 
could run for shelter, nor could they long avail themselves of the partial pro- 
tection which they derived from the weather-shore of the little island, and they 
knew too well that the wind was driving them straight towards the Goodwin 
Sands of the Mediterranean — the dreaded bay of the Greater Syrtis. 3 There 
was only one way to save themselves, which was not, as the English Yersion 
most erroneously expresses it, to "strike sail and so be driven" — since this 
would be certain destruction — but to lie to, by rounding the prow of the vessel 
on the starboard tack as near to the wind as possible, to send down the topsail 
and cordage, lower the ponderous yard to such a height as would leave enough 
of the huge mainsail to steady the vessel, 4 set the artemo, or storm-sail, and 
so — having made all as snug as their circumstances permitted — let her drift 
on, broadside to leeward, at the mercy of wind and wave. This they did, and 
so ended the miserable day, which had begun with such soft breezes and pre- 
sumptuous hopes. 5 

All night long the storm blew, and, in spite of the undergirding, the vessel 
still leaked. Next day, therefore, they kept throwing over from time to time 
everything that could possibly be spared to lighten the ship ; 6 but even this 
was insufficient. The next night brought no relief; the vessel still leaked 
and leaked, and all labour at the pumps was in vain. The fate which most 

1 The narrative of St. Luke is admirably brief and pregnant, and yet we can at once 
trace in it the tasks in which he and St. Paul and other passengers or prisoners were able 
to take their share. They helped, for instance, in getting hold of the boat (ver. 16), and 
in lightening the vessel (ver. 19, leg. ep'pfy*ixev) ; but they could not help in such technical 
tasks as frapping the vessel, heaving the lead, dropping the anchors, &c. 

* v7ro&iJ.a.Ta, mitrae, Vitruv. x. 15, 6 ; Thuc. i. 29 ; Plato, Rep. x. 616 ; Hor. Od i. 14, 
6. "They [a Spanish man-of-war in a storm] were obliged to throw overboard all their 
upper-deck guns, and take six turns of the cable round the ship to prevent her opening" 
(Anson, Voyage Bound the World). The Albion was frapped with iron chains after the 
battle of Navarino. 

3 Ver. 17, iicnevuMTi, not "fall into," but "be driven ashore on" (Hdt. viii. 13). 

4 xoAaowre? to avcevos, here "lowering the great yard " (Smith). 

5 Ver. 13, Bo^avres -nrjs irpoOeaem KeKparrj/ceWi. 

• Ver. 18, ck/3oAV €7toiov»to, jacturam facicbant, whereas what they did the day aftsj 
ffas an instantaneous act, epptyafxei'. 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 569 

commonly befell ancient vessels — that of foundering at sea — was obviously 
imminent. On the third day, therefore, it became necessary to take some still 
more decisive step. This, in a modern vessel, would have been to cut down 
the masts by the board ; in ancient vessels, of which the masts were of a less 
towering height, it consisted in heaving overboard the huge mainyard, which, 
as we see, was an act requiring the united assistance of all the active hands. 1 
It fell over with a great splash, and the ship was indefinitely lightened. But 
now her violent rolling — all the more sensible from the loose nature of her 
cargo — was only counteracted by a trivial storm-sail. The typhoon, indeed, 
had become an ordinary gale, but the ship had now been reduced to the con- 
dition of a leaky and dismantled hulk, swept from stem to stern by the dashing 
spray, and drifting, no one knew whither, under leaden and moonless heavens. 
A gloomy apathy began to settle more and more upon those helpless three 
hundred souls. There were no means of cooking ; no fire could be lighted ; 
the caboose and utensils must long ago have been washed overboard ; the pro- 
visions had probably been spoiled and sodden by the waves that broke over the 
ship ; indeed, with death staring them in the face, no one cared to eat. They 
were famishing wretches in a fast-sinking ship, drifting, with hopes that 
diminished day by day, to what they regarded as an awful and a certain 
death. 

But in that desperate crisis one man retained his calm and courage. It 
was Paul the prisoner, probably in physical health the weakest and the greatest 
sufferer of them all. But it is in such moments that the courage of the noblest 
souls shines with the purest lustre, and the soul of Paul was inwardly enlight- 
ened. As he prayed in all the peacefulness of a blameless conscience, it was 
revealed to him that God would fulfil the promised destiny which was to lead 
him to Rome, and that, with the preservation of his own life, God would also 
grant to him the lives of those unhappy sufferers, for whom, all unworthy as some 
of them soon proved to be, his human heart yearned with pity. While the rest 
were abandoning themselves to despair, Paul stood forth on the deck, and after 
gently reproaching them with having rejected the advice which would have 
saved them from all that buffeting and loss, he bade them cheer up, for 
though the ship should be lost, and they should be wrecked on some island, 
not one of them should lose his life. For they knew that he was a prisoner 
who had appealed to Caesar; and that night an angel of the God, whose child 
and servant he was, had stood by him, and not only assured him that he should 
stand before Csesar, but also that God had, as a sign of His grace, granted him 

1 Ver. 19, ttjv cmevriv eppi\f/afxev- (This is the reading of G, H, most of the Cursives, both 
the Syriac versions, the Coptic, JSthiopic, &c. I agree with De TTette in thinking that 
the eppvpav of n, A, B, C, Vulg., is a mistaken alteration, due to the eTrotovvTo of the pre- 
vious verse.) The meaning of the expression is disputed, but it has been universally 
overlooked that the aorist requires some single act. Hence Alford's notion that fi oveeuTj 
means beds, furniture, spare rigging, &c, and Wetstein's, that it means the baggage of 
the passengers, fall to the ground, and Smith's suggestion that the main spar is intended 
is muoh strengthened. He observes that the effect would be much the same as that 
produced in modern vessels by heaving the guns overboard. 



570 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

the lives of all on board. He bade them, therefore, to cheer up, and to share 
his own conviction that the vision should come true. 

"Who shall say how much those calm undoubting words were designed by 
God to help in bringing about their own fulfilment ? Much had yet to be 
done ; many a strong measure to avert destruction had yet to be taken ; and 
God helps those only who will take the appointed means to help themselves. 
The proud words " Caesarem vehis " 1 may have inspired the frightened sailor 
to strenuous effort in the open boat on the coast of Illyria, and certainly it was 
Paul's undaunted encouragements which re-inspired these starving, fainting, 
despairing mariners to the exertions which ultimately secured their safety. 
For after they had drifted fourteen days, tossed up and down on the heaving 
waves of Adria, 2 a weltering plaything for the gale, suddenly on the fourteenth 
night the sailors, amid the sounds of the long-continued storm, fancied that 
they heard the roar of breakers through the midnight darkness. Suspecting 
that they were nearing some land, and perhaps even detecting that white 
phosphorescent gleam of a surf -beat shore which is visible so far through even 
the blackest night, they dropped the lead and found that they were in twenty 
fathom water. Sounding again, they found that they were in fifteen fathoms. 3 
Their suspicions and fears were now turned to certainty, and here was the 
fresh danger of having their desolate hulk driven irresistibly upon some iron 
coast. In the face of this fresh peril the only thing to be done was to drop 
anchor. Had they anchored the vessel in the usual manner, from the prow, 4 
the ship might have swung round against a reef ; nor could they suppose, as 
they heard the extraordinary loudness of the surf beating upon the shore, that 
they were at that moment a quarter of a mile from land. So they dropped 
four anchors 5 through the hawse-holes in which the two great paddle -rudders 
ordinarily moved ; since these — having long been useless as they drifted before 
the gale — had been half lifted out of the water, and lashed to the stern. 6 
Having done this, they could only yearn with intense desire for the dawn of 
day. All through the remaining hours of that long wintry night, they stood 
face to face with the agony of death. In its present condition, the leak con- 
stantly gaining on them, the waves constantly deluging them with spray, the 
vessel might at any moment sink, even if the anchors held. But they did not 
know, what we know, that those anchors had dropped into clay of extraordinary 

1 Plut. Caes. 38; De Fort. Rom. 6; Floras, iv. 2; Dion Cass. xli. 46. "Et fortunam 
Caesaris " is a later addition. 

2 The Mediterranean between Greece, Italy, and Africa. Strabo, ii. 123. 'Iovtov 
TreAayos, 6 vCv'ASpi'as (Hesycb.). 8ia</>ep6|u.evov, " tossed hither and thither." So it would 
appear to those on board, but probably they drifted in the E.N. Easter, 477 miles in 
thirteen days at the natural rate of one mile and a half an hour. (See Smith, p. 101.) 

3 Mr. Smith says th at Captain Stewart's soundings "would alone have furnished a 
conclusive test of the truth of this narrative " (p. ix.) ; and that we are enabled by these 
and similar investigations "to identify the locality of a shipwreck which took place 
eighteen centuries ago " (p. xiii.). 

4 "Anchova de prora jacitur" (Virg. wEn. iii. 277). Lord Nelson, reading this 
chapter just before the battle of Copenhagen, ordered our vessels to be anchored by 
the stern. 

• Cf. Caes. Bell. Civ. i. 25. 6 As appears from xxvii. 40. 



THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 571 

tenacity, which, indeed, was the sole circumstance between them and hopeless 
wreck. 

Gradually through the murky atmosphere of rain and tempest, the grim 
day began to dawn upon the miserable crew. Almost as soon as they could see 
the dim outlines of their own faces, haggard and ghastly with so much privation 
and so many fears, they observed that they were anchored off a low point, 
over which the sea was curling with a huge and most furious surf. Ignorant 
that this was Point Koura, on the north-east side of Malta, 1 and not recog- 
nising a single landmark on the featureless shore, the only thought of the 
eslfish heathen sailors was to abandon the hulk and crew to their fate, while 
they saved themselves in the boat which they had with such trouble and 
danger hoisted on board. Pretending, therefore, that they could steady the 
pitching of the ship, and therefore make her hold together for a longer time, 
if they used more anchors, and laid them out at full length of the cables 2 
instead of merely dropping them from the prow, they began to unlash the boat 
and lower her into the sea. Had they succeeded in their plot, they would 
probably have been swamped in the surf upon the point, and all on board 
would inevitably have perished from inability to handle the sinking vessel. 
From this danger alike the crew and the sailors were once more saved by the 
prompt energy and courage of St. Paul. Seeing through the base design, he 
quietly observed to Julius, who was the person of most authority on board, 
" If these sailors do not stay in the ship, ye cannot be saved." He says " ye," 
not " we." Strong in God's promise, he had no shadow of doubt respecting 
his own preservation, but the promise of safety to all the crew was conditional 
on their own performance of duty. The soldiers, crowded together in the 
vessel with their prisoners, heard the remark of Paul, and — since he alone at 
that wild moment of peril had kept calm, and was therefore the virtual captain 
— without the smallest scruple drew their swords and cut through the boat's 
ropes, letting her fall away in the trough of the sea. It is not likely that the 
sailors felt much resentment. Their plan was distinctly base, and it offered at 
the best a very forlorn and dubious hope of safety. But the daylight had now 
increased, and the hour was approaching in which everything would depend 
upon their skill and promptitude, and on the presence of mind of all on board. 
Once more, therefore, the Apostle encouraged them, and urged them all to 
take some food. " This is the fourteenth day," he said, " on which you are 
continuing f oodless, in constant anxiety and vigilance, without taking any- 
thing. I entreat you, then, all to join in a meal, which is indeed essential 
to that preservation, of which I assure you with confidence, for not a 
hair of the head of any one of you shall perish." And having given 
them this encouragement, he himself set the example. Making of the 
simplest necessity of life a religious and eucharistic act, he took bread, 
gave thanks to God in the presence of them all, broke it, and began to 
eat. Catching the contagion of his cheerful trust, the drenched, miserable 

1 Where the English frigate Lively was wrecked in 1810. 
8 xxvii. 30, eKTetVew, not "to cast out," as in E.V. 



572 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

throng of 276 souls, who had so long been huddled together in their unspeak- 
able wretchedness and discomfort, as their shattered vessel lay rolling and 
tossing under the dismal clouds, took fresh courage, and shared with him in a 
hearty meal. Knowing that this was the last meal they could ever take in the 
dismasted vessel, and also that it would be impossible to save the cargo, they 
lightened and righted the vessel by flinging overboard the wheat, which in the 
long drift of 476 miles from Clauda in the storm must have shifted much to 
one side and made the vessel heel over in a dangerous manner. "When the fill] 
daylight enabled them to examine the shore, they saw no recognisable land- 
mark — since the present Yaletta, the harbour of Malta, at which ships often 
touched, was seven miles E.S.E. of the point where they were wrecked ; but 
they saw a bay, at one extremity of which the cliffs sank down into a flat 
beach, and the only thing which they could hope to do was to thrust the 
ship out of her direct course, and strand her at this spot. To make a tack 
athwart the wind with a disabled ship was a manoeuvre by no means easy, 
but it was worth attempting. They therefore cut away the anchors, letting 
the ropes drop into the sea, 1 unlashed and let down the paddle-rudders, 2 
hoisted the artemo, or foresail 3 — which was all that was left them — to the 
wind, and steered straight for the beach. But their manoeuvre, resolutely as it 
had been undertaken, was a failure. They had unconsciously anchored off Ras 
el Koura. The opposite point looked like another promontory, but was in 
reality the island of Salmonetta, separated from the mainland by a deep, 
narrow, and precipitous channel. Through this channel, about a hundred 
yards in width, ran a current, and in the stormy race where the waters of this 
current met the waters of the bay, the vessel 4 would not answer to the helm, 
and all they could do was to run her ashore. Happily for them she drove, 
not upon a rock, but deep into a bank of mud, such as still exists at that very 
spot. Here the prow stuck immovably fast, while the stern was free. The 
crew rushed to the prow, while the waves, which broke with fury over the un- 
supported stern, began instantly to batter it to pieces. Here, even at this 
extremity, there rose for Paul and the other prisoners a new, unexpected, and 
yet more terrible danger. It was the duty of the soldiers to be responsible 
with their own lives for their prisoners. The Roman law was stern, rigid, and 
unbending, nor did it admit of any extenuating plea. So long as death seemed 
imminent, and every hand on board might be useful in averting it, the 
prisoners must have been left unchained ; but in such a crisis as this, what 
was there to prevent any one of them from taking a dive into the sea, and 
so escaping ? It would have been a horrible thing that blood and butchery 
should stain the planks of a shipwrecked vessel at the very moment when 
safety seemed within reach, and that this human sacrifice of lives which God 

1 Ver. 40, ay Kvpm nept.e\6vTe<; eltov ei? rr)v 6a\a.(r<rav, not '* when they had taken up the 
anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea," E.V. 

2 Eur. Hel. 1536. 

3 "Levato artemone," Vulg. ; "a litil sail," Wycl. ; "Vestibus extensis, et quod 
Buperaverat unum Velo prora suo," Juv. xii. 68, Artemone Solo. Sen, 

4 So 6i0aAao-<rof i» used of the Bosphorus by Strabo, 124. 



ST. Paul's arrival at rome. 573 

had rescued should be the only thanksgiving of the survivors. It was even 
more horrible that they who had fraternised with their fellows in the levelling 
communism of sympathy, as they huddled side by side, with death staring them 
in the face, should now thrust their swords into hearts with which their own 
had so long been beating in fearful sympathy. From this peril the prisoners 
were again indirectly saved by him whose counsel and encouragement had all 
along been the direct source of their preservation. If the prisoners were to 
be killed, equal justice, or injustice, must be dealt to all of them alike, and 
Julius felt that it would be dastardly ingratitude to butcher the man to whom, 
under God's providence, they all owed their rescued lives. He therefore 
forbade the design of the soldiers, and gave orders that every one who could 
swim should first fling himself overboard, and get to land. 1 The rest seized 
hold of planks and other fragments of the fast- dissolving wreck. 2 The wind 
threw them landwards, and at last by the aid of the swimmers all were saved, 
and — at a spot which, owing to the accurate fidelity of the narrative, can still 
be exactly identified — a motley group of nearly three hundred drenched, and 
shivering, and weather-beaten sailors and soldiers, and prisoners and passen- 
gers, stood on that chill and stormy November morning upon the desolate and 
surf -beat shore of the island of Malta. Some, we are sure, there were who 
joined with Paul in hearty thanks to the God who, though He had not made 
the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof were still, had yet brought them 
safe to land, through all the perils of that tempestuous month. 



$oaft V. 

ROME. 



CHAPTER XLIY. 

ST. PAUL'S ARRIVAL AT ROME. 

** Paulus Romae, apex Evangelii." — Bengel. 

So ended St. Paul's fourth shipwreck. The sight of the vessel attracted 
the natives of the island, 3 a simple Punic race, mingled with Greek settlers, 
and under Roman dominion. There have been times far more recent, and 
coasts far nearer to the scenes of civilisation, in which the castaways of a 

1 Probably Paul was among these (2 Cor. xi. 25). 

2 Ver. 41, eXv'ero, " was going to pieces." "Dissolutum navigium" (Cic. Att 

XV. 11). 

3 The notion that the island on which they were wrecked was not Malta, but the 
little Adriatic island of Meleda, off the coast of Dalmatia, was started by Constantino 
the Porphyrogenite. It was founded on mistakes about Adria (xxvii. 27), barbarians 
(xxviii. 2), and vipers {id. 3), combined with various nautical considerations ; and was 
supported by Georgi of Meleda, Jacob Bryant, and Dr. Falconer, and lastly by Dr. J. 
Mason Neale, in his Notes on Dalmatia, p. 161. All that can be said for it may be found 
in Falconer's Dissertation (3rd edit., with additional notes, 1872). 



574 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

derelict would have been more likely to be robbed and murdered than received 
with hospitality and compassion ; but these Maltese Phoenicians, nearly two 
millenniums ago, welcomed the rescued crew with unusual kindness. Heavy 
showers had cume on, and the shipwrecked men were half-benumbed with 
fatigue and cold. Pitying their condition, the natives lit a huge fire of fagots 
and brushwood, that they might dry their clothes, and gave them in all respects 
a friendly welcome. Paul, with that indomitable activity and disregard of 
self which neither danger nor fatigue could check, was busy among the busiest 
collecting fuel. He had got together a large bundle of furze-roots, 1 and had 
just put it on the blazing fire, when a viper which had been lying torpid, being 
suddenly revived and irritated by the heat, darted out of the bundle and 
"fastened on Paul's hand/' Seeing the creature hanging from his hand, 
and observing that he was a prisoner, the simple natives muttered to one 
another that he must be some murderer, rescued indeed from the waves, but 
pursued by just vengeance even on land. Paul, quite undisturbed, shook the 
creature off into the fire, and was none the worse. 2 The natives expected 
that he would suddenly drop dead. 3 For a long time they watched him with 
eager eyes, but when they observed that no unpleasant result of any kind 
followed, they, like the rude people of Lystra, gradually changed their minds, 
and said that he was a god. 

For three months, until the beginning of February opened the sea to 
navigation, the crew lived in Malta ; and during that time, owing once more 
to the influence of St. Paul, he and his associates received the utmost kindness. 
Not far from the scene of the shipwreck lay the town now called Alta Yecchia, 
the residence of Publius, the governor of the island, who was probably a legate 
of the Praetor of Sicily. Since Julius was a person of distinction, this Roman 
official, who bore the title of Protos ("First") — a local designation, the accu- 
racy of which is suppo.ted by inscriptions 4 — offered to the centurion a 
genial hospitality, in which Paul and his friends were allowed to share. Tt 
happened that at that time the father of Publius was lying prostrated by 
feverish attacks complicated with dysentery. St. Luke was a physician, but 
his skill was less effectual than the agency of St. Paul, who went into the 
sick man's chamber, prayed by his bedside, laid his hands on him, and healed 
him. The rumour of the cure spread through the little island, and caused all 
the sick inhabitants to come for help and tendance. We may be sure that 
St. Paul, though we do not hear of his founding any Church, yet lost no 
opportunity of making known the Gospel. He produced a deep and most 

1 <f)pvyivuiv (see Theophrast, Hist. Plant. 1, 4). Hence the objection that Bosquetta, 
some distance from St. Paul's Bay, is the only place where there is timber in Malta, drops 
to the ground, even if there were ever anything in it. 

2 The disappearance of the viper from Malta, if it has disappeared, is no more strange 
than its disappearance from Arran. There is a curious parallel to the incident in the 

Greek Anthology. (""EnTave) Avypos tX 15 ' Tt ' IJ-^W 7rpbs /cup-ai' ep.6x#<='i fyy 67Tt y*><; tyevyiDV ixotpav 
tyet.KoiJ.evrii' ; {Anthol.) 

3 So when Charmian is bitten, "Trembling she stood, and on the sudden dropped," 
Ant. and Cleop. v. 2 (Humphry). 

* Bueliart, Phakg. II. i. 20. iipixo? MeAiraiW, Corp. Jnscr. Grcec. 5754. 



ST. PATJL S ARRIVAL AT ROME. 575 

favourable impression, and was surrounded on all sides with respectful demon- 
strations. In the shipwreck the crew must have lost all, except what little 
money they could carry on their own persons ; they were therefore in deep 
need of assistance, 1 and this they received abundantly from the love and 
gratitude of the islanders to whom their stay had caused so many benefits. 

Another Alexandrian corn-ship, the Castor and Pollux — more fortunate 
than her shattered consort — had wintered in the harbour of Valetta; and 
when navigation was again possible, Julius and his soldiers embarked on 
board of her with their prisoners, and weighed anchor for Syracuse. It was 
but eighty miles distant, and during that day's voyage St. Paul would gaze 
for the first time on the giant cone of Etna, the first active volcano he had 
ever seen. At Syracuse they waited three days for a more favourable wind. 
Since it did not come, they made a circuitous tack, 2 which brought them to 
Rhegium. Here again they waited for a single day, and as a south wind 
then sprang up, which was exactly what they most desired, they sped swiftly 
through the Straits of Messina, between the chains of snow-clad hills, and 
after passing on their left the huge and ever-flashing cone of Stromboli, 
anchored the next day, after a splendid run of 180 miles, in the lovely Bay 
of Puteoli. The unfurled topsail which marked the Alexandrian corn-ship 
would give notice of her arrival to the idlers of the gay watering-place, who 
gathered in hundreds on the mole to welcome with their shouts the vessels 
which brought the staff of life to the granaries of Rome. Here Paul had the 
unexpected happiness to find a little Christian Church, and the brethren begged 
him to stay with them seven days. This enabled them to spend together a 
Sabbath and a Sunday, and the privilege was granted by the kindly and grateful 
Julius. Here, then, they rested, in one of the loveliest of earthly scenes, 
when Vesuvius was still a slumbering volcano, clad to its green summit with 
vines and gardens. Paul could not have looked unmoved on the luxury and 
magnificence of the neighbouring towns. There was Baiae, where, to the 
indignation of Horace, the Roman nobles built out their palaces into the sea ; 
and where the Caesar before whose judgment-seat he was going to stand had 
enacted the hideous tragedy of his mother's murder, and had fled, pursued 
by her Furies, from place to place along the shore. 3 In sight was Pandataria, 
and the other distant rocky islets, dense with exiles of the noblest rank, where 
Agrippa Postumus, the last of the genuine Caesars, had tried to stop the pangs 
of famine by gnawing the stuffing of his own mattress, and where the daughter 
of the great Augustus had ended, in unutterable wretchedness, her life of 
infamy. Close by was Cumae, with its Sibylline fame, and Pausilypus, with 
Virgil's tomb, and Capreae, where twenty-three years before Tiberius had 
dragged to the grave his miserable old age. And within easy distance were 
the little towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, little dreaming as yet, in their 

1 nutans. Cf. Ecclus. xxxviii. 1; "honos," Cic. ad Divv. xvi. 9. 

2 xxviii. 13. TrepieXBovTeq, " fetched a compass," 2 Sam. v. 33 ; 2 Kings iii. 9. 

A.D. 59. Aib koX aAAotre fjei ko.1 eTTti&rj Ka.vTa.v6a. ra. avra. aurai crvee'jSaive, dAAocre €(U.7rX^(CT«j 

nfBia-TOLTo. Dion, lxi. 13, 14 ; Tac. Ann. xiv. 8 ; Suet. Nero, 34. 



576 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Greek-like gaiety and many-coloured brilliance, how soon they would be buried 
by the neighbouring mountain in their total and sulphurous destruction. 

Here, free and among brethren, Paul passed seven peaceful days. On the 
eighth they started for Rome, which was only distant a hundred and forty 
miles. News of their arrival had reached the brethren, and when they had 
gone about a hundred miles, past Capua, and through the rich vineyards of 
Italy, and then through the Pomptine Marshes, Paul and Luke and Aris- 
tarchus, among the bargees and hucksters who thronged Appii Forum, 1 
caught sight of a body of Christians, who had come no less than forty miles 
to welcome them. Farther than this they could not have come, since there 
were two ways of reaching Rome from Appii Forum, and the centurion might 
have preferred the less fatiguing journey by the canal. Ten miles further on, 
at Tres Tabernae, they found another group of brethren awaiting them. 
Though there were a few who loved him at Rome, Paul knew the power, the 
multitude, and the turbulence of the vast assemblage of synagogues in the 
great city, and on their favour or opposition much of his future destiny must, 
humanly speaking, depend. It was natural, therefore, that when he saw the 
little throng of Christians he should thank God, and take courage from this 
proof of their affection. Nothing cheered and inspired him so much as human 
sympathy, and the welcome of these brethren must have touched with the 
brightness of a happy omen his approach to a city which, greatly as he had 
longed to see it, he was now to enter under circumstances far more painful 
than he had ever had reason to expect. 

And so through scenes of ever- deepening interest, and along a road more 
and more crowded with stately memorials, the humble triumph of the Lord's 
slave and prisoner swept on. St. Paul had seen many magnificent cities, but 
never one which was approached by a road so regular and so costly in construc- 
tion. As they passed each well-known object, the warm-hearted brethren 
would point out to him the tombs of the Scipios and Csecilia Metella, and the 
thousands of other tombs with all their architectural beauty, and striking bas- 
reliefs and touching inscriptions ; and the low seats for the accommodation of 
travellers at every forty feet ; and the numberless statues of the Dei Yiales ; 
and the roadside inns, and the endless streams of carriages for travellers of 
every rank — humble birotae and comfortable rhedae, and stately carpenta — 
and the lecticae or palanquins borne on the necks of slaves, from which the 
occupants looked luxuriously down on throngs of pedestrians passing to and 
from the mighty capital of the ancient world. 

" What conflux issuing forth or passing in ; 
Praetors, Proconsuls to their provinces 
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state, 
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power, 
Legions and cohorts, tunns of horse and wings, 
Or embassies from regions far remote, 
In various habits, on the Appian road . . 
Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed.** 

1 Hor. Sat. I. v. 4. 



ST. PAUL'S ARRIVAL AT ROME. 577 

How many a look of contemptuous curiosity would be darted at the chained 
prisoner and his Jewish friends as they passed along with their escort of 
soldiers ! But Paul could bear all this while he felt that he would not be 
utterly lonely amid the vast and densely-crowded wilderness of human habita- 
tions, of which he first caught sight as he mounted the slope of the Alban 
hills. 

Perhaps as they left the Alban hills on the right, the brethren would tell 
the Apostle the grim annals of the little temple which had been built 
beside 

" that dim lake which sleeps 

Beneath Alicia's trees, 
The trees in whose dim shadow 
The ghastly priest doth reign, 
The priest who slew the slayer 
And shall himself he slain." 

And so through ever-lengthening rows of suburban villas, and ever- thickening 
throngs of people, they would reach the actual precincts of the city, catch 
sight of the Capitol and the imperial palace, pass through the grove and by 
the fountain of Egeria, with its colony of begging Jews, 1 march past the 
pyramid of C. Cestius, under the arch of Drusus, through the dripping 
Capenian gate, 2 leave the Circus Maximus on the left, and pass on amid 
temples, and statues, and triumphal arches, till they reached the Excubito- 
rium, or barracks of that section of the Praetorian cohorts whose turn it was 
to keep immediate guard over the person of the Emperor. It was thus that 
the dream of Paul's life was accomplished, and thus that in March, A.D. 61, 
in the seventh year of the reign of Nero, under the consulship of Csesennius 
Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus, he entered Rome. 

Here the charge of the centurion Julius ended, though we can hardly suppose 
that he would entirely forget and neglect henceforth his noble prisoner, to whom 
in God's providence he owed his own life and the safety of the other prisoners 
entrusted to him. Officially, however, his connexion with them was closed 
when he had handed them over to the charge of the Praef ect of the Praetorian 
guards. From this time forward, and indeed previously, there had always 
been two Praefecti Praetorio, but during this year a single person held the 
power of that great office, the honest and soldierly Afranius Burrus. 3 So far, 
Paul was fortunate, for Burrus, as an upright and humane officer, was not 
likely to treat with needless severity a prisoner who was accused of no compre- 
hensible charge — of none at any rate which a Roman would consider worth 
mentioning — and who had won golden opinions both from the Procurators of 
Judaea and from the centurion who had conducted him from Jerusalem. A 
vulgar and careless tyrant might have jumped to the conclusion that he was 
some fanatical Sicarius, such as at that time swarmed throughout Judaea, and 
so have thrust him into a hopeless and intolerable captivity. But the good 

1 Juv. Sat. iii. 12. 2 p or t a di S. Sebastiano. 

3 Acts xxviii. 16, t<j> (rrpaToneBdpxa- Trajan ap. Plin. Epp. x. 65, "Vinctus mitti ad 
praef ectos praetorii mei debet," 
L L 



578 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

word of Julius, and the kindly integrity of Burrus, were invaluable to him, 
and he was merely subjected to that kind of custodia militaris which was 
known as observatio. For the first three days he was hospitably received by 
some member of the Christian community, 1 and was afterwards allowed to 
hire a lodging of his own, with free leave to communicate with his friends both 
by letter and by personal intercourse. The trial of having a soldier chained 
to him indeed continued, but that was inevitable under the Roman system. It 
was in mitigation of this intolerable concomitant of his imprisonment that the 
goodwill of his Roman friends might be most beneficially exercised. At the 
best, it was an infliction which it required no little fortitude to endure, and for 
a Jew it would be far more painful than for a Gentile. Two Gentiles might 
have much in common ; they would be interested in common topics, actuated 
by common principles ; but a Jew and Gentile would be separated by mutual 
antipathies, and liable to the incessant friction of irritating peculiarities. That 
St. Paul deeply felt this annoyance may be seen from his allusions to his 
"bonds" or his "coupling-chain" in every Epistle of the Captivity. When 
the first Agrippa had been flung into prison by Tiberius, Antonia, out of 
friendship for his family, had bribed the Praetorian Prefect Macro to place 
him under the charge of a kind centurion, and to secure as far as possible that 
the soldiers coupled to him should be good-tempered men. Some small measure 
of similar consideration may have been extended to Paul ; but the service was 
irksome, and there must have been some soldiers whose morose and sullen 
natures caused to their prisoner a terrible torture. Yet even over these coarse, 
uneducated Gentiles, the courtesy, the gentleness, the " sweet reasonableness " 
of the Apostle, asserted its humanising control. If he was chained to the 
soldier, the soldier was also chained to him, and during the dull hours until he 
was relieved, many a guardsman might be glad to hear from such lips, in all 
their immortal novelty, the high truths of the Christian faith. Out of his 
worst trials the Apostle's cheerful faith created the opportunities of his highest 
usefulness, and from the necessities of his long- continued imprisonment arose 
a diffusion of Gospel truths throughout the finest regiment of that army which 
less than a century later was to number among its contingents a " thundering 
legion," and in less than three centuries was to supplant the silver eagles of 
the empire by the then detested badge of a slave's torture and a murderer's 
punishment. 

It was one of the earliest cares of the Apostle to summon together the 
leading members of the Roman Ghetto, and explain to them his position. 
Addressing them as " brethren," he assured them he had neither opposed his 
people nor contravened their hereditary institutions. In spite of this he had 
been seized at Jerusalem, and handed over to the Roman power. Tet the 
Romans, after examining him, had declared him entirely innocent, and would 
have been glad to liberate him had not the opposition of the Jews compelled 
him to appeal to Caesar. But ho was anxious to inform them that by this 

1 ixviii. 23, «« tV (eyiav. Cf. Philem. 22 ; Acts xxi. Id. 



ST. PAUL'S ARRIVAL AT ROME. 579 

appeal he did not intend in any way to set the Roman authorities against his 
own nation, and that the cause of the chain he wore was his belief in the fulfil- 
ment of that Messianic hope in which all Israel shared. 

The reply of the Jews was very diplomatic. Differences within their own 
pale, connected as we have seen with the name of Christ, had kindled such anger 
and alarm against them, that less than ten years before this time they had 
suffered the ruinous indignity of being banished from Rome by an edict of 
Claudius. That edict had been tacitly permitted to fall into desuetude ; but 
the Jews were anxious not to be again subjected to so degrading an infliction. 
The) therefore returned a vague answer, declaring — whether truthfully or not 
we cannot say — that neither by letter nor by word of mouth had they received 
any charge against the Apostle's character. It was true that, if any Jews had 
been deputed to carry before Caesar the accusation of the Sanhedrin, they could 
only have started at the same time as Julius, and would therefore have been 
delayed by the same storms. The Jews wished, however, to learn from Paul 
his particular opinions, for, as he was a professed Christian, they could only 
say that that sect was everywhere spoken against} It is obvious that this 
answer was meant to say as little as possible. It is inconceivable that the Jews 
should never have heard anything said against St. Paul; but being keen 
observers of the political horizon, and seeing that Paul was favourably regarded 
by people of distinction, they did not choose to embroil themselves in any 
quarrel with him. Nor does their professed ignorance at all disprove the 
existence of a Christian community so important as that to which St. Paul had 
addressed his Epistle to the Romans. 2 The Jews could boast of one or two 
noble proselytes ; and it is possible that Pomponia Graecina, 3 wife of Plautius, 
one of the conquerors of Britain, may have been a Christian. But if so she 
had long been driven into the deepest seclusion, 4 and the conversion of the 
Consular Flavius Clemens, and his wife, Flavia Domitilla, who were martyred 
by Domitian, did not take place till some time afterwards. The Christian 
Church was composed of the humblest elements, and probably its Jewish and 
Gentile members formed two almost distinct communities under separate 
presbyters. 5 Now, with uncircumcised Gentile Christians of the lowest rank 

1 This they might well say. See Tac. Ann. xv. 44 ; Suet. Ner. 16 ; and, doubtless, 
the graffiti of the catacombs are only successors of others still earlier, just as are the 
hideous calumnies against which the Christian apologists appeal (Tert. Apol. 16, &c). 

2 In Eom. i. 8 St. Paul tells the Roman Christians that their faith is proclaimed in 
the whole world. No one familiar with his style would see more in this than the favour- 
able mention of them in the scattered Christian Churches which he visited. To St. Paul, 
as to every one else, "the world" meant the world in the midst of which he lived, i.e., 
the little Christian communities which he had founded. Kenan remarks, that in reading 
Benjamin of Tudela, one would imagine that there was no one in the world but Jews ; 
and in reading Ibn Batoutah that there was no one in the world but Moslim. 

3 On this lady see Tac. Ann. xiii. 32. 

4 She was privately tried by her husband, and acquitted, in A.D. 57. 

5 Lkhtfoot, Philippians, p. 219. It is at any rate a most remarkable fact that, when 
St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Colossians, two only of the Judaic Christians showed 
him any countenance — namely, Mark and Jesus, whose surname of Justus, if it be 
intended as a translation of 6 SiWo?, shows that he, like "James the Just" wai a 
faithful observer of the Law (Col. iv. 11). 

LL 2 



580 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJL. 

the leading Jews would not be likely to hold any intercourse, even if they were 
aware of their existence. But is it remembered that Rome at this time was a 
city of more than two million inhabitants ? Is there any improbability that, 
among so many myriads, a small and struggling sect might, to outsiders* 
remain utterly unknown ? The immense weight of the Epistle to the Romans 
furnishes no proof that the Church to which it was addressed was one which 
the world would regard as of any importance. The Sandemanians or Glassites 
are a Christian body in London, and it is quite conceivable that some eminent 
member of their body, like the late Mr. Faraday, might address to them a 
letter of deep significance ; would it be any sufficient reason to deny their 
existence if it was found that the Archdeacons and Rural Deans of London 
had barely so much as heard of their peculiar tenets ? 

Since, however, the Romish Jews professed a wish for further information, 
St. Paul begged them to fix their own day to hear what he had to set before 
them. They came to him in considerable numbers. That only the heads of 
their community can have been invited is clear. St. Paul's abode could only 
have accommodated an insignificant fraction of the Jewish residents, who at 
this time are believed to have amounted to 60,000. It is said that there were 
seven synagogues in Rome, 1 and the officers of these synagogues would 
probably be as many as Paul could hope to address at once. All day long, 
from dawn till evening, he set before them his personal testimony and 
his scriptural arguments. That they were not wholly unimpressed, appears 
from the length of the discussion ; but while a few were convinced, others 
disbelieved. The debate acquired towards its conclusion a somewhat stormy 
emphasis ; and before it broke up Paul addressed the dissentients with 
something of his old fiery energy, applying to them the passage of Isaiah 
once quoted by our Lord Himself, which said that they should not see nor 
hear because they would not, and that their blindness and deafness were a 
penal consequence of the grossness of their hearts. And then he sternly 
warned them that the salvation of God was now sent to the Gentiles, and that 
the Gentiles would listen to its gracious offer. 2 

Henceforth St. Paul took his own line, opening no further communication 
with his obstinate fellow-countrymen. For two whole years he remained in 
Rome, a fettered prisoner, but living in his own hired lodging, 3 and cheered 
by the visits of the fellow-workers who were truest and best beloved. The 
quiet and holy Timotheus perhaps acted as his amanuensis, and certainly 
showed him all the tenderness of a son ; 4 the highly- cultivated Luke was his 
historiographer and his physician ; 6 Aristarchus attended him so closely as to 
earn the designation of his " fellow-prisoner; " 6 Tychicus brought him news 
from Ephesus ; 7 Epaphroditus warmed his heart by the contributions which 
showed the generous affection of Philippi ; 8 Epaphras came to consult him 

1 Friedlander, iii. 510. 2 Ver. 29 is not found in a, A, B, E. 

8 M/o-flu/xa, not "house," as in the E. V., but "lodging" — tnttitorium cenductum. 

« Phil. i. 1 ; ii. 19, seqq. ; Col. L 1 ; Philem. 1. 

» Col. iv. 14 ; Philem. 24. 6 Col. iv. 10; Philem 24. 

7 Enh. vi. 21 ; Col. iv. 7. 8 Phil. ii. 25; n. 18. 



ST. patjl's sojourn in ROME. 581 

about the heresies which were beginning to creep into the Churches of 
Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossae ; l Mark, dear to the Apostle as the cousin 
of Barnabas, more than made up for his former defection by his present 
constancy ; 2 and Demas had not yet shaken the good opinion which he at first 
inspired. 3 Now and then some interesting episode of his ministry, like the 
visit and conversion of Onesimus, came to lighten the tedium of his confine- 
ment. 4 Nor was his time spent fruitlessly, as, in some measure, it had been at 
Caesarea. Throughout the whole period he continued heralding the kingdom 
of God, and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness of speech 
" nnmolestedly." 

With that one weighty word a.Ku>\vTws, we lose the help of the Acts of the 
Apostles. From the Epistles of the imprisonment we learn that, chained 
though he was in one room, even the oral teaching of the Apostle won many 
converts, of whom some at least were in positions of influence ; and that — as 
soldier after soldier enjoyed the inestimable privilege of being chained to him 
— not his bonds only, but also his Gospel, became known throughout the 
whole body of Praetorian guards. But besides this, God overruled these two 
years of imprisonment in Rome for the benefit of the whole world. Two 
imprisonments, away from books, away from all public opportunities for 
preaching, each of two years long, with only a terrible shipwreck interpolated 
between them — how sad an interruption to most minds would these have 
seemed to be ! Yet in the first of these two imprisonments, if nothing else 
was achieved, we can perceive that his thoughts were ripening more and more 
in silent growth ; and in that second imprisonment he wrote the letters which 
have enabled him to exercise a far wider influence on the Church of Christ 
throughout the world than though he had been all the while occupied in 
sermons in every synagogue and missionary journeys in every land. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

ST. PAUL'S SOJOURN IN ROME. 

Tl6\iv imrofi^v ttjs oiKovfiepris. — Athen. Deiptws, 1120. 

"Fumum et opes strepitunque Romae." — Hon. 

St. Paul's arrival at Rome was in many respects the culminating point of 
his Apostolic career, and as he continued to work there for so long a time, 
it is both important and interesting to ascertain the state of things with which 
he came in contact during that long stay. 

Of the city itself it is probable that he saw little or nothing until he was 

i Col. i. 7 ; iv. 12. 2 Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 24 ; 2 Tim. iv. U, 

» Col iv. 14 j Philem. 24 j 2 Tim, iv. 10. * QoJ. iv, 9 ; Philem. 10, 



582 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

liberated, except such a glimpse of it as he may have caught on his way to his 
place of confinement. Although his friends had free access to him, he was 
not peimitted to visit them, nor could a chained Jewish prisoner walk about 
with his guarding soldier. Yet on his way to the Praetorian barracks he must 
have seen something of the narrow and tortuous streets, as well as of the great 
open spaces of ancient Eome ; something of the splendour of its public edifices, 
and the meanness of its lower purlieus ; something of its appalling contrast 
between the ostentatious luxury of inexhaustible wealth, and the painful 
squalor of chronic pauperism. 1 And during his stay he must have seen or 
heard much of the dangers which beset those densely- crowded masses of 
human beings ; 2 of men injured by the clumsy carrucae rumbling along with 
huge stones or swaying pieces of timber; 3 of the crashing fall of houses 
raised on weak foundations to storey after storey of dangerous height; 4 of 
women and children trampled down amid the rush of an idle populace to 
witness the horrid butcheries of the amphitheatre ; of the violence of nightly 
marauders ; of the irresistible fury of the many conflagrations. 5 It is obvious 
that he would not have been allowed to seek a lodging in the Jewish quarter 
beyond the Tiber, since he would be obliged to consult the convenience of the 
successions of soldiers whose duty it was to keep guard over him. It is 
indeed possible that he might have been located near the Excubitorium, but 
it seems more likely that the Praetorians who were settled there were too 
much occupied with the duties thrown on them by their attendance at the 
palace to leave them leisure to guard an indefinite number of prisoners. 
We infer, therefore, that Paul's "hired apartment" was within close range 
of the Praetorian camp. Among the prisoners there confined he might have 
seen the Jewish priests who had been sent to Rome by Felix, and who won 
from their nation so much approval by the abstinence which they endured in 
the determination that they would not be defiled by any form of unclean 
meat. 6 Here, too, he may have seen Caradoc, the British prince whose heroic 
resistance and simple dignity extorted praise even from Roman enemies. 7 
The fact that he was not in the crowded city precincts would enable him at 
less cost to get a better room than the stifling garrets which Juvenal so 
feelingly describes as at once ruinously expensive and distressingly incon- 
venient. Considering that he was a prisoner, his life was not dull. If he had 
to suffer from deep discouragements, he could also thank God for many a 
happy alleviation of his lot. He had indeed to bear the sickness of hope 
deferred, and put up with the bitterness of " the law's delays." His trial was 
indefinitely postponed — perhaps by the loss, during shipwreck, of the elogium 
of Festus ; by the non-appearance of his accusers ; by their plea for time to 
procure the necessary witnesses ; or by the frivolous and inhuman carelessness 

> Juv. Sat. iii. 126 189. 

3 Juv. Sat. iii. 235 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 38. 

3 Juv. Sat. iii. 254—261 ; Mart. v. 22. 

* Juv. iii. 197, teq. * Id. 239, seq., 190- 231. 

• Job. Met. 3, 7 Tac. Ann, xii. 38 ; H. iii. 46. 



BT PAUL'S SOJOURN IN ROME. 683 

of the miserable youth who was then the emperor of the world. He was 
saddened at the rejection of his teaching by his unconverted countrymen, and 
by the dislike and suspicion of Judaising Christians. He could not but feel 
disheartened that some should be preaching Christ with the base and conten- 
tious motive of adding affliction to his bonds. 1 His heart must have been 
sometimes dismayed by the growth of subtle heresies in the infant Church.* 
But, on the other hand, he was safe for the present from the incessant perils 
and tumults of the past twenty years ; and he was deprived of the possibility* 
and therefore exempt from the hard necessity, of earning by incessant toil his 
daily bread. And again, if he was neglected by Jews and Judaisers, he was 
acceptable to many of the Gentiles ; if his Gospel was mutilated by unworthy 
preachers, itill Christ was preached ; if his bonds were irksome, they inspired 
others wit] zeal and courage ; if one form of activity had by God's will been 
restrained, others were still open to him, and while he was strengthening 
distant Ch arches by his letters and emissaries, he was making God's message 
known moie and more widely in imperial Rome. He had preached with but 
small success in Athens, which had been pre-eminently the home of intellect ; 
but he was daily reaping the fruit of his labours in the city of empire — the 
city which had snatched the sceptre from the decrepit hands of her elder 
sister — the capital of that race which represented the law, the order, and the 
grandeur of the world. 

That many of the great or the noble resorted to his teaching is wholly 
improbable, nor is there a particle of truth in the tradition which, by the aid 
of spurious letters, endeavoured to represent the philosopher Seneca as one of 
his friends and correspondents. We have seen that Gallio prided himself 
on ignoring his very existence; and it is certain that Seneca would have 
shared, in this as in all other respects, the sentiments of his brother. In his 
voluminous writings he never so much as alludes to the Christians, and if he 
had done so he would have used exactly the same language as that so freely 
adopted many years later — and, therefore, when there was far less excuse 
for it — even by such enlightened spirits as Pliny, Tacitus, Epictetus, and 
M. Aurelius. Nothing can less resemble the inner spirit of Christianity than 
the pompous and empty vaunt of that dilettante Stoicism which Seneca 
professed in every letter and treatise, and which he belied by the whole tenor 
of his life. There were, indeed, some great moral principles which he was 
enabled to see, and to which he gave eloquent expression, but they belonged 
to the spirit of an age when Christianity was in the air, and when the loftiest 
natures, sick with disgust or with satiety of the universal vice, took refuge in 
the gathered experiences of the wise of every age. It is doubtful whether 
Seneca ever heard more than the mere name of the Christians ; and of the 
Jews he only speaks with incurable disdain. The ordinary life of the wealthy 
and noble Roman of St. Paul's day was too mueh divided between abject 
terror and unspeakable depravity to be reached by anything short of a 
miraculous awakening. 

1 Phil. i. 16, 8 Later Epistles, passim, 



684 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUI*. 

" On that hard Pagan world disgust 
And secret loathing fell ; 
Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell. 
" In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 
The Roman noble lay ; 
He drove abroad in furious guise 
Along the Appian "Way. 
" He made a feast, drank fast and fierce, 
And crowned his hair with flowers — 
No easier nor no quicker passed 
The impracticable hours." 

The condition of the lower classes rendered them more hopeful subject* 
for the ennobling influences of the faith of Christ. It is true that they also 
lived in the midst of abominations. But to them vice stood forth in all its 
bare and revolting hideousness, and there was no wealth to gild its anguishing 
reactions. Life and its temptations wore a very different aspect to the 
master who could lord it over the souls and bodies of a thousand helpless 
minions, and to the wretched slave who was the victim of his caprice and 
tyranny. As in every city where the slaves far outnumbered the free 
population, they had to be kept in subjection by laws of terrible severity. It 
it is no wonder that in writing to a Church of which so many members were 
in this sad condition, St. Paul had thought it necessary to warn them of the 
duty of obedience and honour towards the powers that be. 1 The house of a 
wealthy Roman contained slaves of every rank, of every nation, and of every 
accomplishment, who could be numbered not by scores, but by hundreds. The 
master might kill or torture his slaves with impunity, but if one of them, 
goaded to passionate revenge by intolerable wrong, ventured to raise a hand 
against his owner, the whole familia, with their wives and children, however 
innocent, were put to death. 2 The Roman lady looked lovely at the banquet, 
but the slave girl who arranged a curl wrong had been already branded with 
a hot iron. 3 The triclinia of a banquet might gleam with jewelled and 
myrrhine cups, but if a slave did but drop by accident one crystal vase he 
might be flung then and there to feed the lampreys in his master's fishpond. 
The senator and the knight might loll upon cushions in the amphitheatre, 
and look on luxuriously at the mad struggles of the gladiators, but to the 
gladiator this meant the endurance of all the detestable savagery of the 
lanista, and the taking of a horrible oath that, " like a genuine gladiator/' he 
would allow himself to be bound, burned, beaten, or killed at his owner's will. 4 

1 Rom. xiii., xiv. 

2 The necessity for this law had been openly argued in the Senate, and it was put in 
force during this very year, A.D. 61, when Pedanius Secundus, the prefect of the city, 
was murdered by one of his slaves (Tac. Ann. xiv. 42). In consequence of that murder — 
itself caused by dreadful depravities — no less than four hundred slaves had been executed, 
and it is far from impossible that there may have been some Christians among them. On 
their numbers see Juv. ill. 141 ; viii. 180 ; xiv. 305. Mancipiorum legiones, Plin. H. N. 
XKxiii. 0, § 26. 

8 Juv. xiv. 24 ; Becker, Charicles, ii. 53 ; Gallw, ii. 124. 
« Petroa. Satyr., p. 117 (Sen. Ep. 1). 



ST. PAUL'S SOJOtTEN IN EOME. 585 

There were, doubtless, many kind masters at Rome ; but the system of slavery 
was in itself irredeemably degrading, and we cannot wonder, but can only 
rejoice, that, from Caesar's household downwards, there were many in this 
condition who found in Christian teaching a light and peace from heaven. 
However low their earthly lot, they thus attained to a faith so sure and so 
consolatory that in the very catacombs they surrounded the grim memorials 
of death with emblems of peace and beauty, and made the ill- spelt jargon of 
their quaint illiterate epitaphs the expression of a radiant happiness and an 
illimitable hope. 

From the Roman aristocracy, then, Paul had little to expect and little to 
fear; their whole life — physical, moral, intellectual — moved on a different 
plane from his. It was among the masses of the populace that he mainly 
hoped for converts from the Gentiles, and it was from the Jews, on the one 
hand, and the Emperor, on the other, that he had most to dread. The first 
terrible blow which was aimed at any Church among the Gentiles was dealt 
by the Emperor, and the hand of the Emperor was not improbably guided by 
the secret malice of the Jews. That blow, indeed — the outburst of the 
ISTeronian persecution — St. Paul escaped for a time by the guiding Providence 
which liberated him from his imprisonment just before the great fire of 
Rome ; but since he escaped it for a time only, and since it fell on many 
whom he had taught and loved, we will conclude this chapter by a glance at 
these two forces of Antichrist in the imperial city. 

1. The importance of the Jews at Rome began, as we have seen, with the 
days of Pompeius. 1 Julius Caesar — who, as Philo informs us, felt an 
undisguised admiration for the manly independence with which they held 
themselves aloof from that all but idolatrous adulation into which the 
degenerate Romans were so ready to plunge — allowed them to settle in a large 
district beyond the Tiber, and yearly to send deputies and temple-tribute to 
their holy city. From that time forward they were the incessant butt for the 
half-scornful, half-alarmed wit and wrath of the Roman writers. The district 
assigned to them — being in the neighbourhood of the wharfs where the barges 
from Ostia were accustomed to unlade — was particularly suitable for the retail 
trade in which they were mainly occupied. 2 They increased with almost 
incredible rapidity. Their wisp of hay and the basket, which were their sole 
belongings, and were adopted to secure them from the danger of unclean 
meats, were known in every quarter. Martial describes how Jewish hawkers 
broke his morning slumbers with their bawling, and Juvenal complains of the 
way in which their gipsy-like women got themselves smuggled into the 
boudoirs of rich and silly ladies to interpret their dreams. 3 Others of them, 
with a supple versatility which would have done credit to the Greeks them- 

1 Cio. pro Flacc. 28; Jos. c. Apion. i. 7; Tae. Ann. ii. 85; Philo, Leg ad Gaium, 
p. 568. 

2 Jos. Antt. xvii. 11, § 1 ; Tac. Ann. ii. 85. See on the whole subject Frieilander, 
Sittengesch. Boms, iii. 500 ; Hausrath, p. 474, seqq. 

3 Mart. i. 41, 3 ; x. 5, 3 ; Juv. iv. 116 ; v. 8 ; xiv. 134. 



686 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

salves, thrust themselves into every house and every profession, flung them- 
selves with perfect shamelessness into the heathen vices, and became the 
useful tools of wealthy rascality, and the unscrupulous confidants of the 
"gilded youth." 1 Some became the favourites of the palace, and made 
nominal proselytes of noble ladies who, like Poppsea, had every gift except 
that of virtue. 2 But whatever their condition, they were equally detested by 
the mass of the population. If they were false to their religion they were 
flouted as renegades ; if they were true to it, their Sabbaths, and their circum- 
jision, and their hatred of pork, their form of oath, their lamp -lightings, and 
their solemn festivals were held up to angry ridicule, 3 as signs of the most 
abject superstition. If a Roman saw a knot of Jew beggars, he turned from 
them with a shudder of disgust ; if he noticed the statue of a Jewish king or 
Alabarch, he frowned at it as a proof of the degradation of the age. Whether 
successful or unsuccessful — whether he was an Herodian prince or a match- 
selling pedlar — the Jew was to the Latin races an object of abhorrence and 
disdain. They were regarded with the same feelings as those with which a 
citizen of San Francisco looks on the Chinese immigrant — as intruders, whose 
competition was dangerous— as aliens, whose customs were offensive. And 
yet they made their presence tremendously felt. Rome, so tolerant and so in- 
different in her own religious beliefs, was sometimes startled into amazement 
by the raging violence of their internal disputes. Cicero, one hundred and 
twenty years before this period, prided himself on his courage in defending 
Flaccus against their charges, and was obliged to deliver his speech in a low 
tone of voice, for fear of exciting a riot among the thousands of them who 
besieged the court to denounce their enemy. Sober Quirites had listened with 
astonishment to their wild wailing round the funeral pile of their patron 
Julius Caesar. 4 Even poets and satirists imply that those who were attracted 
by feelings of superstition to adopt some of their customs were neither few in 
number nor insignificant in position. 6 

Under Augustus their condition was not materially altered. Tiberius, recog- 
nising them as a dangerous element in the population, made a ruthless attempt 
to keep down their numbers by conscriptions and deportations. Gaius, on the 
other hand, grossly as he behaved to their most venerable ambassadors, was so 
much attached to the elder Agrippa that he respected their religious and 
political immunities. The position of the Herodian princes in the imperial 
court was sufficient to protect them during the greater part of the reign of 
Claudius. During the reign of Nero, and therefore at the very time of St. 
Paul's Roman imprisonment, they enjoyed a secret influence of the most for- 
midable kind, since Poppaea never hesitated to intercede for them, and had 
even given orders that after her death her body was — in accordance with the 
Jewish practice — to be buried and not burnt. 

» Mart. xi. 94 ; vii. 30. 

2 Tac. Ann. xiii. 44, "Huic mulieri cimcta alia fuere praetcr honestum animum." 

» See Pera. v. 180; Hor. Sal. ii. 3, 288. 

« tSuetou. Caen. 84. * Hor. Sat. 1, ix. 20. 



ST. patjl's SOJOURN IN ROME. 687 

2. If Paul had little to hope from the Jewish community at Rome, he 
had still less reason to place any confidence in the justice, or mercy, or even 
the ordinary discernment, of the Caesar to whom he had appealed. The first 
three Caesars had been statesmen and men of genius. For Gaius might have 
been urged the mitigating plea of congenital madness. Claudius was 
redeemed from contempt by a certain amount of learning and good-nature, 
But Nero was in some respects worse than any who had preceded him. 
Incurably vicious, incurably frivolous, with no result of all his education 
beyond a smattering of ridiculous or unworthy accomplishments, his selfish- 
ness had been so inflamed by unlimited autocracy that there was not a single 
crime of which he was incapable, or a single degradation to which he could 
not sink. The world never entrusted its imperial absolutism to a more des- 
picable specimen of humanity. He was a tenth-rate actor entrusted with 
irresponsible power. In every noble mind he inspired a horror only alleviated 
by contempt. The first five years of his reign— that " golden quinquennium " 
which was regarded as an ideal of happy government — were a mere illusion. 1 
Their external success and happiness had been due to the wise counsels exclu- 
sively of Burrus and Seneca, which Nero — who was but seventeen when his 
stepfather Claudius had been poisoned by his mother Agrippina — was too 
ignorant, too careless, and too bent on personal pleasure to dispute. Yet in 
all that concerned the personal conduct of himself and of Agrippina, even 
those five years had been thickly sown with atrocities and infamies, of which 
the worst are too atrocious and too infamous to be told. His very first year 
was marked not only by open ingratitude to his friends, but also by the 
assassination of Junius Silanus, and the poisoning of the young son of 
Claudius — Britannicus, a boy of fourteen, from whom he had usurped the 
throne. The second year was marked by the cowardly folly of his disguised 
nightly marauding among his peaceful subjects, after the fashion of the 
Mohawks in the reign of Queen Anne. From these he had descended 
through every abyss of vice and crime, to the murder of his mother, his public 
displays in the theatre, 2 the flight from place to place in the restless terrors of 
a haunted conscience, and finally to the most abandoned wickedness when he 
found that even such crimes as his had failed to sicken the adulation or to 
shake the allegiance of his people. He was further encouraged by this 
discovery to throw ofi 2 all shadow of control. Shortly after Paul's arrival 
Burrus had died, not without suspicion of being poisoned by his imperial 
master. Nero seized this opportunity to disgrace Seneca from his high 
position, To fill up the vacancy created by the death of Burrus, he returned 
to the old plan of appointing two Praetorian Praefects. These were Fenius 
Rufus, a man of no personal weight, but popular from his benevolent disposi- 

1 Nero succeeded Claudius on October 13, A.D. 54. 

2 At the Juvenalia, which he instituted on the occasion of first shaving his beard, 
Gallio had to submit to the degradation of publicly announcing his appearance in the 
theatre, and Burrus and Seneca had to act as prompters and tutors, "with praises on 
their lips and anguish in their hearts " (Dion, bri. 20, 19 ; Tac. Arm. xiv. 15), 



588 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

tion, 1 and Sofonius Tigellinus, one of the worst characters of that bad age. 
Tigellinus was dear to Nero from the exceptional cruelty and infamy of his 
nature, and to him was practically entrusted the entire power. 2 The banish- 
ment and subsequent murder of Nero's wife Octavia, the unhappy daughter 
of Claudius, took place within a year of St. Paul's arrival at Rome. 

Such are some of the events which must have been whispered to the 
Apostle from time to time by the Praetorians who guarded him ; and if his 
condition was rendered less tolerable by the promotion of such a wretch as 
Tigellinus, he must also have felt that his hopes for the future had been ren- 
dered more precarious by the downfall of Seneca, and the now unchecked 
tyranny of the incestuous matricide before whose tribunal his appeal must 
soon be tried. But if deep fears as to the result of that appeal alternated with 
passing hopes, neither his natural fears nor his earthly hopes disturbed the 
serenity of his soul. He quietly continued the discharge of every duty which 
was still possible to him in his captivity, and for the rest he knew that his 
times were in God's hands, and that, whether life awaited him or death, all 
things were his, whether things present or things to come, and he was Christ's 
and Christ was God's. Alike on the stage of stormy publicity and in the soli- 
tude of his sad imprisonment, his life was hid with Christ in God. 



CHAPTER XLYI. 

EPISTLES OP THE CAPTIVITY. 



" That man is very strong and powerful who has no more hopes for himself, who 
looks not to be loved any more, to be admired any more, to have any more honour or 
dignity, and who cares not for gratitude ; but whose sole thought is for others, and 
who only lives on for them." — Helps. 

The history of St. Paul's first imprisonment, as well as the thoughts by which 
he was then occupied, can only be derived from the "Epistles of the Cap- 
tivity." The extant Epistles of St. Paul fall naturally into four connected 
groups, " separated from each other alike by chronological intervals and by 
internal characteristics." They are respectively the letters of the second mis- 
sionary journey (1, 2 Thess.) ; those of the third missionary journey (1, 2 Cor., 
Gal., Rom.) ; those of the first imprisonment (Phil., Col., Philem., Eph.) ; 
and those of the second imprisonment (1, 2 Tim., Tit.). These groups maybe 
respectively characterised as the Eschatological Epistles (1, 2 Thess.) ; the 
Epistles of the anti- Judaic controversy (1, 2 Cor., Gal., Rom.) ; the letters 
against incipient Gnosticism (Col., Eph.) ; and the Pastoral Epistles (1,2 Tim. 

1 Tac. Arm. xiv. 51. 

2 " Validior Tigellinus in animo Principis et intimis libidinibus assumptus " (Tac. I. c). 

ItytXX'ivov hi Tiea 3.u)<t>6vt.ov i.<re\yeiy t< xai fuaMpovitf ir&vra* tou$ Koff iavrbv av6p<LirQV<; vnep* ffWVTff 

(Dion. LxiL 13). 



EPISTLES OF THE CAPTIVITY. 589 

Tit.). The Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon stand in most respects, 
separate from the group to which they belong. 

1. The two letters tp the Thessalonians are the simplest of all in their 
matter and manner, and deal mainly (as we have seen) with the question 
of the shortly-expected return of Christ. They were written about A.D. 52. 

2. The next great group of letters may be called in one of their aspects the 
letters of Judaic controversy. This group comprises the two Epistles to the 
Corinthians— which show St. Paul's method of dealing with questions of doc- 
trine and discipline in a restless, intellectual, and partly disaffected Church ; 
and those to the Galatians and Romans. They were written during the years 
A.D. 57 and A.D. 58, a period pre-eminently of storm and stress in the 
Apostle's life, of physical suffering and mental anxiety, which leave deep 
traces on his style. 

Of these, the Epistles to the Corinthians are largely occupied with the 
personal question of Paul's Apostolate. His Jewish- Christian opponents had 
found it easier to impugn his position than to refute his arguments. It became 
a duty and a necessity to prove his claim to be a teacher of co-ordinate 
authority with the very chiefest of the Twelve. 

The Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans contain the defence of his 
main position as regards the Law; a definition of the relations between 
Christianity and Judaism ; and the statement and demonstration of the Gospel 
entrusted to him by special revelation. Of these, the latter is calmer, fuller, 
and more conciliatory in tone, and serves as the best commentary on the 
former. 

The Epistle to the Philippians finds its main motive in an entirely different 
order of conceptions. In it we only hear the dying echoes of the great con- 
troversy, and if his one outburst of strong indignation against his opponents 
(ii. 3 — 6, 18) reminds us of the heat of the Epistle to the Galatians, on the 
other hand he here suppresses the natural sense of deep personal injuries, and 
even utters an expression of rejoicing that these very opponents, whatever 
may be their motives, are still preachers of the Gospel of Christ (i. 14 — 20). 

3. The next two Epistles, those to the Colossians and Ephesians, mark the 
rise of a new phase of error. They are the controversy with incipient 
Gnosticism. Hence also they are the chief Christological and Ecclesiastical 
Epistles, the Epistles of Christian dogma, the Epistles of Catholicity. The 
Idea and constitution of the Church of Christ was the destined bulwark 
against the prevalence of heresy, and the doctrine of Christ was the sole pre- 
servative against the victory of error. The dominant thought of the Colos- 
sians is Chr*ot over all; that of the Ephesians, the Universal Church in 
Christ. 

The Epistle to Philemon, a sort of appendix to the Colossians, stands alone 
as a letter addressed solely to an individual friend, though it involves the 
statement of an immortal principle. 

4. In the last group stand the three Pastoral Epistles, containing, as we 
should have expected, the proof that there had been a development of the 



590 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Gnostic tendency on the one hand, and of Chnrch organisation on the other. 
In the Second Epistle to Timothy we have the last words and thoughts of 
St. Paul before his martyrdom. l 

May we go further, and attempt, in one or two words, a description of 
each separate Epistle, necessarily imperfect from its very brevity, and yet, per- 
haps, expressive of some one main characteristic ? If so, we might perhaps 
say that the First Epistle to the Thessalonians is the Epistl t of consolation in 
the hope of Christ's return ; and the second, of the immediate hindrances to 
that return, and our duties with regard to it. The First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians is the solution of practical problems in the light of eternal principles ; 
the Second, an impassioned defence of the Apostle's impugned authority, his 
Apologia pro vita sua. The Epistle to the Galatians is the Epistle of freedom 
from the bondage of the Law ; that to the Romans, of justification by faith. 
The Epistle to the Philippians is the Epistle of Christian gratitude and 
Christian joy in sorrow ; that to the Colossians, the Epistle of Christ the uni- 
versal Lord ; that to the Ephesians, so rich and many-sided, is the Epistle of 
"the heavenlies," the Epistle of grace, the Epistle of ascension with the 
ascended Christ, the Epistle of Christ in His One and Universal Church ; 
that to Philemon, the Magna Charta of emancipation. The First Epistle to 
Timothy, and that to Titus, are the manuals of the Christian pastor ; the 
Second Epistle to Timothy is the last message of a Christian ere his death. 2 

He must doubtless have written others besides these, but intense as would 
have been for us the theologic and psychologic interest of even the most 
trivial of his writings, we may assume, with absolute certainty, that those 
which we still possess have been preserved in accordance with God's special 
providence, and were by far the most precious and important of all that he 
wrote. 

That the four letters which we shall now examine were written at Rome, 
and not, as some critics have imagined, at Csesarea, may be regarded as abso- 
lutely certain. Although Rome is not mentioned in any of them, yet the 
facts to which they advert, and the allusions in which they abound, are such 
as exactly suit the ancient and unanimous tradition that they were penned 
during the Roman imprisonment, 3 while they agree far less yi'xth. the novel and 

1 Other classifications have been attempted — e.g., that of Baur, who divides them 

into 6/AoAoyou/u.eva (four), avTiKeyo/ieva (six), and v69a (three). 

Similarly, M. Kenan classes the Epistles as follows : — 1. Incontest >ble — Gal. , 1, 2 Cor., 
Kom. 2. Authentic, though disputed — 1, 2 Thess., Phil. 3. Probably authentic, though 
open to serious objection— Col. and Philem. 4. Doubtful — Eph. 5. Spurious- -The 
Pastoral Epistles. (St. Paul, v.) 

Lange classes the Epistles as— 1. Eschatological (1, 2 Thess.). 2. Soteriological (Gal., 
Kom). 3. Ecclesiastical (1 Cor., polemically ; 2 Cor., apologetically). 4. ChristologicaJ 
(Col., Eph.). 5. Ethical (Philipp.). 6. Pastoral (Philem., 1, 2 Tim., Tit.). (Introd. to 
Romans.) 

Olshausen's classification of them under the heads of — 1. Dogmatic; 2. Practical; 
3. Friendly — is unsuccessful. 

2 See Excursus XXII., "Distinctive Words, Keynotes, and Characteristics of the 
Epistles." 

3 Chrys. Proozm ad Epist. ad Ephcs. ; Jerome, ad Eph. iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20 ; Theodore t. 



EPISTLES OP THE CAPTIVITY. 591 

fantastic hypothesis that they were sent from Csesarea. 1 If any confirmation 
for this certain tradition were required, it would be found, as far as the 
Epistle to the Philippians is concerned, in the salutation which St. Paul sends 
from tne converts in " Caesar's household." As regards the other three 
Epistles it is sufficient to say that internal evidence conclusively proves that 
all three were written at the same time, as they were despatched by the same 
messengers, and that whereas during his Csesarean imprisonment St. Paul was 
looking forward to visit Rome,* 2 he is, at the time of writing these letters, 
looking forward to visit, first Macedonia, then Colossse. 3 Further than this, 
the allusions in these Epistles show that, prisoner though he was, he was 
enabled to exercise a powerful influence for the spread of the Gospel in a city 
of the highest importance. 4 Meyer, indeed — with that hypercritical ingenuity 
which, like vaulting ambition, so constantly overleaps itself and falls on the 
other side — argues that Onesimus is more likely to have fled from Colossse to 
Csesarea than to Rome ; an argument of which we can only say that Csesarea 
— a mere Procuratorial residence full of Jews — would be about the very last 
town which any one would naturally have dreamt of suggesting as a likely 
hiding-place for a runaway Asiatic slave. Meyer might as reasonably argue 
that a London pickpocket would be more likely to hide himself at Biarritz than 
at New Tork. His other arguments derived from the non-mention of the 
name of Onesimus in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and the incidental expres- 
sion " you also" in that letter, are too trivial for serious discussion. 

The question next arises, in what order these Epistles were written ; and 
the prima facie argument that the Epistle to the Philippians seems to have 
been written before the approaching crisis of his trial has been taken as a 
sufficient proof that it was written after the other three. On the other hand, 
there is the same expectation of approaching release in the Epistle to Phile- 
mon, so that on this circumstance no conclusion can be built. The notion 
that this Epistle shows traces of deeper depression than the others, and that 
this may be accounted for by the change wrought in his affairs through the 
influence of Tigellinus and Poppaea, is partly unsupported by fact, since a 
spirit of holy joy is the very key-note of the Epistle ; and partly inconsistent 
with itself, since, if the hostile influences were at work at all appreciably, they 
were quite as much so within a few months after Paul's Roman imprisonment 
began, as they were at its close. 6 It is true that the letter could not have been 

Procem ad Epist. ad Epk., &c. If I do not mention Oeder's theory (?) that the Epistle to 
the Philippians was written from Corinth (see Schenkel, Der Brief an die Philippier, 
p. 110), it is because " it is not worth while," as Baur says, " to discuss vague hypotheses 
which have no support in history, and no coherence in themselves." 

1 I can only express my surprise that this theory should have commended itself not 
only to Schulz and Schneckenburger, but even to Holtzmann, Keuss, Schenkel, and 
Meyer. 

2 Acts xix. 21 ; xxiii. 11. 8 Phil. ii. 24 } Philem. 22. 
* Eph. vi. 19, 20 ; Col. iv. 3, 4. 

5 The death of Burrus and the appointment of Tigellinus took place very early in 
A.D. 62, some nine months after St. Paul's arrival. Nero's marriage with Poppaea took 
place about the time, and indeed bears very little on the matter, since her influence as 
Nero's mistress was probably even greater than that which she enjoyed as his wife. 



592 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

written during the earliest months of the captivity at Rome, because time 
must be allowed for the news of Paul's arrival there to have reached the 
Philippians ; for the despatch of Epaphroditus with their contributions ; for 
his illness at Kome ; for the arrival of intelligence to that effect at Philippi ; 
and for the return of their expressions of sorrow and sympathy. 1 Now a 
journey from Rome to Philippi — a distance of seven hundred miles — would, 
under ordinary circumstances, occupy about a month, and as we do not sup- 
pose that any of these letters were written during the first year of the 
imprisonment, ample time is allowed for these journeys, and no objection 
whatever to the traditional priority of the Epistle to the Philippians can be 
raised on this score. 

Still less can any argument be urged from the absence of greetings from 
Luke and Aristarchus, or from the allusion to Timothy as the sole exception to 
the general selfishness which the Apostle was grieved to mark in those around 
him. The presence of particular names in the greetings of any letter may 
furnish a probable or even positive argument as to its date, but their absence 
is an indication of the most uncertain character. It needs no more than the 
commonest everyday experience to prove the utter fallaciousness of the 
" argument from silence ; " and we know far too little of the incessant missions 
and movements, from church to church, and continent to continent, of the 
companions of St. Paul, to be able in any way to build upon the non-occurrence 
of the name of any one of them. Since, therefore, there are no adequate 
arguments against regarding the Epistle to the Philippians as the earliest of 
the four Epistles of the Captivity — although it may have been written only a 
few months before the other three — full weight may be given to the internal 
evidence, which is in favour of that supposition. That internal evidence con- 
sists in the general resemblance of this Epistle to those of the earlier group — 
especially to the Epistle to the Romans — which enables us to regard it as an 
intermediate link between the Epistles of the Captivity and those of the third 
Apostolic journey. 2 To the Epistle to the Romans it presents many and 
close parallels in thought and language, while its general tone and spirit, its 

1 Dr. Lightfoot (Philipp. p. 34) thinks that Aristarchus may have left St. Paul at 
Myra, and may have conveyed to Philippi the news of St. Paul's journey to Rome, as he 
was on his way home to Thessalonica ; but I can see no sufficient reason for believing that 
Aristarchus, who was in some sense St. Paul's "fellow-prisoner" at Rome (Col. iv. 10), 
went home from Adramyttium (Acts xxvii. 2). In any case he could only have taken the 
news that St. Paul was on his way to Rome, not that he had arrived. 

2 Lightfoot, Philippians, pp. 40—45, e.g.- 

Philippians. 

i. 3, 4, 7, 8 

i. 10 

ii. 8, 9, 10, 11 . 

ii. 4 
To these we may add Phil. iii. 3, Rom. xii. 1, and the use of <f> P ovetv in Phil. i. 7, ii. 2, 5, 
iii. 15, with Rom. xii. 3, 16, xiv. 6. The Epistle also presents some interesting pointo of 
comparison with the last which he ever wrote : — Phil. i. 23, ein.dvij.iav exwi/ els to avakveu, 

2 Tim. iv. 6, Kaip'os T7J? e/^TJS ai>aAwews e<£ecmj*ce>/. Phil. ii. 17, el icai anevSoixai, 2 Tim. iv. 6, 
tyai 7cip 7)617 ajrev&o^ai. Phil. iii. 14, Kara crKonbv Siutnu) C7ri to /3pu/3tiW, 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, rb» 
lp6fj.ov T«Tt'At/ca, irro<ceiTai /uioi o rrjs SiKaioavvrjs aTe^xwot. 



Romans. 


Philippians. 


Romans. 


i. 8—11 


iii. 4, 5 


xi. 1 


ii. 18 


iii. 9 


x. 3 


xiv. 9, 11 


iii. 21 


viii. 29 


xii. 10 


iii. 19 


xvi. 18. 



BPISTLES OF THE CAPTIVITY. 595 

comparative calmness, the spiritual joy which breathes through its holy resig- 
nation, the absence of impassioned appeal and impetuous reasoning, mark its 
affinity to the three by which it was immediately followed. Although not 
much more than four years had now elapsed since Paul, a free man and an 
active Apostle, elaborated at Corinth the great argument which he had 
addressed to the Gentiles and proselytes, who formed the bulk of the Church 
of Rome, his controversy with Judaism had to some extent faded into the 
background. Every Church that he had founded was now fully aware of 
his sentiments on the questions which were agitated between the advocates 
of Judaic rigour and Gospel freedom. In writing to the Philippians there 
was no need to dwell on these debates, for whatever dangers might ye* 
await them — dangers sufficiently real to call forth one energetic outburst, 
which reminds us of his earlier tone — they had up to this time proved 
themselves faithful to his teaching, and were as yet unsophisticated by any 
tampering interference of emissaries from Jerusalem. The Judaisers of the 
party of James may have heard enough of the devotion of the Philippians for 
St. Paul to show them that it would be unadvisable to dog his footsteps 
through the Christian Churches of Macedonia. They might leave their view 
of the question with better policy in the hands of those unconverted Jews, 
who would never hesitate to use on its behalf the engines of persecution. 
Thus St. Paul had no need to enter on the debate which had so recently 
occupied the maturity of his powers ; and in the Epistle to the Philippians 
we have only " the spent waves of this controversy." Nevertheless, as we 
have seen, his was a mind whose sensitive chords continued to quiver long 
after they had been struck by the plectrum of any particular emotion. He 
was reminded of past controversies by the coldness and neglect of a commu- 
nity in which some " preached Christ even of contention, supposing to add 
affliction to his bonds." If, then, he dwelt on doctrinal considerations at all 
in a letter of affectionate greetings to the community which was dearest to 
his heart, they would naturally be those on which he had last most deeply 
thought. By the time that he sat down to dictate the Epistle to the Colos- 
sians a fresh set of experiences had befallen him. His religious musings had 
been turned in an entirely different direction. The visit of Epaphras of 
Colossse had made him aware of new errors, entirely different from those 
which he had already combated, and the Churches of Proconsular Asia evi- 
dently needed that his teaching should be directed to questions which lay far 
apart from the controversies of the last eight years. On the other hand, I 
regard it as psychologically certain that, had the Epistle to the Philippians 
been written, as so many critics believe, after those to the " Ephesians " and 
Colossians, it could not possibly have failed to bear upon its surface some 
traces of the controversy with that hybrid philosophy — that Judaic form of 
incipient Gnosticism — in which he had been so recently engaged. These con- 
siderations seem to me to have decided the true order of the Epistles of the 
Captivity, and to give its only importance to a question on which little would 
otherwise depend. 
M M 



594 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

The Epistle to the Philippians 1 arose directly out of one of the few happy 
incidents which diversified the dreary uncertainties of St. Paul's captivity. 
This was the visit of Epaphroditus, a leading presbyter of the Church of 
Philippi, with the fourth pecuniary contribution by which that loving and 
generous Church had ministered to his necessities. At Rome, St. Paul was 
unable with his fettered hands to work for his livelihood, and it is possible 
that he found no opening for his special trade. One would have thought that 
the members of the Roman Church were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently 
wealthy to render it an easy matter for them to supply his necessities ; but the 
unaccountable indifference which seems to have marked their relations to 
him, and of which he complains both in this and in his later imprisonment, 
shows that much could not be hoped from their affection, and strangely belied 
the zealous respect with which they had come thirty or forty miles to meet 
and greet him. It is, of course, possible that they may have been willing to 
help him, but that he declined an assistance respecting which he was 
sensitively careful. But the Phillippians knew and valued the privilege which 
had been accorded to them — and perhaps to them only — by their father in 
Christ — the privilege of helping him in his necessities. It was a custom 
throughout the Empire to alleviate by friendly presents the hard lot of 
prisoners, 2 and we may be sure that when once the Philippians had heard of 
his condition, friends like Lydia, and other converts who had means to spare, 
would seize the earliest opportunity to add to his comforts. Epaphroditus 
arrived about autumn, and flinging himself heartily into the service of the 
Gospel — which in a city like Rome must have required the fullest energies of 
every labourer — had succumbed to the unhealthiness of the season, and been 
prostrated by a dangerous and all but fatal sickness. The news of this illness 
had reached Philippi, and caused great solicitude to the Church. 3 Whatever 
gifts of healing were entrusted to the Apostles, they do not seem to have 
considered themselves at liberty to exercise them in their own immediate 
circle, or for any ends of personal happiness. No miracle was wrought, 
except one of those daily miracles which are granted to fervent prayer. 4 Paul 
had many trials to bear, and the death of "his brother, Epaphroditus," as he 
tenderly calls him, would have plunged him in yet deeper sadness. We can- 

1 The notion that the Epistle is really two and not one seems to have originated in 
Phil. iii. 1, and in a mistaken supposition that Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians, 
mentions more than one letter of St. Paul to them (or /cal aTrwi/ v/mv eypa^ev e7r«n-oAds, ad 
Philipp. c. 3). That 'ETricn-oAa?, however, may only differ from em<TToKri in being a more 
important term, is conclusively proved by Thuc. viii. 51 ; Jos. Antt. xii. 4, § 10. That 
St. Piul wrote other letters to the Philippians during the ten years which had elapsed 
sinoa he visited them, and that he may have written other letters after this, is not only 
possible, but probable ; but if any such letters had survived till the time of Polycarp, it 
is wholly improbable that they should not have been subsequently preserved. 

2 Thus, the friends of Agrippa had helped him by providing him with better fare and 
accommodation when he was imprisoned by Tiberius ; and Lucian relates the warmth 
and open-handedness with which the Christians diminished the hardships, and even 
J>arfid night after night the confinement of Peregrinus. 

' Phil. ii. 26. 

« (Join 1 tare what Luther said of Melancthon's sickness and recovery. 



EPISTLES OF THE CAPTIVITY. 595 

not doubt that he pleaded with God for the life of his sick friend, and God 
had mercy on him. Epaphroditns recovered ; and deeply as Paul in his 
loneliness and discouragement would have rejoiced to keep him by his side, 
he yielded with his usual unselfishness to the yearning of Epaphroditns for 
his home, and of the Christians of Philippi for their absent pastor. He there- 
fore sent him back, and with him the letter, in which he expressed his thank- 
fulness for that constant affection which had so greatly cheered his heart. 

And thus it is that the Epistle to the Philippians is one of the ^ast 
systematic, the least special in character, of all St. Paul's writings. But it is 
this which raises the genuineness of the letter, not indeed beyond cavil, but 
far beyond all reasonable dispute. The Tubingen school, in its earlier stages, 
attacked it with the monotonous arguments of its credulous scepticism. 
With those critics, if an Epistle touches on points which make it accord with 
the narrative of the Acts, it was forged to suit them ; if it seems to disagree 
with them, the discrepancy shows that it is spurious. If the diction is 
Pauline, it stands forth as a proved imitation ; if it is un-Pauline, it could not 
have proceeded from the Apostle. The notion that it was forged to introduce 
th^ name of Clement because he was confused with Flavius Clemens, and 
because Clement was a fellow-worker of St. Peter, and it would look well to 
place him in connexion with Paul — and the notion that in Phil. ii. 6 — 8 the 
words form and shape express Gnostic conceptions, and that the verses refer 
to the Yalentinian iEon Sophia, who aimed at an equality with God — are 
partly founded on total misinterpretations of the text, and are partly the 
perversity of a criticism which has strained its eyesight to such an extent as 
to become utterly purblind. 1 This Epistle is genuine beyond the faintest 
shadow or suspicion of doubt. The Philippian Church was eminently free 
from errors of doctrine and irregularities of practice. No schism seems to 
have divided it ; no heresies had crept into its faith ; no false teachers had 
perverted its allegiance. One fault, and one alone, seems to have needed 
correction, and this was of so personal and limited a character that, instead 
of denouncing it, Paul only needs to hint at it gently and with affectionate 
entreaty. This was a want of unity between some of its female members, 
especially Euodia and Syntyche, whom Paul begs to become reconciled to each 
other, and whose feud, and any partisanship which it may have entailed, he 
tacitly and considerately rebukes by the constant iteration of the word " all" 
to those whom he can only regard as one united body. In fact, we may say 
that disunion and despondency were the main dangers to which they were 
exposed ; hence " all " and " rejoice " are the two leading words and thoughts. 
But this absence of any special object makes the letter less doctrinally dis- 
tinctive than those which are more controversial in character. It would, 
indeed, be colourless if it did not receive a colouring from the rich hues of the 
writer's individuality. It is not, like the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a 

1 Baur, Paul. ii. 50, seqq. Schwegler, Nachapostol. Zeital. ii. 133, seqq. The threa 
arguments are : (1) Gnostic conceptions in ii. 6—9 ; (2) want of anything distinctively 
Pauline ; (3) the questionableness of some of the historic data. 
M M 2 



596 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

consolation to the afflicted, by reminding them of the near advent of theii 
Lord ; * or a series of replies to questions, like the greater part of the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians ; nor a trumpet note of defiance to powerful and 
aggressive opponents, like the Epistle to the Galatians ; nor a treatise of 
theology, like the Epistle to the Romans : but it is the warm, spontaneous out- 
pouring of a loving heart expressing itself with unreserved gratitude and 
tenderness towards the favourite children of his ministry. If it exhibits to us 
somewhat less than other Epistles of St. Paul's peculiar teaching, it has this 
high source of interest that it shows to us more of his character and feelings. 
In this respect it somewhat resembles the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 
except that in it St. Paul is writing to those who were kindest and most 
faithful to him, whereas towards the Corinthians he had little cause for 
gratitude, and much need of forbearance. Amid the trials and suspense of a 
galling imprisonment it reveals to us, not directly, but as it were unconsciously, 
the existence of an unquenchable happiness — a peace as of the inmost heart of 
the ocean under the agitation of its surface storms. It was dictated by a 
worn and fettered Jew, the victim of gross perjury, and the prey of contend- 
ing enmities ; dictated at a time when he was vexed by hundreds of opponents, 
and consoled but by few who cared for him ; and yet the substance of it all 
may be summed up in two words — x a ^ w > x a£ V eTe (" I rejoice ; rejoice ye "). 
If any one compare the spirit of the best-known classic writers in their 
adversity with that which was habitual to the far deeper wrongs and far 
deadlier sufferings of St. Paul — if he will compare the Epistle to the 
Philippians with the " Tristia " of Ovid, the letters of Cicero from exile, or 
the treatise which Seneca dedicated to Polybius from his banishment in 
Corsica — he may see, if he will, the difference which Christianity has made in 
the happiness of man. 



CHAPTER XLYII. 

THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 
" Summa Epistolae — gaudeo, gaudete." — Bengel. 

The greeting is from " Paul and Timotheus, slaves of Jesus Christ, to all the 
saints who are in Christ Jesus in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons." 
Timothy is naturally associated with him as one who had laboured at Philippi, 
but so little is he supposed to have any share in the authorship that St. Paul 
afterwards proceeds to speak of him in the third person. The " bishops " 
(i.e., the presbyters) and deacons are specially greeted, perhaps because they 
had taken an active part in the collection of the contribution. He does not 

1 The topic of " persecution " i8 prominent only in the Epistles to the Macedonian 
Churches. It had led the Philippians to despondency ; the Thessalonians to a mistaken 
form of hop*. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 597 

call himself an apostle, because to them no assertion of his authority was in 
any way needful. 1 

The thanksgiving which follows is unusually full. He tells them that he 
thanks God in all his remembrance of them, alivays, in all his supplication on 
behalf of them all, making his supplication with joy for their united work in 
furtherance of the Gospel from the first day when he had visited them — ten 
years ago — until now ; and he is very sure that God, who began in them that 
sacred work of co-operation in a good cause, will carry it on to perfection until 
the day of Christ ; 2 a conviction arising from his heartfelt sense that they 
were ALL of them partakers of the grace which God had granted to him, and 
which they had manifested by their sympathetic aid in his bondage, and in 
the defence and establishment of the Gospel. God knows how much he yearns 
for them in Christ ; and his prayer for them is that their love may abound 
more and more in full knowledge of the truth, and all insight into its applica- 
tion, so that they may discriminate all that is best and highest, 3 and be pure 
towards God, and blameless towards men, for the day of Christ, having been 
filled with the fruit of a righteousness attainable not by their own works, but 
by Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God. 4 

They must not suppose, he tells them, that he is the Apostle of a ruined 
cause, or that his imprisonment is a sign that God's frown is on his work, and 
that it is coming to nought ; on the contrary, he wants them to recognise that 
his misfortunes have been overruled by God to the direct furtherance of the 
Gospel. The necessity of his being coupled to guardsman after guardsman, 
day after day and night after night, had resulted in the notoriety of his con- 
dition as a prisoner for Christ among all the Praetorian cohorts, 5 and to every- 
body else ; and the majority of the brethren had been stimulated by his bonds to 
a divine confidence, which had shown itself in a yet more courageous daring than 
before in preaching the word of God. Some of them preach Christ out of 
genuine good will, but some, alas ! tell the story of Christ insincerely 6 out of 

1 Phil. i. L, 2. This Epistle may he thus summarised :— i. 1, 2, Greeting; i. 3 — 11, 
Thanksgiving and prayer ; 12 — 26, Personal details ; i. 27 — ii. 16, Exhortation to unity 
by the example of Christ ; ii. 17 — 30, Personal details ; iii. 1, 2, Last injunction suddenly 
broken off by a digression in which he denounces Judaism and Antinomianism ; 
iii. 3 — iv. 1, Exhortation to unity ; iv. 2, 3, and to Christian joy ; 4 — 9, Gratitude for 
their aid ; iv. 10 — 20, Final greetings and benediction ; 21 — 23, The unity of the Epistle 
(in spite of Heinrichs, Weisse, &c. ) is generally admitted. 

2 " It is not God's way to do things by halves " (Neander). 

3 Ver. 10, SotcLft-d^eLv to. 8«Kf>epoi>Ta, cf. Rom. ii. 18. " Non modo prae malis bona, sed 
ex malis optima " (Bengel). " Ut probetis potiora " (Vulg.). 

4 i. 3—11. 

5 Ver. 13, ev 6\ci) t<3 irpatTwpta). The word, though used of royal residences in the 
provinces (Mark xv. 16 ; Acts xxiii. 35), was purposely avoided at Rome, where the 
ostentation of a military despotism was carefully kept out of sight (Merivale, vi. 268, n.). 
The use of Prcetorium (properly " General's tent ") for the house of the Emperor on the 
Palatine would have been an insult to the Romans. The contrast with -rots Achttchs naaci 
shows that persons are meant (Lightfoot, pp. 97 — 99 ; Schleusner, s.v.). 

6 i. 15, (ojpvVo-ouo-iv : 16, KdTayyeWovo-iv. It is doubtful whether the change of word 
implies as much as Dean Blakesley seems to think (Diet, of Bible, s.v. Philippi). 
'Epifleta : — 1, Working for hirej 2, Canvassing of hired partisans; 3, " Pactiousnesa " 
Arist. J>olit, v. 3). 



598 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUI*. 

mere emvy and discord. The former are influenced by love to him, knowing 
that he is appointed for the defence of the Gospel ; the latter announce Christ 
out of partisanship with base motives, thinking to make his bonds more 
galling. 1 Perhaps the day had been when Paul might have denounced them 
in tones of burning rebuke; but he is already Paul the prisoner, though rot 
yet Paul the aged. He had learnt, he was learning more and more, that the 
wrath of man, even in a holy cause, worketh not the righteousness of God ; he 
had risen, and was rising more and more, above every personal consideration. 
What mattered it whether these preachers meant only to insult him, and 
render his bondage yet more galling ? After all, " in every way, whether with 
masked design or in sincerity, Christ is being preached, and therein I do — 
aye, and " — whatever angry feelings may try to rise within my heart — " I will 
rejoice." 2 

It is thus that the Apostle first tramples on the snake of any mere personal 
annoyance that may strive to hiss in his sad heart, and crushes it yet more 
vigorously with a determined effort if its hiss still tries to make itself heard. 
He has attained by this time to a holy resignation. 

"For I know that this trouble will turn to salvation by means of your prayer, 
and the rich out -pouring 3 of the spirit of Jesus Christ, in accordance with my 
earnest desire 4 and hope that with all outspokenness, as always, so now "—he was 
going to say, "I may magnify Christ," but with his usual sensitive shrinking from 
any exaltation of himself, he substitutes the third person, 5 and says, " So now 
Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to 
live is Christ, and to die is gain. 6 But if life in the flesh means that I shall reap 
the fruit of labour . . . well, what to choose I cannot tell; but I am hard 
pressed by the alternatives. I desire to break up my earthly camp, 7 and be with 
Christ, for it is very far, far better ; 8 but to abide by this earthly life is more 
necessary for your sakes. And I am confidently persuaded of this, that I shall bide 
and abide 9 with you all, for the advance and joy of your faith, that by a second 
stay of mine among you, you may have in me some further subject for your Christian 
glorying." » 

Only in any case he bids them play worthily the part, not only of Roman, 
but of Christian citizens, 11 that, whether he came and saw their state, or only 
heard of it at a distance, he might know that they stood firm in one spirit, with 
one heart, fellow-wrestlers with the Faith in the Gospel, and not scared in 
anything by their adversaries — conduct which would be to those adversaries a 
proof of their ultimate perdition, and to themselves of salvation ; an evidence 

i Leg. kyetpeiv (», A, B, D, F, G). 

2 i. 12—18. Perhaps the x *PWoii.ai implies, " I shall in the long-run have good cause 
to rejoice ; for," &c 

3 Ver. 19, eTrixoprjYta ; Gal. iii. 5 ; 2 Cor. ix. 10 ; Eph. iv. 16 ; 2 Pet. i. 5. 

4 Ver. 20, awoKapaSoKiav ; Rom. viii. 19 ; knireTap-ivi] npoaSoicia, Chrys. (See Jos. JB. J. 
Iii. 7, § 26, and Schleusner, s.v.) 

6 Lightfoot, Phil. i. 20. 

6 " Quicquid vivo, Christum vivo ... In Paulo non Paulus vivit, sed Jesus Christus M 
(Bengel). 

7 2 Cor. v. 1 ; iv. 6 — 8. On the intermediate state of the dead, see 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. 

8 Ver. 23, noWot fiaWov Kpeia-o-ov. ! ' /xewo koX napa.fj.evo> (Lightfoot, Phil. i. 25). 

10 L 19—26. Kavxwa, "a ground of boasting." ll Ver. 27, iroAi/reveo-fle. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 599 

from God Himself, since, thus, they were privileged not only to belie\ e in 
Christ, but to suffer for Him, as sharers in a contest like that in which they 
saw Paul engaged when he was among them, and in which they knew by 
rumour that he was at that moment engaged. 1 

And this brings him to one main object of his letter, which was to urge on 
them this earnest entreaty :— 

" If, then, there be any appeal to you in Christ, if any persuasiveness in love, if 
any participation in the Spirit, if any one be heart and compassionateness, 2 complete 
my joy by thinking the same thing, having the same love, heart-united, thinking 
one thing. Nothing for partisanship, nor for empty personal vanity ; but in lowli- 
ness of mind, 3 each of you thinking others his own superiors, not severally keeping 
your eye on your own interests, but, also severally, on the interests of others. 4 

"Be of the same mind in yourselves as Christ Jesus was in Himself, who exist- 
ing in the form ((jj.op(py) of God, deemed not equality with God a thing for eager 
seizure, 5 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, revealing Himself in 
human semblance, and being found in shape (ffxhf-ari) as a man, 6 humbled Hi mself, 
showing Himself obedient even to death, aye, and that death — the death of the 
Cross." 

Those words were the very climax ; in striving to urge on the Philippians 
the example of humility and unselfishness as the only possible bases of unity, 
he sets before them the Divine lowliness which had descended step by step 
into the very abyss of degradation. He tells them of Christ's eternal posses- 
sion of the attributes of God; His self-abnegation of any claim to that 
equality; His voluntary exinanition of His glory; His assumption of the 
essential attributes of a slave ; His becoming a man in all external semblance ; 
His display of obedience to His Father, even to death, and not only death, but 
— which might well thrill the heart of those who possessed the right of 
Roman citizenship, and were therefore exempt from the possibility of so 
frightful a degradation — death by crucifixion. Such were the elements of 

i i. 27—30. 

* ii. 1, d rts <nr\dyxva <aX oiKTip/moi. This reading of n, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, K, has 
usually been treated as a mere barbarism. So it is grammatically ; but the greatest 
writers, and those who most deeply stir the heart, constantly make grammar give way 
to the rhetoric of emotion ; and if St. Paul in his eager rush of words really said it, the 
amanuensis did quite right to take it down. Possibly, too, the word cm\dyxva had come 
to be used colloquially like a collective singular (cf. spoglia, depouille, Bible, &c). How 
entirely it had lost its first sense we may see from the daring £v8v<raa8e . . <rnkayx va - °f 
Col. iii. 12. 

3 A word redeemed from the catalogue of vices (Col. ii. 18 ; Plato, Legg. iv., p. 774 ; 
Epict. i. 3) into that of virtues. 

4 ii. 1—4, leg. o-kottovvtss («, A, B, F, G). 

6 This interpretation of the Greek Fathers is preferable to that of most of the Latin 
Fathers, followed by our E.V. It makes apnaynw YiyeZvOat identical in meaning with the 
common phrase apway^a yy. = "to clutch at greedily." Besides, this sense is demanded 
by the whole context (/aij to. eav-jw a-Kowelv). This is the passage which is supposed to be 
borrowed from the conception of the Valentinian iEon Sophia, who showed an eccentric 

and passionate desire, 7rpo<£AAeo-0ai, "to dart forward;" #ceKoivwv7Jo-0ai t<3 iraTpl rto TeAeiw, 

"to be associated with the Perfect Father;" KaraXa^etv to /u.e-ye0os avToi), to grasp His 
greatness ! (Iren. Adv. Haer. i. 2, 2). 

6 Baur sees Docetism here, as he saw Valentinianism in ver. 6 (Paul. ii. 1(5 — 21) ; 
nopty, abiding substantial form (Kom. viii. 29 ; GaL iv. 19) ; oxwia, outward transitory 
fashion (iii. 21 j Rom. xii. 2 j 1 Cor. vii. 31). 



000 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Christ's self-abasement! Yet that self -humiliation had purchased its own 
infinite reward, for — 

" Because of it God also highly exalted Him, and freely granted Him the name 
above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend of heavenly 
and earthly and subterranean beings, and every tongue gratefully confess 1 that 
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father." 2 

Could they have a stronger incentive ? In his absence, as in his presence, 
he exhorts them to maintain their obedience, and work out their own salvation 
with fear and trembling, since the will and the power to do so came alike 
from God. 3 Let them lay aside the murmurings and dissensions which were 
the main hindrance to their proving themselves blameless and sincere- 
children of God, uncensured in the midst of a crooked and distorted genera- 
tion, among whom they appeared as stars, 4 holding forth the word of life, so 
as to secure to him for the day of Christ a subject of boast that he neither 
ran his race nor trained for his contest to no purpose. 

" Nay, even if I am poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and free offering 
of your faith, 5 I rejoice and congratulate you all ; and likewise rejoice ye too, and 
congratulate me." 6 

Perhaps, then, he might never come to them himself. 

" But I hope in the Lord Jesus speedily to send Timothy to you, that he in turn 
may be cheered by a knowledge of your fortunes. For I have no emissary like him 
— no one who will care for your affairs with so genuine an earnestness. For," he 
sadly adds, "one and all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But 
ye remember how he stood the test, since as a son for a father he slaved with me for 
the Gospel. Him then, at any rate, I hope to send — as soon as I get a glimpse of 
how it will go with me — at once. But I feel sure in the Lord that I myself too 
shall quickly come. I think it necessary, however, to send you Epaphroditus, my 
brother, and fellow-labourer, and fellow-soldier, 8 the messenger whom you sent to 
minister to my need, since he was ever yearning for you, and feeling despondent 
because you heard of his illness. Yes, he was indeed ill almost to death ; but God 
pitied him, and not him only, but also me, that I may not have grief upon grief. 
"With all the more eagerness, then, I send him, that you may once more rejoice on 
seeing him, and I may be less full of grief. Welcome him, then, in the Lord with 
all joy, and hold such as him in honour, because for the sake of the work he came 

1 €£o/io\oyij<njTai. Cf . Matt. xi. 25 ; Luke x. 21. 2 ii. 9 — 11. 

8 Vers. 12, 13, Karepya^ea-Oe ... 6 ©eb? yap . . . Here we see the correlation of Divine 
grace and human effort. Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 24, rpe'xeTe, iva KaraX6.^r\re. Rom. ix. 16, ouSe toG 

Tpe'xoi/TOS, aAAa tov eAeowTOS ©eov. 

4 tfHoo-njpe?. Gen. i. 14; Rev. xxi. 11. Bp. Wordsworth makes it mean "torches in 
the dark, narrow streets." 

5 Cf. 2 Tim. iv. 6. Compare the striking parallel in the death of Seneca, Tao. Ann. 
xv. 64. Some make «rl, not "over," but "in addition to," because Jewish libations were 
poured, not "on," but "round" the altar. (Jos. Antt. iii. 9, § 4.) But the allusion may 
be to Gentile customs. 

6 ii. 14 — 18. "We are reminded of the messenger who brought the tidings of the 
battle of Marathon expiring on the first threshold with these words on his lips : x<uper« 
c*i va/poMf*' (Plut. Mot., p. 347)." (Lightfoot, ad loc.) 

7 i4>;s«, r 8 2 Tim. U. 3 ; Philem. 2, 



THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIASTS. 6*0] 

near to death, playing the gambler with his life, 1 in order to fill up the necessary 
lack of your personal ministratiol towards me. 2 

" For the rest, my brethren, farewell, and indeed fare ye well in the Lord. 3 To 
write the same things to you is not irksome to me, and for you it is safe." 4 

Then came a sudden break. 5 It seems clear that the Apostle had intended 
at this point to close the letter, and to close it with a repetition of the oft- 
repeated exhortation — for which he half apologises — to greater peace and 
unity among themselves. 6 It is quite possible that these last words might 
have run on, as they do in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, to a 
considerable length ; 7 but here something occurred to break the sequence of 
the Apostle's thoughts. When he returned to his dictation he began a 
digression far more severe and agitated in its tone than the rest of his letter, 
and he does not resume the broken thread of his previous topic till the second 
verse of the fourth chapter, where, instead of any general exhortation, he 
makes a direct personal appeal. 

As to the nature of the interruption we cannot even conjecture. It may 
have been merely a change of the soldier who was on guard; but in the 
exigencies of a life which, though that of a prisoner, was yet fully occupied, 
many circumstances may have caused a little delay before everything could be 
ready, and the amanuensis once more at his post. And meanwhile something 
had occurred which had ruffled the Apostle's soul — nay, rather which had 
disturbed^ to its inmost depths. That something can only have been a 
conflict, in some form or other, with Judaising teachers. Something must 
either have thrown him in contact with, or brought to his notice, the character 
a 1 doctrine of false Apostles, of the same class as he had encountered at 
Uorinth, and heard of in the Churches of Galatia. Once more the thoughts 
and tone of the Epistle to the Galatians, the truths and arguments of the Epistle 
to the Romans, swept in a storm of emotion over his soul ; and it is with a 
burst of indignation, stronger for the moment than he had ever before ex- 
pressed, that, on once more continuing his letter, he bids Timothy write to the 
still uncontaminated Church : — 

" Beware of the dogs ! 8 Beware of the bad workers ! 9 Beware of the concision 
party!" 10 

1 irapapoXevo-dtievos (n, A, B, D, E, F, G). It is used especially of one who endangers 
his life by attendance on the sick (parabolani). (Wetst. ad loc.) 

2 ii. 19—30. 

3 I have tried to keep up the two meanings of " farewell " and "rejoice." 

4 hi. 1. 5 Ewald, Sendschr., p. 438. 

6 This is the simplest and most reasonable explanation of to. avra. yp6.^iv, and accords 
with St. Paul's custom of a concluding warning (1 Cor. xvi. 22; Gal. vi. 15, &c), or it 
may refer to the topic of joy (i. 18, 25 ; ii. 17 ; iv. 4). It has led to all sorts of hypo- 
theses. St. Paul had doubtless written other letters to the Philippians (the natural 
though not the necessary inference from Ka l airbv in'iv Zypoupev en-ioroAas— Polyc. ad Phil. 3), 
but these words do not show it. ( V. supra, p. 594.) 

~* 1 Thess. iv. 1. 

8 Generally used of Gentiles and Hellenising Jews (Matt. xv. 26), involving a coarse 
■hade of reproach (Deut. xxiii. 18 ; Eev. xxii. 15). We cannot be sure of the allusion here. 

s Cf . 2 Cor. xi. 13 ; Matt, xxiii. 15. 

10 ireptTOfiT), KaraTo/ii) would be in Latin "circumcisi," "decisi," (Curti, Hor. Sat. i. 



602 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

The words are intensely severe. He implies, " They call us dogs, bnt they, 
not we, are the veritable dogs ; and we, not they, are the true circumcision. 
Their circumcision is but concision — a mere mutilation of the flesh. "We serve 
by the Spirit of God ! — they serve ordinances ; we boast in Christ Jesus — they 
do but trust in the flesh." And why should they put themselves into rivalry 
with him ? If the external were anything in which to place confidence, he 
could claim it in even a greater degree than any one else. He had been 
circumcised when eight days old; he was an Israelite, and of one of the 
noblest tribes of Israel, and not a mere Hellenist, but a Hebrew — aye, and a 
Hebrew of Hebrews; 2 and — to pass from hereditary to personal topics of 
carnal boasting — as regards Law, he was a Pharisee; as regards Judaic 
enthusiasm, he had even persecuted the Church ; as regards legal righteous- 
ness, he had proved himself above all reproach. Things like these were at 
one time the gains which he reckoned that life had brought him, but now for 
Christ's sake he had got to count them as a loss. 

" Aye, and more than that, I even count all things to be a loss for the sake of 
the transcendence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I was 
mulcted of all things, 3 and I regard them as refuse flung to dogs, 4 that I may gain 
Christ, and may be found in Him, not having any righteousness of mine which is of 
Law, hut that which is by means of faith in Christ, that which comes of God, which 
is based on faith, 5 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and 
the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if so be I may attain 
to the resurrection (I mean not the general resurrection, but the resurrection of 
those that are Christ's) from the dead." 6 

And yet, as he goes on to warn them — though he had all this pregnant 
ground for confidence in externalisms, though he had rejected it all for the 
sake of Christ as mere foul and worthless rubbish, though his whole trust was 
now in Christ's righteousness, and not in his own — so far was he even still 
from the secure and vaunting confidence of their adversaries, that he did not 
at all consider that he had grasped the prize, or had been already perfected : — 

" But I press forward to see if I may even grasp — for which purpose 7 I too was 
grasped by Christ. Brothers, I do not reckon myself to have grasped; but one 
thing — forgetting the things behind, and leaning eagerly forward for the things 
before, I press forward to the goal for the prize of my heavenly calling of God in 
Christ Jesus." 

He is like one of those eager charioteers of whom his guardsmen so often 

9, 70); in German, Beschnittene, Zerschnittene. "Concision" means circumcision re 
garded as a mere mutilation. Cf. Acts vii. 51; Rom. hi. 25—29; Col. ii. 11; Ezek. 
xliv. 7 ; Deut. x. 16. 

1 iii. 3, Xarpevoi/Tes, intr. Luke ii. 37 ; Acts xxvi. 7. 

2 iii. 5. A proselyte, son of a proselyte, was called a Ger ben-ger, but Paul was 
nnt> ]1 nns- {Pirke Abhdth, v. ) 

3 ' May this refer to some sudden loss of all earthly means of living at his conversion? 
4 Ver. 8, o-kv/BouU. In derivation perhaps from root o*aT, but in usage = K v<ripa\a 
(Suid.). Some prefer the technical sense of the word = "excrementa" (Theodoret). 

6 Ver. 9, fiia 7riaTews . . . e/c &eov . . . en-i rn nCarst. 

6 iii. 2 — 11, leg. ri}v £* veKpw (a, A, B, D, E). 

7 €<£ u may also mean "because" (2 Cor. v. 4) ; or there may be an ellipse of the 
accusative after »caTaAa0w, as in the E.V. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 603 

talked to him when they had returned from the contests in the Circus 

Maximus, and joined their shouts to those of the myriads who cheered their 
favourite colours — leading forward in his flying car, bending over the si laken 
rein and the goaded steed, forgetting everything — every peril, every com- 
petitor, every circling of the meta in the rear, as he pressed on for the goal by 
which sat the judges with the palm garlands that formed the prize. 1 

" Let all, then, of us who are full grown in spiritual privileges have this mind ; 
then if in any other respect ye think otherwise 2 than ye should, this shall God 
reveal to you; only walk in the same path to the point whereunto we once 
reached." 3 

And as a yet further warning against any danger of their abusing the 
doctrine of the free gift of grace by antinomian practices, he adds — 

" Show yourselves, brethren, imitators of me, and mark those who walk as ye 
have us for an example. For many walk about whom I often used to tell you, and 
now tell you even with tears — the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is 
destruction, whose god their belly, and their glory in their shame, men minding 
earthly things. For our real citizenship is in heaven, whence also we anxiously 
await as a Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change the fashion of the body 
of our abasement so as to be conformable to the body of His glory, 4 according to the 
efficacy of His power to subject also every existing thing unto Himself. So, my 
brethren, beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand ye firm in the Lord, 
beloved." 5 

Then after this long digression, which, beginning in strong indignation, 
calms itself down to pathetic appeal, he once more takes up the exhortation to 
unity with which he had intended to conclude. He entreats two ladies, Euodia 
and Syntyche, to unity of mind in Christ, and he also affectionately asks 
Syzygus 6 — on whose name of "yokefellow" he plays, by calling him a 
genuine yokefellow — a yokefellow in heart as well as in name 7 — to assist these 
ladies in making up their quarrel, which was all the more deplorable because 
of the worth of them both, seeing that they wrestled with him in the Gospel, 
with Clement too, and the rest of his fellow-workers whose names are in the 
Book of Life. 8 

1 "Non progredi est regredi" (Aug.). 

2 erepos, used euphemistically ( = *c<ikws, Od. i. 234, edrepov = t6 kokov). So the Hebrew 
"aekeer." The meaning is, If you have the heart of the matter, God will enlighten you 
in non-essentials. 

3 hi. 12 — 16, omit icavovi, to clvto ippovelv {#, A, B). 

4 Ver. 21, |u.eTao-x»}|u.aT«rei . . . avp.p.op^>ov ', il. 6. 

5 iii. 17— iv. 1. 

6 iv. 3, yvvjo-ie 2u£vye. Clement of Alexandria seems to have taken the word to mean 

Paul's Wife, ovk OKvel rqv avrov irpoo-ayopeveLv a~6C,vyov tjv ov irepieKop-^ev (Strom, iii. 6, 53), cf. 

Euseb. H. E. iii. 30. Renan (p. 145) thinks it was Lydia. Why is she not saluted? 
If Lydia be merely a Gentilic name she may be one of those two ladies, or she may have 
been dead. 

7 Schwegler thinks that this is intended to be taken as an allusion to the Apostle 
Peter ! The play on names is quite in St. Paul's manner. The only difficulty is that 
Syzygus does not occur elsewhere as a name. 

8 iv. 2, 3. Baur's wild conjecture (?) about Clement — that tne whole story of his 
Romish Episcopate is invented to give respectability to the early Christians, by insinuating 



604 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

" Fare ye well always ; again I will say, fare ye well. Let your reasonableness 
be recognised "by all men. Be anxious about nothing, but in everything, in your 
general and special prayers, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
before God. Then shall the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, keep 
sentry over your hearts, and the devices of your hearts, in Christ Jesus. 

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are real, whatsoever things are awful, 
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
amiable, whatsoever things are winning, if ' virtue,' r if ' honour,' have a real mean- 
ing for you, on these things meditate. The things which ye both learned and 
received, both heard and saw in me, these things do, and the God of peace shall b€ 
with you." 2 

Then comes the warm yet delicate expression of his heartfelt gratitude to 
them for the pecuniary contribution by which now, for the fourth time, they, 
and they only, had supplied the wants which he could no longer meet by 
manual labour. 

" One word more : — I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now once more your 
thought on my behalf blossomed afresh. 3 In this matter ye were indeed bearing me 
in mind, but ye were without opportunity. Not that I speak with reference to 
deficiency, for I learnt to be always independent in existing circumstances. I know 
how both to be humiliated, and I know how to abound. In everything and in all 
things I have been initiated how both to be satisfied and to be hungry, both to 
abound and to be in need. I am strong for everything in Him who gives me power. 
Still ye did well in making yourselves partakers in my affliction. And ye know as 
well as I do, Philippians, that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I went forth 
from Macedonia, no Church communicated with me as regards giving and receiving, 
except ye only, for even in Thessalonica both once and twice ye sent to my need — 
not that I am on the look-out for the gift, but I am on the look-out for the fruit 
which abounds to your account. Now, however, I have all things to the full, 4 and 
I abound. I have been fulfilled by receiving from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, 
an odour of sweet fragrance, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. 5 But my 
God shall fulfil all your need according to His riches, in glory, in Christ Jesus. 
Now to our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 6 

" Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren with me salute you. All the 
saints salute you, and especially 7 those of Caesar's household. 8 

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." 

his identity with the Consular Flavius Clemens, and that the whole of this Epistle is 
forged to lead up to this passing allusion — looks almost tame beside Volkmar's hypo- 
thesis (?) about p]uodia and Syntyche — viz., that Euodia = "orthodoxy," the Petrine 
party, and Syntyche, "the partner " = the Pauline party! Clement, though a Philip- 
pian, may possibly be identical with " Clement of Rome " (Orig. in Joann. i. 29 ; Euseb. 
H. E. iii. 15, &c); we cannot even say "probably," because the name is exceedingly 
common. 

1 iv. 8, ipeTTj, here alone in St. Paul. 2 iv. 4 — 9. 

3 Ver. 10, aveOakeTf, literally, "ye blossomed again to think on my behalf." Chry- 
sostom says, on npoTtpov Si/res avOrfpol e^pd^rjcrai/, which is to touch the metaphor with an 
Ithuriel spear {Repullulastis, Aug. ; Rejloruistis, Vulg.). 

4 Ver. 18, a7r<-'xw. (Matt. vi. 2.) The word is used for "giving receipt in full." 

6 Gen. viii. 21. 6 iv. 10—20. 

7 Why especially ? It is impossible to say. 

8 It should be borne in mind that these slaves would be counted by thousands— 
atrienses, cubicularii, secretarii, lectores, introductores, nomenclatores, dispensatores, 
silentiarii (to keep the others quiet), &c. &c, and even slaves to tell the master the 
names of his other slaves ! We read of Romans who had 20,000 slaves. Four thousand 
was no very extraordinary number (Sen. De Vit. Beat. 17 ; Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 10 ; A.then. 
vi., p. 272). 



GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 605 

No great future awaited the Philippian Church. Half a century later, 
Ignatius passed through Philippi with his " ten leopards," on his way to 
martyrdom ; and Polycarp wrote to the Church a letter which, like that of St. 
Paul, is full of commendations. Little more is heard of it. Its site is still 
occupied by the wretched village of Filibidjek, but in spite of the fair promise 
of its birth, " the Church of Philippi has," in the inscrutable counsel of God. 
" lived without a history, and perished without a memorial." l 



CHAPTER XL VIII. 

GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 



Ov, xadairep %.v ris et/«{<reie, avdpc&irois vir-qperrjv riva tre/m^as ft &yye\ov &A\' avrip 
rdp rexvirrjv nal Srj/xtovpydv t&v '6\(av. — Ep. ad JDiognet. 7. 

The remaining three of the Epistles of the Captivity were written within a 
short time of each other, and were despatched by the same messengers. 
Tychicus was the bearer of those to the Ephesians and Colossians. Onesimus, 
who naturally took the letter to Philemon, was sent at the same time with him, 
as appears from the mention of his name in the Epistle to the Colossians. In 
both of these latter Epistles there is also a message for Archippus. 

There is nothing but internal evidence to decide which of these letters was 
written first. The letter to Philemon was, however, a mere private appendage 
to the Epistle to the Colossians, which may have been written at any time. 
The letter to this Church must claim the priority over the circular Epistle 
which is generally known as the Epistle to the Ephesians. The reason for this 
opinion is obvious — the Epistle to the Colossians was called forth by a special 
need, the other Epistle was not. It is in exact psychological accordance with 
the peculiarities of St. Paul's mind and style that if, after writing a letter 
which was evoked by particular circumstances, and led to the development of 
particular truths, he utilised the opportunity of its despatch to send another 
letter, which had no such immediate object, the tones of the first letter would 
still vibrate in the second. When he had discharged his immediate duty to 
the Church of Colossse, the topics dwelt upon in writing to the neighbouring 
Churches would be sure to bear a close resemblance to those which had most 
recently been occupying his thoughts. Even apart from special information, 
St. Paul may have seen the desirability of warning Ephesus and its depen- 
dencies against a peril which was infusing its subtle presence within so short a 
distance from them ; and it was then natural that his language to them should 
be marked by the very differences which separate the Epistle to the Colossians 
from that to the Ephesians. The former is specific, concrete, and polemical ; 
the latter is abstract, didactic, general. The same words and phrases predomi- 
nate in both ; but the resemblances are far more marked and numerous in the 

1 Lightfoot, p. 64. 



606 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

practical exhortations than in the doctrinal statements. In the Epistle to the 
Colossians he is primarily occupied with the refutation of an error ; in that 
to the Ephesians he is absorbed in the rapturous development of an exalted 
truth. The main theme of the Colossians is the Person of Christ ; that of the 
Ephesians is the life of Christ manifested in the living energy of His Church. 1 
In the former, Christ is the " Plenitude," the synthesis and totality of every 
attribute of God ; in the latter, the ideal Church, as the body of Christ, is the 
Plenitude, the recipient of all the fulness of Him who filleth all things with 
all. 2 Christ's person is most prominent in the Colossians ; Christ's body, the 
Church of Christ, in the Ephesians. 

The genuineness of these two letters has been repeatedly and formidably 
assailed, and the grounds of the attack are not by any means so fantastic as 
those on which other letters have been rejected as spurious. To dwell at 
length on the external evidence is no part of my scheme, and the grounds on 
which the internal evidence seems to me decisive in their favour, even after 
the fullest and frankest admission of all counter-difficulties, will best appear 
when we have considered the events out of which they spring, and which at 
once shaped, and are sufficient to account for, the peculiarities by which they 
are marked. 

Towards the close of St. Paul's Roman imprisonment, when his approach- 
ing liberation seemed so all but certain that he even requests Philemon to be 
getting a lodging in readiness for him, he received a visit from Epaphras of 
Colossae. To him, perhaps, had been granted the distinguished honour of 
founding Churches not only in his native town, but also in Laodicea and 
Hierapolis, which lie within a distance of sixteen miles from each other in the 
valley of the Lycus. That remarkable stream resembles the Anio in clothing 
the country through which it flows with calcareous deposits ; and in some parts 
of its course, especially near Colossae, it flowed under natural bridges of 
gleaming travertine deposited by its own waters, the course of which was fre- 
quently modified by this peculiarity, and by the terrific earthquakes to which 
the valley has always been liable. The traveller who followed the course of 
the Lycus in a south-eastward direction from the valley of the Mseander into 
which it flows, would first observe on a plateau, which rises high above its 
northern bank, the vast and splendid city of Hierapolis, famous as the birth- 
place of him who in Nicopolis 

" Taught Arrian when Vespasian's brutal son 
Cleared Borne of what most shamed him 



and famous also for the miraculous properties of the mephitic spring whose 
exhalations could be breathed in safety by the priests of Cybele alone. About 

> Col. ii. 19 ; Eph. iv. 16. 

3 Col. i. 19; ii. 9; Eph. i. 23; iii. 19; iv. 13. (John i. 14, 16.) German writers 
axpress the difference by saying that Christlichkeit is more prominent in the Colossians, 
KirchXichkeit in the Epheeians. 

3 Epiotetus was a contemporary of the Apostle. As to the Christian tinge of his Stoia 
speculations, see my Seekers after God. 



GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 607 

six miles further, upon the southern bank of the river, he would see Laodicea, 
the populous and haughty metropolis of the " Cibyratic jurisdiction," which 
alone of the cities of proconsular Asia was wealthy and independent enough 
to rebuild its streets and temples out of its own resources, when, within a year 
of the time at which these letters were written, an earthquake had shaken it. 1 
Passing up the valley about ten miles further, he might before sunset reach 
Colossse, a town far more anciently famous than either, but which had fallen 
into comparative decay, and was now entirely eclipsed by its thriving and 
ambitious neighbours. 2 

This remarkable valley and these magnificent cities, St. Paul, strange to 
say, had never visited. Widely as the result of his preaching at Ephesus had 
been disseminated throughout Asia, his labours for the Ephesian Church had 
been so close and unremitting as to leave him no leisure for wider missionary 
enterprise. 3 And although Jews abounded in these cities, the divinely guided 
course of his previous travels had not brought him into this neighbourhood. 
It is true that St. Luke vaguely tells us that in the second missionary journey 
St. Paul had passed through " the Phrygian and Galatian country," 4 and that 
in the shifting ethnological sense of the term the cities of the Lycus-valley 
might be regarded as Phrygian. But the expression seems rather to mean 
that the course of his journey lay on the ill-defined marches of these two dis- 
tricts, far to the north and east of the Lycus. In his third journey his natural 
route from the cities of Galatia to Ephesus would take him down the valleys of 
the Hermus and Cayster, and to the north of the mountain range of Messogis 
which separates them from the Lycus and Mseander. From St. Paul's own 
expression it seems probable that the Churches in these three cities had been 
founded by the labours of Epaphras, and that they had never " seen his face in 
the flesh " at the 1im? when he wrote these Epistles, though it is not impossible 
that he subsequently visited them. 5 

And yet he could not but feel the deepest interest in their welfare, because, 
indirectly though not directly, he had been indeed their founder. Ephesus, as 
we have seen, was a centre of commerce, of worship, and of political procedure ; 
and among the thousands, "both Jews and Greeks," "almost throughout all 
Asia," who heard through his preaching the word of the Lord, 6 must have been 
Philemon, 7 his son, Archippus, and Epaphras, and Nymphas, who were leading 
ministers of the Lycus Churches. 8 

And there was a special reason why St. Paul should write to the Colossian 
Christians. Philemon, who resided there, had a worthless slave named 

1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 27, "propriis opibus revaluit." Eev. iii. 14. Cicero, who resided 
there as Proconsul of Cilicia, frequently refers to it in his letters. 

2 Now Chonos. Dr. Lightfoot calls it "the least important Church to which any 
Epistle of St, Paul was addressed " (Col., p. 16). 

3 Acts xx. 31. 

4 Acts xvi 6. In Acts xviii. 23 the order is "the Galatian country and Phrygia." In 
the former instance he was travelling from Antioch in Pisidia to Troas ; in the latter from 
Antioch in Svria to Ephesus. 

3 Col. i. 4, 6, 9 ; ii L « Acts xix. 10—26. 

7 Philem. 1. 2. « Col. iv. 12, 13. 15. 



608 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Onesimus — a name which, under the circumstances, naturally lent itself to a 
satiric play of words ; for instead of being " Beneficial," he had been very 
much the reverse, having first (apparently) robbed his master, and then run 
away from him. Rome was in ancient days the most likely place to furnish 
a secure refuge to a guilty fugitive, and thither, even more than to modern 
London, drifted inevitably the vice and misery of the world. Philemon was a 
Christian, and some access of wretchedness, or danger of starvation, may have 
driven the runaway slave to fling himself on the compassion of the Christian 
teacher, whom he may have heard and seen when he attended his master on some 
great gala- day at Ephesus. The kind heart of Paul was ever open ; he had a 
deep and ready sympathy for the very lowest and poorest of the human race, 
because in the very lowest and poorest he saw those " for whom Christ died." 
His own sufferings, too, had taught him the luxury of aiding the sufferings of 
others, and he took the poor dishonest fugitive to his heart, and was the human 
instrument by which that change was wrought in him which converted the 
" non tressis agaso " into a brother beloved. But Onesimus was still legally the 
debtor and the slave of Philemon ; and Paul, ever obedient to the law, felt it a 
duty to send him back. He placed him under the protecting care of Tychicus 
of Ephesus, and sent him with a letter which could not fail to ensure his 
pardon. It was necessary, therefore, for him to write to a citizen of Colossae, 
and another circumstance determined him to write also to the Colossian 
Church. 

This was the strange and sad intelligence which he heard from Epaphras. 
They had many opportunities for intercourse, for, either literally or metaphori- 
cally, Epaphras shared his captivity, and did not at once return to his native 
city. In his conversations with St. Paul he told him of an insidious form of 
error unlike any which the Apostle had hitherto encountered. The vineyard 
of the Lord's planting seemed, alas ! to resemble the vineyards of earth in the 
multiplicity of perils which it had to overcome before it could bring forth its 
fruit. Now it was the little foxes that spoiled its vines ; now the wild boar 
which broke down its hedge ; and now, under the blighting influence of neglect 
and infertile soil, its unpruned branches only brought forth the clusters of 
Gomorrah. An erroneous tendency, as yet germinant and undeveloped, but 
one of which the prescient eye of St. Paul saw all the future deadliness, had 
insensibly crept into these youthful Churches, and, although they only knew 
the Apostle by name, he felt himself compelled to exert the whole force of 
his authority and reasoning to chefk so perilous an influence. Doubtless 
Epaphras had expressly sought him for the sake of advice and sympathy, and 
would urge the Apostle to meet with distinct warnings and clear refutation 
the novel speculations with which he may have felt himself incompetent to 
cope. 

The new form of error was partly Judaic, for it made distinctions in meats, 
attached importance to new moons and sabbaths, 1 and insisted upon the value 

» Col. ii. 16. 



GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 609 

of circumcision, if not upon its actual necessity. 1 Yet it did not, as a whole, 
resemble the Galatian Judaism, nor did it emanate, like the opposition at 
Antioch, from a party in Jerusalem, nor was it complicated, like the Corinthian 
schisms, with personal hostility to the authority of St. Paul. Its character was 
Judaic, not so much essentially as virtually ; not, that is, from any special 
sympathy with national and Levitical Hebraism, but rather because there were 
certain features of Judaism which were closely analogous to those of other 
Oriental religions, and which commanded a wide sympathy in the Eastern 
world. 

We must judge of the distinctive colour of the dawning heresy quite as 
much from the truths by which St. Paul strives to check its progress, as by 
those of its tenets on which he directly touches. 2 In warning the Colossians 
respecting it, he bids them be on their guard against allowing themselves to be 
plundered by a particular teacher, whose so-called philosophy and empty deceit 
were more in accordance with human traditions and secular rudiments than 
with the truth of Christ. The hollow and misguiding system of this teacher, 
besides the importance which it attached to a ceremonialism which at the best 
was only valuable as a shadow of a symbol, tried further to rob its votaries of 
the prize of their Christian race by representing God as a Being so far removed 
from them that they could only approach Him through a series of angelic 
intermediates. It thus ignored the precious truth of Christ's sole mediatorial 
dignity, and turned humility itself into a vice by making it a cloak for inflated 
and carnal intellectualism. In fact, it was nothing more nor less than pride 
which was thus aping humility ; and, in endeavouring to enforce an ignoble 
self -abrogation of that direct communion with God through Christ which is 
the Christian's most imperial privilege, it not only thrust all kinds of inferior 
agencies between the soul and Him, but also laid down a number of rules and 
dogmas which were but a set of new Mosaisms without the true Mosaic sanc- 
tions. Those rules were, from their very nature, false, transient, and trivial. 
They paraded a superfluous self-abasement, and insisted on a hard asceticism, 
but at the same time they dangerously flattered the soul with a semblance of 
complicated learning, while they were found to be in reality valueless as any 
remedy against self-indulgence. That these ascetic practices and dreamy 
imaginations were accompanied by a pride which arrogated to itself certain 
mysteries as an exclusive possession from which the vulgar intellect must be 
kept aloof ; that, while professing belief in Christ, the Colossian mystic 
represented Him as one among many beings interposed between God and man ; 
that he regarded matter in general and the body in particular as something in 
which evil was necessarily immanent, 3 seem to result from the Christology of 
the Epistle, which is more especially developed in one particular direction than 

i Col. ii. 11. 

2 They were "Gnostic Ebionites," Baur; " Cerinthians," Mayerhoff ; "Christian 
Essenism in its progress to Gnosticism," Lipsius; " A connecting link between Essenes 
and Cerinthians," Nitzsch ; "Ascetics and Theosophists of the Essene school," Holtz- 
mann ; " Precursors of the Christian Essenes," Kitschl. (Pfleiderer, ii. 98.) 

3 So, too, Philo regarded the body as the Egypt of the souL (Ques. rer. div. haer. 51&) 

N N 



610 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

we find it to be in any of St. Paul's previous writings. Already, in writing to 
the Corinthians, he had said that " if he had ever known Christ after tht flesh, 
from henceforth he knew Him no more," and in this Epistle the Person of our 
Lord as the Eternal Co-existent Son is represented in that divine aspect the 
apprehension of which is a boon infinitely more transcendent than a human 
and external knowledge of Jesus in His earthly humiliation. And yet — as 
though to obviate beforehand any Ceriuthian attempt to distinguish between 
Jesus the man of sorrows and Christ the risen Lord, between Jesus the 
crucified and Christ the Eternal Word — he is, even in this Epistle, emphatic 
in the statement that these are one. 1 To say that there is any change 
in St. Paul's fundamental conception of Christ would be demonstrably 
false, since even the juxtaposition of our Lord Jesus Christ with God 
the Father as the source of all grace, and the declaration that all 
things, and we among them, exist solely through Him, are statements of 
His divinity in St. Paul's earliest Epistles 2 as strong as anything which 
could be subsequently added. But hitherto the Apostle had been led to 
speak of Him mainly as the Judge of the quick and dead, in the Epistles 
to the Thessalonians ; as the invisible Head and Ruler of the Church in those 
to the Corinthians ; as the Author of all spiritual freedom from ceremonial 
bondage, and the Redeemer of the world from the yoke of sin and death, as 
in those to the Romans and Galatians ; as the Saviour, the Raiser from the 
dead, the Life of all life, the Source of all joy and peace, in that to the Philip- 
pians. A new phase of His majesty had now to be brought into prominence 
— one which was indeed involved in every doctrine which St. Paul had 
taught concerning Him as part of a Gospel which he had received by 
revelation, but which no external circumstance had ever yet led him to explain 
in all its clearness. This was the doctrine of Christ, as the Eternal, Pre- 
existing, yet Incarnate Word. He had now to speak of Him as One in whom 
and by whom the Universe — and that not only its existing condition but its 
very matter and its substance — are divinely hallowed, so that there is nothing 
irredeemable, nothing inherently antagonistic to Holiness, either in matter or in 
the body of man ; as One in whom dwells the " plenitude " of the divine per- 
fections, so that no other angelic being can usurp any share of God which is 
not found in Him ; as One who is the only Potentate, the only Mediator, the 
only Saviour, the Head of the Body which is the Church, and the Source of 
its life through every limb. And the expression of this truth was rendered 
necessary by error. The Colossian teachers were trying to supplement Chris- 
tianity, theoretically by a deeper wisdom, practically by a more abstentious 
holiness. It was the beautiful method of St. Paul to combat false doctrine as 
little as possible by denunciation and controversy (though these two have at 
times their necessary place), and as much as possible by the presentation of 
the counter truth. We are able, therefore, to find the theological errors of 

I i. 20, 22 ; ii. 6. 

3 1 Thess. i. 1 ; v. 28 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; v. 19 ; Horn. ix. 5. Even Ren»u 
fully admit this {St. Paul, x. 274). 



GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 611 

the Colossian8 reflected in the positive theology which is here developed in 
order to counteract them. In the moral and practical discussions of the 
Epistle we see the true substitute for that extravagant and inflating asceticism 
which had its origin partly in will-worship, ostentatious humility, and trust in 
works, and partly in mistaken conceptions as to the inherency of evil in the 
body of man. St. Paul points out to them that the deliverance from sin was 
to be found, not in dead rules and ascetic rigours, which have a fatal tendency 
to weaken the will, while they fix the imagination so intently on the very sins 
against which they are intended as a remedy, as too often to lend to those very 
sins a more fatal fascination — but in that death to sin which is necessarily in- 
volved in the life hid with Christ in God. From that new life — that resurrec- 
tion from the death of sin — obedience to the moral laws of God, and faithfulness 
in common relations of life, result, not as difficult and meritorious acts, but as 
the natural energies of a living impulse in the heart which beats no longer 
with its own life but with the life of Christ. 

Alike, then, from the distinct notices and the negative indications of the 
Epistle we can reproduce with tolerable clearness the features of the Colossian 
heresy, and we at once trace in it the influence of that Oriental theosophy, 
those mystical speculations, those shadowy cosmogonies and moral aberrations 
which marked the hydra-headed forms of the systems afterwards summed up 
in the one word Gnosticism. This very circumstance has been the main ground 
for impugning the genuineness of the Epistle. It is asserted that Gnosticism 
belongs to a generation later, and that these warnings are aimed at the 
followers of Cerinthus, who did not flourish until after Paul was dead, or 
even at those of Yalentinus, the founder of a Gnostic system in the second 
century. In support of this view it is asserted that the Epistle abounds in 
un-Pauline phrases, in words which occur in no other Epistle, and in technical 
Gnostic expressions, such as plenitude, mystery, wisdom, knowledge, powers, 
light, darkness. Now, that Gnosticism as a well-developed system belongs to 
a later period is admitted ; but the belief that the acceptance of the Epistle 
as genuine involves an anachronism, depends solely on the assumption that 
Gnostic expressions 1 may not have been prevalent, and Gnostic tendencies 
secretly at work, long before they were crystallised into formal heresies. As 
far as these expressions are concerned, some of them are not technical at all 
until a Gnostic meaning is read into them, and others, like " knowledge " 
(gnosis), &c, "plenitude" (pleroma), though beginning to be technical, are 
used in a sense materially different from that which was afterwards attached 
to them. As for the asserted traces of doctrines distinctly and systematically 
Gnostic, it is a matter of demonstration that they are found, both isolated and 
combined, during the Apostolic age, and before it, as well as afterwards. The 
esoteric exclusiveness which jealously guarded the arcana of its mysteries 

1 The use of these expressions is admirably illustrated by some remarks of TertuUian, 
Adv. Praxeam., 8. He has used the word 7rpo|3oA.rj, and anticipating the objection that 
the word is tainted with Valentinianism, he replies that Heresy has taken that word 
from Truth to mould it after its own likeness. 
N N 2 



ftl2 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

from general knowledge ; the dualism which became almost Manichaean in the 
attempt to distinguish between the good and evil impulses ; the notion that 
God's "plenitude" could only flow out in a multitude of imperfect emanations; 
the consequent tendency to exalt and worship a gradation of angelic hierarchies ; 
the rules and purifications which were designed to minimise all infection from 
the inevitable contact with matter ; the attempt to explain the inherency of 
evil in matter by vain and fanciful cosmogonies ; the multiplication of obser- 
vances ; the reduction of food and drink to the barest elements, excluding all 
forms of animal life; the suspicious avoidance or grudging toleration of 
marriage as a pernicious and revolting necessity ; — these are found in various 
Oriental religions, and may be traced in philosophies which originated among 
the Asiatic Greeks. They find a distinct expression in the doctrines of the 
Essenes. 1 Their appearance in the bosom of a Christian community was 
indeed new ; but there was nothing new in their existence ; nothing in them 
with which, as extraneous forms of error, St. Paul's Jewish and Gentile 
studies — were it only his knowledge of Essene tenets and Alexandrian specu- 
lations — had not made him perfectly familiar. That they should appear in a 
Phrygian Church, powerfully exposed to Jewish influences, and yet consisting 
of Gentiles trained amid the mysteries of a ceremonial nature worship, and 
accustomed to the utterances of a speculative philosophy 2 must have been 
painful to St. Paul, but could not have been surprising. The proof that these 
forms of heresy might have been expected to appear is rendered yet more 
cogent by the knowledge that, within a very short period of this time, they 
actually did appear in a definite and systematic form, in the heresy of Cerin- 
thus, with whom St. John himself is said to have come into personal collision. 3 
And under these circumstances, so far from seeing a mark of spuriousness, 
we rather deduce an incidental argument in favour of the genuineness of the 
Epistle from the nature of the errors which we find that it is intended to 
denounce. Many critics have been eager to prove that St. Paul could not have 
written it, because they reject that fundamental doctrine of the Eternal 
Divinity of Christ, of which this group of Epistles is so impregnable a 
bulwark ; yet this was so evidently the main article in the belief of St. Paul 

1 Neander {Planting, p. 323, seqq.) points out the Phrygian propensity to the mystical 
and magical as indicated by the worship of Cybele, by Montanism, by the tendencies con- 
demned at the council of Lnodicea, and by the existence of Athinganians in the ninth 
century, &c. Perhaps the incipient heresies of Asia might be most briefly characterised 
as the germ of Gnosticism evolved by Essene and Oriental speculations on the origin of 
evil. These speculations led to baseless angelologies injurious to the supremacy of Christ ; 
*■<* esoteric exclusiveness injurious to the universality of the Gospel ; and to mistaken 
asceticism injurious to Christian freedom. Cloudy theories generated unwise practices. 
It is interesting to observe that some at least of the same tendencies are traceable in St. 
John's rebukes to the seven Churches. Compare Kev. hi. 14 and Col. i. 15 — 18 ; Rev. iii. 
21 and Col. iii. 1, Eph. ii. 6. Some interesting Zoroastrian parallels are quoted from 
Bleeck by the Rev. J. LI. Davies in his essay on traces of foreign elements in these 
Epistles (Ephes. pp. 141 — 9). He says " the decay and mixture of old creeds in the 
Asiatic intellect had created a soil of 'loose fertility— a footfall there sufficing to upturn 
to the warm air half -germinating ' theosophies." 

» Lightfoot, Col. pp. 114—179. 

" Neander, Planting, i. 325; Ch. Hist. ii. 42; Lightfoot, Col, p. 107, seq. 



GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 613 

that the proof of its being so would hardly be weakened, even if these 
Epistles could be banished from the canon to which hostile criticism has only 
succeeded in showing more conclusively that they must still be considered to 
belong. 

The Christology, then, of these Epistles is nothing more than the syste- 
matic statement of that revelation respecting the nature of Jesus, which is 
implicitly contained in all that is written of Him in the New Testament j 1 and 
the so-called " Gnosticism " with which these Epistles deal is nothing more 
than a form of error — a phase of the crafty working of systematic decep- 
tion — which is common to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual aberrations 
of all ages and countries. It is found in the Zend Avesta; it is found 
in Philo ; it is found in Neoplatonism ; it is found in the Kabbala ; it 
is found in Yalentinus. Abject sacerdotalism, superstitious ritual, extravagant 
asceticism, the faithlessness which leads men to abandon the privilege of 
immediate access to God, and to thrust between the soul and its One Mediator 
all sorts of human and celestial mediators ; the ambition which builds upon 
the unmanly timidity of its votaries its own secure and tyrannous exalta- 
tion ; the substitution of an easy externalism for the religion of the heart ; the 
fancy that God cares for such barren self-denials as neither deepen our own 
spirituality nor benefit our neighbour ; the elaboration of unreasonable systems 
which give the pompous name of Theology to vain and verbal speculations 
drawn by elaborate and untenable inferences from isolated expressions of 
which the antinomies are unfathomable, and of which the true exegetic history 
is deliberately ignored ; the oscillating reactions which lead in the same sect 
and in even the same individual to the opposite extremes of rigid scrupulosity 
and antinomian licence : 2 — these are the germs not of one but of all the here- 
sies : these are more or less the elements of nearly every false religion. The 
ponderous technicalities of the systematiser ; the interested self-assertions of 
the priest ; the dreamy speculations of the mystic ; the Pharisaic conceit of 
the externalist ; the polemical shibboleths of the sectarian ; the spiritual pride 
and narrow one-sidedness of the self -tormentor ; the ruinous identification of 
that saving faith which is a union with Christ and a participation of His life 
with the theoretic acceptance of a number of formulae : — all these elements 
have from the earliest dawn of Christianity mingled in the tainted stream of 
heresy their elements of ignorance, self-interest, and error. In their dark 
features we detect a common resemblance. 

' • Facies non omnibus una 
Nee diversa tain en, quales decet esse Boronim." 

There was Gnosticism in the days of St. Paul as there is Gnosticism now, 
though neither then nor now is it recognised under that specific name. 

We may, therefore, pass to the study of the Epistle with the strongest 

1 "Les plus energiques expressions de l'Epitre aux Colossiens ne font qu'encherir xn 
peu sur celles des Epltres anterieures " (Kenan, St. P. x.). 

2 Olem. Alex. Strom, iii. 5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 1—7 ; Jude 8 ; Rev. ii. 14, 20—22. 



614 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

conviction that there is no expression in it which, on these grounds at any 
rate, disproves its genuineness. None but Paul could have written it. To say 
that it is un-Pauline in doctrine is to make an arbitrary assertion, since it 
states no single truth which is not involved in his previous teachings. Tne 
fact that it is a splendid development of those teachings, or rather an expan- 
sion in the statement of them, in order to meet new exigencies, is simply in 
its favour. Nor do I see how any one familiar with the style and mind of St. 
Paul can fail to recognise his touch in this Epistle. That the style should 
lack the fire and passion — the "meras flammas" — of the Epistle to the 
Galatians, and the easy, fervent outflowing of thought and feeling in those 
to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, and Philippians, is perfectly natural. Of 
all the converts to whom St. Paul had written, the Colossians alone were 
entire strangers to him. He had not indeed visited the Church of Rome, 
but many members of that Church were personally known to him, and he 
was writing to them on a familiar theme which had for years been occupying 
his thoughts. The mere fact that he had already written on the same topic 
to the Galatians would make his thoughts flow more easily. But in writing 
to the Colossians he was handling a new theme, combating a recent error with 
which, among Christians, he had not come into personal contact, and of which 
he merely knew the special characteristics at secondhand. "When, in the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, he reverts to the same range of conceptions, 1 his 
sentences run with far greater ease. The style of no man is stereotyped, and 
least of all is this the case with a man so many-sided, so emotional, so 
original as St. Paul. His manner, as we have repeatedly noticed, reflects 
to an unusual degree the impressions of the time, the place, the mood, in 
which he was writing. A thousand circumstances unknown to us may have 
given to this Epistle that rigid character, that want of spontaneity in the 
movement of its sentences, which led even Ewald into the improbable con- 
jecture that the words were Timothy's, though the subject and the thoughts 
belong to St. Paul. But the difference of style between it and other Epistles 
is no greater than we find in the works of other authors at different periods 
of their lives, or than we daily observe in the writings and speeches of living 
men who deal with different topics in varying moods. 

1 V. infra, pp. 630, seq. "These two letters are twins, singularly like one another 
in face, like also in character, but not so identical as to exclude a strongly-marked 
individuality" (J. LI. Davies, Eph. and Col., p. 7). He says that the style is laboured, 
but "the substance eminently genuine and strong." A forger would have copied 
phrases; who could copy the most "characteristic and inward conceptions of the 
Apostle ? " Even critics who fail to admit the genuineness of the whole letter, see that 
its sentiments and much of its phraseology are so indisputably Pauline that they adopt 
the theory of interpolation (Hitzig, Weiss, Holtzman), or joint authorship of Paul an<5 
Timothy (Ewald). 



THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 615 

CHAPTER XLLX. 

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 

" Per Me venitur, ad Me pervenitur, in Me permanetur." — Aug. In Joann. xii. 
l(i Ev avrw irepnraTeire. In eo ambulate ; in illo solo. Hie Epistolae scopus est.* 
— Bengel. 

" Viva, pressa, solida, nervis plena, mascula." — Bohmer, Isag. lx. 
"Brevis Epistola, sed nucleum Evangelii continens." — Calvin. 

After a brief greeting " to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which 
are in Colossse," 1 he enters on the usual " thanksgiving," telling them how in 
his prayers he ever thanked God our Father 2 on their behalf, on hearing of 
their faith in Christ and love to all the saints, because of the hope stored up 
for them in heaven. Of that hope they had heard when the Gospel was first 
preached to them in its true genuineness ; and as that Gospel grew and bore 
fruit 3 in all the world, so it was doing in them, from the day when they heard 
of the grace of God, and recognised it in all its fulness, from the teaching of 
Epaphras, the Apostle's beloved fellow-prisoner and their faithful pastor on 
the Apostle's behalf. 4 By Epaphras he has been informed of their spiritual 
charism of love, and from the day that he heard of their Christian graces it 
was his earnest and constant prayer that their knowledge of God's will might 
be fully completed in all spiritual wisdom and intelligence, in practical holi- 
ness, in fresh fruitfulness and growth, in increasing power to endure even 
suffering with joy, and in perpetual thanksgiving to God, who qualified us for 
our share in the heritage of the saints in light, and who rescued us from the 
power of darkness, and transferred us by baptism into the kingdom of the 
Son of His love, in whom we have our redemption, the remission of our 
sins. 5 

Of the nature of that Son of God, on whose redemption he has thus 
touched, he proceeds to speak in the next five verses. They form one of the 
two memorable passages which contain the theological essence of this Epistle. 
They are the full statement of those truths with respect to the person of 
Christ which were alone adequate to meet the errors, both of theory and 
practice, into which the Colossians were sliding under the influence of some 

1 Ver. 2, KoAoo-o-ais, N, B, D, F, G, L ; but probably npos KoXaercraet? in the later super- 
scription. 

* This, if the reading of B, D, Origen, &c.,be correct, is the only instance where God 
the Father stands alone in the opening benediction. The briefest summary of the 
Epistle is as follows : — I. Introduction : i. 1, 2, Greeting ; i. 3 — 8, Thanksgiving ; i. 9 — 13, 
Prayer. II. Doctrinal : the person and office of Christ, i. 13 — ii. 3. III. Polemical : 
warnings against error, and practical deductions from the counter truths, ii. 4 — iii. 4. 
rV. Practical : general precepts, iii. 5 — 17 ; special precepts, iii. 18 — iv. 6. V. Personal 
messages and farewell, iv. 7 — 18. 

3 Ver. 6, Kapvo^opov^evov, "spontaneously bearing fruit v (ver. 10, Kap7ro<J>o0i/Tes), and 
yet gaining progressive force in doing so (ai/£av6/u.evoi). 

4 Ver. 7, vTrep t)(uo)v, », A, B, D, F, G. This can only mean that Epaphras preached 
on St. Paul's behalf — i.e., in his stead — and, if it be the right reading, furnishes another 
decisive proof that St. Paul had never himself preached in these Churches. 

5 i 9 — 14. The "by His blood " of the E.Y. is a reading interpolated from Eph. i. 7 



616 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Essene teacher. The doctrine of Christ as the Divine Word, — the Likeness 
of God manifested to men — the Pre-existent Lord of the created world — fould 
alone divert them from the dualism and ascetic rigour which their Phrygian 
mysticism and mental proclivities had led them to introduce into the system 
of Christianity. And therefore having spoken of Christ, he shows "His 
absolute supremacy in relation to the universe, the natural creation (15 — 17), 
and in relation to the Church, the new moral creation (ver. 18)." 1 

" Who is the Image of the Unseen God, the First-born of all Creation, since in 
Him all things were created 2 in the heavens and upon the earth, the things seen 
and the things unseen, — whether 'thrones' or 'dominations,' ' principalities ' or 
' powers ' : 3 all things have been created 4 by Him and unto Him : and He is 5 before 
all things, and in Him all things cohere ; and He is the head of the body — the 
Church ; who is the origin, the first-born from the dead, that He and none other 
may become the Presiding Power in all things ; because in Him God thought good 
that the whole Plenitude 6 should permanently dwell, 7 and by Him to reconcile all 
things to Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross ; — by Him, whether the 
things on the earth or the things in the heavens. And you, who once were alienated 
and enemies in your purpose, in the midst of wicked works, — yet now were ye 

1 Dr. Lightfoot, in his valuable note (p. 209), shows that Christ is spoken of first in 
relation to God — the word e'u<u>v involving the two ideas of Representation and Manifesta- 
tion ; and, secondly, in relation to created things — the words irpoiroTOKo? Trdo~q<s ktio-cws 
involving the idea of mediation between God and Creation, and 7tpcot6tokos being applied 
to the Logos by Philo, and to the Messiah in Ps. Ixxxix. 27. It implies priority to, and 
sovereignty over, all creation. It seems as though there were already tendencies to find 
the cross an offence, and to distinguish between the crucified Jesus and the ascended 
Christ (i. 19, 20—22 ; ii. 6—9). 

2 Ver. 16, eKTia-e-q, " created by one word." 

3 No definite angelology can be extracted from these words (cf. ii. 18 ; Eph. i. 21). 
The hierarchies of the pseudo-Dionysius are as entirely arbitrary as Milton's 

" Thrones, dominations, virtues, princedoms, powers, 
Warriors, the flower of heaven." 

But to say that the passage is gnostic, &c, is absurd in the face of such passages as 
Rom. viii. 38 ; 1 Cor. xv. 24. 

4 Ver. 16, eKTicrrai, "have been created, and still continue." 

5 He IS— ecmi/, not kcniv (so Lightfoot), since the tense and the repetition of the 
pronouns imply pre-existence and personality (John viii. 58 ; Ex. iii. 14). 

6 This rendering "Plenitude" — in the sense of "completeness" and "completed 
fulfilment " — will be found to meet all the uses of the words in St. Paul, both in its 
ordinary sense (1 Cor. x. 26; Rom. xi. 12, 25; xiii. 10; xv. 29; Gal. iv. 4; Eph. i. 10), 
and in its later quasi -technical sense, as applied to the "totality of the Divine attributes 
and agencies" (Col. i. 19; ii. 9; Eph. i. 23; iii. 19; iv. 13). It is directly derived from 
the O. T. usage ( Jer. viii. 16, &c. ) ; and the later localised usage of Cerinthus and 
Valentinus is in turn derived from it. If it be derived from ir\r)p6w, in the sense of 
"fulfil" rather than its sense to "fill," the difficulties of its usage by St. Paul are 
lessened ; I cannot say that they disappear. Lightfoot, Col. 323 — 339. Those who 
wish to see other views may find them in Baur, Paul. ii. 93 ; Pfleiderer, ii. 172 ; Holtz- 
mann, Eph. Col. 222, seq. ; Fritzsche on Rom. x. 1. On the connexion of trkfipoma tvitb 
the Hebrew mpn there are some valuable remarks in Taylor's Pirque Aboth, p. 54. 
Makom, "place" = 186, and by Gematria was identified with Yehovah, because the 
squares of the letters of the Tetragrammaton (10 2 + 5 2 + 6 2 + 5-) give the same result 
(Buxt. Lex Chald. 2001). So far from being exclusively gnostic, Philo had already said 
(Be Somniis, 1.) that the word has three meanings, of which the third is God. Hence 
the interesting Alexandrianisin in the LXX. of Ex. xxiv. 10, elfioi/ rbv ronov oD elo-rrj/cei 
6 0e6*. "God," said a celebrated Jewish proverb, "is not in Ha-Makom [the "Place," 
the "Universe"], but all Ha-Makom is in Cod." 

7 Ver. 19, KaToiKTjcrai, not a napoiKia or transient, but a «aTo*K«a or permauei t abode, 
Of. Gen. xjxvi. 44, LXX. ; naTotmlv, jqys nafioi-Kelv, y\^ t &c. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIAN8. 617 

reconciled 1 in the body of His flesh by death, to present yourselves holy and un- 
blemished and blameless before Him, if, that is, ye abide by the faith, founded and 
firm, and not being ever shifted from the hope of the Gospel which ye heard, which 
was proclaimed throughout this sublunary world — of which I became — I, Paul — a 
minister." 3 

The immense grandeur of this revelation, and the thought that it should 
have been entrusted to his ministry, at once exalts and humiliates him ; and 
he characteristically 3 continues :— 

" Now I rejoice in my sufferings on your behalf, and supplement the deficiencies 
of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh on behalf of His body, which is the Church. 4 
of which I became a minister according to the stewardship of God granted to me 
to you-ward, to develop fully the word of God, the mystery 5 which has lain hidden 
from the ages and the generations, but is now manifested to His saints, to whom 
God willed to make known what is the wealth of the glory of this mystery among 
the Gentiles, which mystery is Christ in you the hope of glory ; whom we preach " 
— not to chosen mystae, not with intellectual exclusiveness, not with esoteric reserves, 
but absolutely and universally — " warning every man, and teaching every man in all 
wisdom, that we may present every man ' perfect ' in Christ. 6 For which end also I 
toil, contending according to His energy, which works in me in power. 7 

" For I wish you to know how severe a contest 8 I have on behalf of you, and 
those in Laodicea, and all who have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts 
may be confirmed, they being compacted 9 in love, and so brought to all wealth of 
the full assurance of intelligence, unto the full knowledge of that mystery of God, 
which is Christ, 10 in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge — hid 
treasures," — yet, as the whole passage implies, hidden no longer, but now brought 
to light, n "This I say" — i.e., I tell you of this possibility of full knowledge for 
you all, of this perfect yet open secret of wisdom in Christ—" that no man may 
sophisticate you by plausibility of speech. For even though personally absent, yet 
in my spirit I am with you, rejoicing in and observing your military array, and the 
solid front of your faith in Christ. As, then, ye received the Christ — Jesus the 

1 "Ver. 21, in-0AcaTTjXAayr)Te (B) . The ano, as in an oAa/x fiaveiv vlodeo-iav (Gal. iv. 5) and 

AiroKaTo.oTao-1?, points to the restoration of a lost condition. 

2 i. 15 — 23. At ver. 20 begins a sketch of Christ's work, first generally (20), then 
specially to the Colossians (21 — 23). 

3 Cf . Eph. hi. 2—9 ; 1 Tim. i. 11. 

4 tol vaTep-qixaTa. These latter words throw light on the former. Christ's sacrifice is, 
of course, ' a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins 
of the whole world," and the sufferings of saints cannot, therefore, be vicarious. But 
they can be ministrative, and useful — nay, even requisite for the continuance of Christ's 
work on earth ; and in that sense St. Paul, and every "partaker of Christ's sufferings " 
(2 Cor. i. 7; Phil. hi. 10) can "personally supplement in Christ's stead {ai>Tavai?\ n f>Cj) 
what is lacking of Christ's afflictions on behalf of His body, the Church." Steiger, 
Maurice, Huth, &c, read "the sufferings of the Christ in my flesh ; :: but there can be 
no Xptcrrbs in the erap£ which Christ destroys. 

5 The mystery of the equal admission of the Gentiles (i. 27 ; iv. 3; Eph. i. 10 ; iii. 
3, 8, and passim). 

6 The repetition of the -n-diTa is a clear warning against esoteric doctrines, and the 
exclusive arrogance of intellectual spiritualism which is a germ of many heresies. It is 
naturally a favourite word of the Apostle who had to proclaim the universality of the 
Gospel (1 Cor. x. 1; xii. 29, 30, &c.). Te'A.eios was used of those initiated into tha 
mysteries. 

7 i. 24 — 29. 8 Ver. 1. Aywva, referring back to ayuw^iemsj i. 29. 
9 Read ovpfitfkuT0evTes. 

10 Ver. 2. Read rov ®eoC, Xpia-rov. (Lightfoot, Col. p. 318.) 

11 Prov. ii. 4 ; Matt. xiii. 44 ; 1 Cor. ii. 7 ; iv. 5. 



618 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Lord — walk in Him, rooted, and being built up in Him, 1 and being confirmed by 
your faith, even as ye were taught, abounding in that faith with thanksgiving." 2 

He has thus given them a general warning against being dazzled by 
erroneous teaching. He has laid down for them, with firm hand and absolute 
definiteness, the truth that the Pleroma dwells permanently in Christ — the 
sole Lord of the created universe, and therefore the guarantee that there is in 
matter no inherent element of inextinguishable evil ; the sole Head of the 
Church, the sole Redeemer of the world ; the sole centre, and source, and 
revealer of wisdom to all alike, as they had all along been taught. But it is 
now time to come to more specific warnings — to the more immediate applica- 
tion of these great eternal principles ; and he continues : — 

" Look that there be no person [whom one might name] 3 who is carrying you 
off as plunder by his ' philosophy,' 4 which is vain deceit in accordance with mere 
human traditions, and earthly rudiments, 5 and not in accordance with Christ. For 
in Him all the Plenitude of Godhead 6 has bodily its permanent abode, and ye are 
in Him. fulfilled with Sis Plenitude, who is the head of every ' principality ' and 
' power. ' " 7 

From this great truth flow various practical consequences. For instance, 
the Essene mystic, who was making a prey of them by the empty and specious 
sophistry which he called philosophy, impressed on them the value of circum- 
cision, though not, it would seem, with the same insistency as the Christian 
Pharisees who had intruded themselves into Galatia. But what possible good 
could circumcision do them ? Their circumcision was spiritual, and had 
already been performed — not by human hands, but by Christ Himself ; not as 
the partial mutilation of one member, but as the utter stripping away from 
them of the whole body of the flesh. 8 It was, in fact, their baptism, in which 
they had been buried with Christ, and also raised with Him through their 
faith in the power of God who raised Him from the dead. 9 

11 You, too, dead by transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God 
quickened with Him, freely remitting to us all our transgressions, wiping out the 
bond which, by its decrees, was valid against us, 10 which was opposed to us — this 
bond He has taken away, nailing it to His cross. Stripping utterly away from Him 

1 Ver. 7. Notice the change from eppifafievoi, the permanent result of stability, to 
eVoiKoSoju.ouju.ei'oi, the continuous process of edification. Notice, too, the confusion of 
metaphor which is no confusion of thought : " walk," " rooted," "being built," " being 
strengthened." 

2 ii. 1—7. 8 Ver 8, n S , indefinitely definite (cf. Gal. i. 7). 

4 Remarkable as being the only place where St. Paul uses the word "philosophy," 
just as he only uses "virtue" once (Phil. iv. 8). Both are superseded by loftier 
conceptions. 

s See supra, p. 439. (Gal. iv. 3, 9.) 

6 fleoTTjs, deitas ; stronger than Geion)?, divinitas. 

7 ii. 7—10. 8 Ver. 11, imfefivo-is. » Of. Phil. iii. 10. 

10 Deut. xxvii. 14 — 26 ; Gal. ii. 19, iv. 9; o^eiAeVi)?. The "ordinances" are those of the 
Mosaic and the natural law. The Soy^acni/ is difficult ; the rendering ' consisting in ordi- 
nances' would seem to require ev, as in Eph. ii. 15. Also the Greek Fathers made it mean 
" wiping out by the decrees of the Gospel" 



THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 619 

the ' principalities ' and ' powers ' (of wickedness), 1 He made a show of them boldly, 
leading them in triumph on that cross " 2 — thus making the gibbet of the slave His 
feretrum, on which to carry the spoils of His triumph as an Eternal Conaueror, after 
deadly struggle with the clinging forces of spiritual wickedness. 

Since, then, mere legal obligations are part of a dead compact, a torn and 
cancelled bond, which is now nailed to Christ's Cross — 

" Let no one then judge you in eating and drinking, 3 and in the matter of a 
feast, or a new moon, or Sabbath, 4 which things are a shadow of things to be, but 
the substance is Christ's. Let no one then snatch your prize from you, by delight- 
ing in abjectness, 5 and service of the angels, 6 treading the emptiness of his own 
visions 7 in all the futile inflation of his mere carnal understanding, and not keeping 
hold of Him who is " the Head," from whom, supplied and compacted by its 
junctures and ligaments, the whole body grows the growth of God. 8 If ye died 
with Christ from mundane rudiments, why, as though living in the world, are ye 
ordinance-ridden with such rules as ' Do not handle,' ' Do not taste,' ' Do not even 
touch,' referring to things all of which are perishable in the mere consumption, 9 ac- 
cording to ' the commandments and teachings of men ' ? All these kinds of rules have 
a credit for wisdom in volunteered supererogation 10 and abasement — hard usage of the 
body — but have no sort of value as a remedy as regards the indulgence of the flesh.'' 11 

1 Tearing himself free from the assaults of evil spirits, which would otherwise have 
invested Him as a robe (cf. 1 Pet. v. 5, eyKop.|3wcracr0e ; Heb. xii. 1, eimepto-TaTos ; Isa. xi. 5, 
&c), He carried away their spoils, as trophies, on His cross. 

2 ii. 11 — 15. For 0piap.j3ew<is, cf. 2 Cor. ii. 14, infra, p. 700. 

3 "This is the path of the Thorah. A morsel with salt shalt thou eat ; thou shalt 
drink also water by measure" (Perek. It. Meir). 

4 If after nineteen centuries the Christian Church has not understood the sacred 
freedom of this language, we may imagine what insight it required to utter it in St. 
Paul's day, and how the Jews would gnash their teeth when they heard of it. "When 
"the Emperor" asked B. Akibha how he recognised the Sabbath day, he said, "The 
river Sambatyon (the so-called ' Sabbatic river ') proves it ; the necromancer proves it 
(who can do nothing on the Sabbath) ; thy father's grave proves it (which smokes, to 
Bhow that its tenant is in hell, except on the Sabbath, on which day even hell rests ").— 
Sanhedrin, f. 65, 2. Myriads of passages might be quoted to show that it was the very 
keystone of the whole Judaic system : see Babha Kama, f . 82, 1 ; Abhoda Zara, f. 64, 2, 
&c. The law of the Sabbath, as our Lord strove so often to convince the Jews, is a law 
of holy freedom, not of petty bondage. 

5 e4\oiv ev, 2 yen, 1 Sam. xviii. 22, &c. See Aug., Beng., Olsh., Lightf. 

6 Angelology of the most developed description existed in the Jewish Church long 
before Gnosticism was heard of. See Gfrorer, Jahr. des Heils. i. 124, seq. I have collected 
some of the facts in a paper on Jewish Angelology and Demonology [Life of Christ, ii. 465, 
$eq.). Neander refers to the K^puy/ia ne'rpov, and Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 635. Theodoret 
(ii. 18) mentions that even in his day there were oratories to the Archangel Michael. 

7 a kopoLKev {a, A, B, D). Dr. Lightfoot and others make the very simple conjectural 
emendation, a i6pa<ev Keveju/SarevGov, aut s. a. This does not indeed occur in any MS., but 
its disappearance would be easily explained — (i. ) by the homoeoteleuton ; (ii. ) by the rare 
verb. The verb Kevep.j3a.Teu'co (not unlike the aepo^aroj /cat 7repi<£povw tov -fjAiov, "I tread the air 
and circumspect the sun," of Arist. Nub. 225, and the cuflepo/SaTeiTe of Philo, i. 465) might 
conceivably have been suggested by one of the heretical theosophic terms, if Kev^^a had 
ever been used by some incipient Gnostic of that day (as afterwards) by way of antithesis 
to Pleroma. But may not a. eupanev e/xparevwv be taken (metaphorically) to mean "dwell- 
ing upon what He has seen"? 

8 The accordance of the passage with the highest scientific range of that age is remark* 
able, and may be due to St. Luke. 

9 Mark vii. 1—23. 

10 Ver. 23, eOeKoOp-qo-iceia, a happy coinage of St. Paul's, which Epiphanius expands into 
&e\oT?epi<r(ro6pTi<TKeia {Haer. i, 16). 

11 ii 16—23. This remarkable passage, which is very obscure in the E. V., is an 



620 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. TAUL. 

The true remedy, he proceeds to imply, is very different :— 

"If then ye were raised with Christ, seek the things ahove, where Christ 
is sitting on the right hand of God. Think of the things ahove, not the things 
on the earth. For ye died" (to sin in baptism), "and your life has been hidden 
with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, is manifested, then ye also with Him 
shall be manifested in glory. Kill then at a blow" — not by regulated asceticisms, 
but by this outburst of a new life, which is in Christ, which is Christ — " your 
members that are on the earth — fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and, 
above all, covetousness, for that is idolatry — because of which things cometh the 
wrath of God. 1 In which things ye also walked once, when ye were living in them ; 
but now put ye away also all vices, anger, wrath, malice, railing, foul calumny, 
out of your mouths. Lie not one to another, since ye utterly stripped off the old 
man with his deeds, and put on the new man, which is being ever renewed to full 
knowledge, according to the image of his Creator, in a region wherein there is no room 
for Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, 2 slave, free, 
but Christ is all things, and in all. Put on then, as elect of God, saints beloved, 
hearts of compassion, kindness, humbleness, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one 
another, and forgiving one another, if any one have a complaint against any one. 
Even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye. And over all these things put 
on lore, for love is the girdle of perfection ; and let the peace of Christ arbitrate in 
your hearts, unto which peace ye were even called in one body, and show yourselves 
thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching one 
another and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, 3 spiritual songs in grace, 
singing in your hearts to God. And everything whatever ye do, in word or in 
deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, thanking God the Father by 
Him" 4 

Then follow varions practical exhortations — to wives to love their husbands, 
as is eternally fit in the Lord ; 5 to husbands to love their wives, and 
not behave bitterly towards them ; to children to obey their parents ; to fathers 
not to irritate their children, that they may not lose heart. 6 To slaves, 
of whose duties and position he must often have thought recently, from 
his interest in Onesimus, he gives the precept to obey earthly masters, working 
as ever in their Great Taskmaster's eye, looking for the reward of faithfulness 
to Him who would also send the retribution for wrong-doing. On masters 
he enjoins justice and equity towards their slaves, remarking that they too 
have a Lord in heaven. 7 

argument against, not for, the worrying scrupulosities of exaggerated asceticism — on the 
ground that they are useless for the end in view. St. Paul might have gone even further ; 
for the lives of hermits and monks show us that the virulence of temptation is intensified 
into insupportable agony by the morbid introspection which results from mistaken means 
of combating it. 

1 Ver. 6, our enl tows viovs rrjs a7rei0eias, introduced probably from Eph. v. 6. 

2 Ver. 11. The Scythians were the lowest type of barbarians (Gal. iii. 28). 

3 Christian hymnology began very early, though the hymns were not necessarily me- 
trical (Rev. xv. 3 ; Acts xvi. 25 ; Eph. v. 19, 20 ; Plin. Ep. 97 ; Mart. S. Ign. vii. 
wfal in apxns vtto 7n<nw ypa<J>eioai, Euseb. II. E. v. 28. Rhythmic passages are Eph. v. 14 ; 
1 Tim. iii. 16 ; vi. 15, 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 11—13 [Diet. Christ. Antt. s. v. Hymns). 

4 iii. 1—17. 

6 ws avynev, " as ever was, and ever is fitting" (cf. Acts xxii. 22). (See my Brief 
Greek Syntax, § 140.) 

6 Notice the rare originality of the exhortation. Should we expect to find it in 
• forger ? 

7 iii. 18 — 25, From such passages as these were drawn such noble warning rules of 



THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 621 

The* he tells them to be constant in watchful prayer and thanksgiving, 
and asks their prayers that God would grant an opening for that ministry for 
which he was a prisoner. To the outer world he bids them walk in wisdom, 
buying up every opportunity, and addressing each one to whom they spoke 
with pleasant and wholesome words — "in grace seasoned with salt." l 

He sends no personal news, because that will be conveyed by Tychicus, 
his beloved brother, and a faithful minister and fellow- slave in the Lord, whom 
be sends for that purpose 2 to strengthen their hearts, with Onesimus, their 
fellow-citizen, and now their faithful and beloved brother, whatever he may 
have been before. He sends them greetings from Aristarchus, his fellow- 
prisoner ; 3 from Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, 4 about whose possible visit 
they had received special injunctions ; and Jesus surnamed Justus — the only 
three Jewish Christians who worked with him to further God's kingdom, and 
so became a source of consolation to him. Epaphras, also one of themselves, 
greets them — a slave of Christ Jesus, ever contending on their behalf in his 
prayers that they may stand perfect and entire in all God's will, and one who 
was deeply interested in their Churches. Luke the physician, the beloved, 
greets them, and Demas. 5 He begs them to greet the Laodicean brethren, and 
Nymphas, and the church in the house of him and his friends. 6 He orders 
his Epistle to be publicly read, not only in the Colossian, but also in the 
Laodicean Church, and bids them read the circular letter which they couldprocure 
from Laodicea. 7 " And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which 
thou receivedst in the Lord, that thou fulfil it." 8 The letter concludes with 
his own autograph salutation, to which he briefly adds, " Remember my bonds. 
Grace be with you." 9 

It is no part of my present task to trace the subsequent history of 

feudalism as : " Entre toi vilain, et toi seigneur, il n'y a juge fors Dieu." " Le seigneur 
qui prend des droits injustes de son vilain, les prend au peril de son ame " (Beaumanoir). 
These humble practical rules might be all the u ore necessary for those who looked on 
outward family duties as vulgar, and obstructions to spiritual contemplation. (Maurice, 
Unity, 587.) How different this from ovSe nposytKav SovAois 'Apto-Tore'ATjs eta ttot*. (Clem. 
Alex. Strom, iii. 12, § 84.) 

1 iv. 1—6. 2 iv. 8, leg., "vayvmre ra Trepl rifiw (A, B, D, F, G). 

3 Ver. 10, crwoux^oLWro?. Properly, " a fellow-captive taken in war." So of Epaphras 
(Philem. 23), Andronicus, Junias (Rom. xvi. 7.) In none of these cases can we tell the 
exact allusion, or whether the word is literal or metaphorical. 

4 Barnabas was perhaps dead, and thus Mark would be free. Paul seems to have had 
a little misgiving about his reception. 

5 Perhaps Paul's insight into character is shown by his somewhat ominous silence 
about Demas. (2 Tim. iv. 10.) 

fi Ver. 15, avTo>v {a, A, C) ; wn]? (B, Lachm.) ; ati-rov (F, G, K, &c). 

7 ttjv eK AaoScKeias, "written to Laodicea and coming to them from Thrace." Con- 
structio praegnans. {Brief Greek Syntax, § 89; Winer, § lxvi. 6.) There can be little 
doubt that this was the Epistle to the " Ephesians." The apocryphal Epistle to Laodicea 
is a miserable cento. (See Lightf oot, Col. 340 — 366 ; "Westcott, Canon, p. 572. ) 

8 Archippus is believed to be a son of Philemon, and chief presbyter of Laodicea. 
If bo, Tychicus would see him on his way to Coloasse. It is at least curious that the 
lukewarmness, the lack of zeal which seems here to be gently rebuked, is the distinguishing 
character of the Laodicean Church, as represented by its ' ' angel " in Rev. iii. 15. (Trench, 
Seven Churches, 180.) 

9 This shorter form is characteristic of Paul's later Epistles — Col. i., 2 Tim., Tit, 
The longer form is found in all up to this date. 



622 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

the Churches r£ the Lycus. The followers of Baur in Germany, and 
of Renan in France, have tried to represent that St. Paul's teaching in Asia 
■was followed by a reaction in which his name was calumniated and his 
doctrines ignored. The theory is very dubious. The doctrines and the 
warnings of St. John to the Seven Churches are closely analogous to, 
sometimes almost verbally identical with, those of St. Paul ; and tbo essence 
of the teaching of both Apostles on all the most important aspects cf 
Christianity is almost exactly the same. An untenable inference has been 
drawn from the supposed silence of Papias about St. Paul, so far as we can 
judge from the references of Eusebius. It was the object of Papias to collect 
traditional testimonies from various Apostles and disciples, and of these St. 
Paul could not have been one. Papias was Bishop of Bierapolis, in which 
St. Paul may never have set his foot. Even if he did, his visit was brief, and 
had taken place long before Papias wrote, whereas after the destruction 
of Jerusalem St. John resided for many years at Ephesus, and there were 
gathered around him Andrew, Philip, Aristion, and others who had known the 
Lord. These were the authorities to which Papias referred for his somewhat 
loose and credulous traditions, and he may have quoted St. Paul, just 
as Polycarp does, without its at all occurring to Eusebius to mention the fact. 
Not only is there no proof of a general apostasy from Pauline principles, but 
in the decrees of the Council held at Laodicea about the middle of the fourth 
century, we read the very same warnings against angelolatry, Judaism, and 
Oriental speculation, which find a place in these Epistles of the Captivity. 
Colossse itself — liable as it was to constant earthquakes, which were rendered 
more ruinous by the peculiarities of the Lycus with its petrifying waters 
— was gradually deserted, and the churches of Asia finally perished 
under the withering blight of Islam with its cruelties, its degradation, 
and its neglect. 



CHAPTER L. 

ST. PAUL AND ONESIMUS. 



" Quasi vero curent divina de servis ! " — Macrob. Sat. i. 11. 

" In servos superbissimi, crudelissimi, contumeliosissimi sumus." — Sen. Ep. xlvii 

" Aequalitas naturae et fidei potior est quam differentia statuum." — Bengel. 

" Through the vista of history we see slavery and its Pagan theory of two 
races fall before the holy word of Jesus, ' All men are the children of God.' — 
Mazzini, Works, vi. 99. 

" ' The story is too rare to be true.' Christian faith has answered that. ' It is 
too suggestive to be true.' Christian science has answered that."— Lange, Apostol. 
Zeitalt. i. 134. 

In the Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul had sent no greeting to Philemon — 
who was a prominent member of that Church — because he purposed to write 
him a separate letter. A man like St. Paul, whose large and loving heart had 



ST. PATX AND 0NESIMTT8. 623 

won for him so many deeply-attached friends, must have often communicated 
with them by brief letters, bnt the Epistle to Philemon is the only private 
letter of this correspondence which has been preserved for us — the only private 
letter in the canon of the New Testament, with the exception of the brief 
letter of St. John to the well-beloved Gaius. 1 We cannot but regret the loss. 
Hundreds of letters of Cicero, of Seneca, and of Pliny, have come down to us, 
and, though some of them are models of grace and eloquence, how gladlj 
would we resign them all for even one or two of those written by the Apostle t 
In style, indeed, his letter is quite careless and unpolished ; but whereas the 
letters of the great Romans, with all then" literary skill and finish, often leave 
on us an involuntary impression of the vanity, the insincerity, even in some 
instances the entire moral instability of their writers, on the other hand, this 
brief letter of St. Paul reveals to us yet another glimpse of a character worthy 
of the very noblest utterances which we find in his other Epistles. These few 
lines, at once so warmhearted and so dignified, which theological bigotry was 
once inclined to despise as insignificant, express principles of eternal ap- 
plicability which even down to the latest times have had no small influence in 
the development of the world's history. "With all the slightness of its texture, 
and the comparative triviality of the occasion which called it forth, the letter 
is yet a model of tact, of sympathy, and of high moral nobleness. This little 
" idyl of the progress of Christianity " 2 shows that under the worn and 
ragged gabardine of the wandering missionary there beat the heart of a true 
gentleman, whose high-bred manners would have done honour to any court. 3 

We have seen that during his imprisonment St. Paul was, by " that unseen 
Providence which men nickname Chance," brought into contact with a 
runaway slave from Colossse, whose name was Onesimns, or "Profitable." He 
had fled to Rome — to Rome, the common sentina of the world 4 — to hide 
himself from the consequences of crimes for which a heathen master might 
without compunction have consigned him to the ergastulum or the cross ; and 
in the basement of one of the huge Roman insulae, or in the hovel of some 
fellow-child of vice and misery in that seething mass of human wretchedness 
which weltered like gathered scum on the fringe of the glittering tide of 
civilisation, he was more secure than anywhere else of remaining undetected. 
What it was that rescued him from the degradations which were the sole 
possible outcome of such an ill-begun career we cannot tell. He would soon 
exhaust what he had stolen from his master ; and as Rome was full to over- 
flowing of slaves and idlers— as the openings for an honest maintenance even 
in the barest poverty were few — it is hard to see what resource was left to 

1 The " elect lady " of 2 John i. 1 is believed to be, not an individual, but a Church. 

2 Davies. 

3 Even Baur seems to blush for the necessity which made him declare this Epistle 
spurious. He only does so because it is more or less involved with the other three, and 
stands or falls with them. "What has criticism to do with this short, attractive, 
friendly, and graceful letter, inspired as it is by the noblest Christian feeling, and which 
has never yet been touched by the breath of suspicion ?" {Paul. ii. 80.) 

« Sail. Cat. xxxvii. 5. 



624 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

him except a life of villany. Perhaps in this condition he was met by his 
fellow- Colossian, Epaphras, who as a Presbyter of Colossse would be well 
known to Philemon. Perhaps Aristarchus, or any other of those who had 
been St. Paul's companions at Ephesus, had come across him, and recognised 
him as having been in attendance on Philemon at the time of his conversion 
by St. Paul. Perhaps he had himself been present at some of those daily 
addresses and discussions in the school of Tyrannus, which, though at the 
time they had not touched his heart, had at the least shown him the noble 
nature of the speaker, and revealed to the instinctive sense of one who 
belonged to an oppressed class, the presence of a soul which could sympathise 
with the suffering. How this may have been we do not know, but we do 
know that his hopes were not deceived. The Apostle received him kindly, 
sympathetically, even tenderly. The Rabbis said, " It is forbidden to teach a 
slave the Law." 1 "As though Heaven cared for slaves! " said the ordinary 
Pagan, with a sneer. 2 Not so thought St. Paul. In Christianity there is 
nothing esoteric, nothing exclusive. Onesimus became a Christian. The 
heart which was hard as a diamond against Pharisaism and tyranny, was yet 
tender as a mother's towards sorrow and repentant sin. Paul had learnt in 
the school of Him who suffered the penitent harlot to wash His feet with her 
tears and wipe them with the hair of her head ; of Him who had said to the 
convicted adulteress, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." 
Paul in no wise shared the anti- Christian respect of persons which made some 
people in St. Jerome's days 3 argue that it was beneath his dignity to trouble 
himself about a runaway slave. He understood better than the Fathers that 
the religion of Christ is the Magna Charta of humanity. The drag-net of His 
" fishers of men " was dropped to the very depths of the social sea. Here was 
one whose position was the lowest that could be conceived. He was a slave ; 
a slave of the country whose slaves were regarded as the worst there were ; a 
slave who had first robbed a kind master, and then run away from him ; a 
slave at whom current proverbs pointed as exceptionally worthless, 4 amenable 
only to blows, and none the better even for them. 5 In a word, he was a 
slave ; a Phrygian slave ; a thievish Asiatic runaway slave, who had no 
recognised rights, and towards whom no one had any recognised duties. He 
was a mere " live chattel ; " G a mere " implement with a voice ; " 7 a thing 
which had no rights, and towards which there were no duties. But St. Paul 
converted him, and the slave became a Christian, a brother beloved and 
serviceable, an heir of immortality, a son of the kingdom, one of a royal 
generation, of a holy priesthood. The satirist Persius speaks with utter scorn 
of the rapid process by which a slave became a freeman and a citizen.- 



> Ketubhoth, f. 28, 1. 

2 Macrob. Saturn. 11. The better Stoics furnish a noble exception to this tone, 

3 In Ep. ad Philem. 

4 Mvaotv eo-xaro?. Menand. Androfh 7 ; Plat. Theaet. 209, B. 

6 Cic. pro Flacc. 27. 6 -Arist. Pol. i. 4, Zfxtyvxov opyavov. 

7 Varro, de Re Rust. i. 17. " Instrumenti genus . . . vocale." 



ST. PAUL AND ONESIMUS. 625 

" There stands Dama — a twopenny stable-boy, and a pilfering scoundrel ; the 
PraBtor touches him with his wand, and twirls him round, and 

" Momento turbinis, exit 
Marcus Dama ! . . . . Papae ! Marco spondente recusas 
Credere tu nummos ? Marco sub judice palles ? " 1 

But the difference between Dama the worthless drudge and Marcus Dama the 
presumably worthy citizen was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the real 
and unsurpassable difference which separated Onesimus the good-for-nothing 
Phrygian fugitive from Onesimus the brother faithful and beloved. 

And thus the Epistle to Philemon becomes the practical manifesto of 
Christianity against the horrors and iniquities of ancient and modern slavery. 8 
From the very nature of the Christian Church — from the fact that it was " a 
kingdom not of this world " — it could not be revolutionary. It was never 
meant to prevail by physical violence, or to be promulgated by the sword. It 
was the revelation of eternal principles, not the elaboration of practical details. 
It did not interfere, or attempt to interfere, with the facts of the established 
order. Had it done so it must have perished in the storm of excitement 
which it would have inevitably raised. In revealing truth, in protesting 
against crime, it insured its own ultimate yet silent victory. It knew that 
where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. It was loyal to the powers 
that be. It raised no voice, and refused no tribute even to a Gains or a Nero. 
It did not denounce slavery, and preached no fatal and futile servile war. It 
did not inflame its Onesimi to play the parts of an Eunus or an Artemio. Yet 
it inspired a sense of freedom which has been in all ages the most invincible foe 
to tyranny, and it proclaimed a divine equality and brotherhood, which while 
it left untouched the ordinary social distinctions, left slavery impossible to 
enlightened Christian lands. 3 

This delicate relation to the existing structure of society is admirably 
illustrated by the Letter to Philemon. The tension always produced by the 
existence of a slave population, vastly preponderant in numbers, was at that 
moment exceptionally felt. Less than two years before St. Paul wrote to 

1 Pers. Sat. v. 76—80. 

2 " Omnia in servum licent " (Sen. Clem. i. 18). For an only too vivid sketch of what 
those horrors and iniquities were, see Dollinger, Judenth. u. Heidenth. ix. 1, § 2 ; Wallon, 
Hist, de VEsclavage dans VAntiquite. The difference between the wisdom which is of the 
world and the wisdom which is of God may be measured by the difference between the 
Epistle to Philemon and the sentiments of heathens even so enlightened as Aristotle 
(Polit. i. 3 ; Eth. Nic. viii. 13) and Plato {Legg. vi. 777, seq. ; Rep. viii. 549). The differ- 
ence between Christian morals and those of even such Pagans as passed for very models 
of virtue may be estimated by comparing the advice of St. Paul to Christian masters, 
and the detestable greed and cruelty of the elder Cato in his treatment of his slaves 
(Plut. Cat. Maj. x. 21; Plin. H. N. xviii. 8. 3). See too Plautus, passim; Sec. 
Ep. xlvii. ; Juv. Sat. vi. 219, seq. ; Tac. Ann. xiv. 42 — 45 : and Plut. Apophthegm, vi. 
778 (the story of Vedius Pollio). 

3 On the relation of Christianity to slavery see Lecky, Hist, of nationalism, ii. 258 ; 
Troplong, De VInfluence du Christ sur le Droit civil, &c. ; Gold. Smith, Does the Bible 
sanction American Slavery? De Broglie, L'Eglise et VEmp. vi. 498, seq. ; i. 162, 306; 
Wallon, De VEsclavage, ii. ad fin., &c. The feeling is indicated in Rev. xviii. 13. 

O O 



626 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Philemon, a Consular, a Prsefect of the city, named Pedanius Secundus, had 
been murdered by a slave under circumstances of infamy which characterised 
that entire epoch. In spite of the pity of the people, the Senate had decided 
that the old ruthless law, re-established by the Silanian decree under 
Augustus, should be carried out, and the entire familia of slaves be put 
to death. Regardless of the menaces of the populace, Nero ordered the 
sentence to be executed by military force, and four hundred human beings of 
every age and of both sexes had been led through Hues of soldiers to their 
slaughter in spite of the indubitable innocence of the vast majority. This 
horrible event, together with the thrilling debate to which it had given rise in 
the Senate, had made the subject of slavery a " burning question " at Rome, 
and deepened the general feeling which had long found proverbial expression, 
that "the more slaves the more enemies." In that memorable debate, it had 
been asserted by C. Cassius Longinus that the only way in which the rich 
could live in Rome— few amid multitudes, safe amid the terrified, or, at the 
worst, not unavenged among the guilty — would be by a rigid adherence to the 
old and sanguinary law. 

Such then, was the state of things in which St. Paul sat down to write his 
letter of intercession for the Phrygian runaway. He could not denounce 
slavery ; he could not even emancipate Onesimus ; but just as Moses, " because 
of the hardness of your hearts," 1 could not overthrow the lex talionis, or 
polygamy, or the existence of blood-feuds, but rendered them as nugatory as 
possible, and robbed them as far as he could of their fatal sting, by controlling 
and modifying influences, so St. Paul established the truths that rendered 
slavery endurable, and raised the slave to a dignity which made emancipation 
itself seem but a secondary and even trivial thing. A blow was struck at the 
very root of slavery when our Lord said, " Te all are brethren." In a 
Christian community a slave might be a " bishop," and his master only a 
catechumen ; and St. Paul writes to bid the Corinthians pay due respect and 
subjection to the household of Stephanas, though some of the Corinthians 
were people of good position, and these were slaves. 2 Onesimus repaid by 
gratitude, by affection, by active and cherished services to the aged prisoner, 
the inestimable boon of his deliverance from moral and spiritual death. 
Gladly would St. Paul, with so much to try him, with so few to tend him, have 
retained this warm-hearted youth about his person, — one whose qualities, 
however much they may have been perverted and led astray, were so naturally 
sweet and amiable, that St. Paul feels for him all the affection of a father 
towards a son. 3 And had ho retained him, he felt sure that Philemon would 
not only have pardoned the liberty, but would even have rejoiced that one over 
whom he had some claim should discharge some of those kindly duties to the 

1 Matt. xix. 8. 2 See Hausrath, Neut. Zeitg. ii. 405. 

3 It is not said in so many words that Onesimus was young, but the language used 
respecting him seems clearly to show that this was the case (l'hilem. 10, 12, &c). The 
expression vnXayxv*, hke the Latin viscera, is used of Bona — oi n-atSes a-7rA.ayxi'a MyovraA 
(Artemid. Oneirocr, L 44 ; cf. v. 57). 



8T. PAUL AND ONESIMUS. 627 

A-postle in his affliction which he himself was unable to render. 1 But Paul 
was too much of a gentleman 2 to presume on the kindness of even a beloved 
convert. And besides this, a fault had been committed, and had not yet been 
condoned. It was necessary to show by example that, where it was possible, 
restitution should follow repentance, and that he who had been guilty of a 
great wrong should not be irregularly shielded from its legitimate conse- 
quences. Had Philemon been a heathen, to send Onesimus to him would have 
been to consign the poor slave to certain torture, to possible crucifixion. 3 He 
would, to a certainty, have become henceforth a "branded runaway," a 
stigmatias* or have been turned into the slave-prison to work in chains. But 
Philemon was a Christian, and the " Gospel of Christ, by Christianising the 
master, emancipated the slave." 6 Paul felt quite sure that he was sending 
back the runaway — who had become his dear son, and from whom he could not 
part without a violent wrench — to forgiveness, to considerate kindness, in all 
probability to future freedom ; and at any rate right was right, and he felt that 
he ought not to shrink from the personal sacrifice of parting with him. He 
therefore sent him back under the kind care of Tychicus, and — happily for us 
— with a " commendatory Epistle," which even Baur apologises for rejecting, 
and which all the world has valued and admired. 6 It has been compared by 
Grotius and others with the graceful and touching letter written by the 
younger Pliny to his friend Sabinianus to intercede for an offending freedman, 
who with many tears and entreaties had besought his aid, That exquisitely 
natural and beautifully- written letter does credit both to Pliny's heart and to 
his head, and yet polished as it is in style, while St. Paul's is written with a 
sort of noble carelessness of expression, it stands for beauty and value far 
below the letter to Philemon. In the first place, it is for a young freedman 
who had been deeply beloved, and not for a runaway slave. In the next place, 
it is purely individual, and wholly wanting in the large divine principle which 
underlies the letter of St. Paul. And there are other marked differences. 
Paul has no doubt whatever about the future good conduct of Onesimus ; but 

1 Philem. 13, Iva inip <rov /xot iuucovfj. It is unlikely that 8taKovS> here implies religious 
assistance. 

2 Many writers have felt that no word but "gentleman," in its old and truest sense, 
is suitable to describe the character which this letter reveals. (Stanley, Cor. 391 ; Newman, 
Serm.. on Various Occasions, 133. ) ' ' The only fit commentator on Paul was Luther — 
not by any means such a gentleman as the Apostle was, but almost as great a genius " 
(Coleridge, Table Talk). 

3 Juv. Sat. vi. 219 ; Plin. Ep. ix. 21, " Ne torseris ilium." 

4 SpcLTre-njs eariy^evo? (Ar. Av. 759). (Becker, Charikles, p. 370.) 

5 Bp. "Wordsworth. 

6 Baur's rejection of it is founded on un-Pauline expressions — i.e., expressions which 
only occur in other Epistles which he rejects ; on the assertion that the circumstances are 
improbable ; and that the word a-n-Xayxva — which he admits to be Pauline, and which 
might, he says, have occurred twice — is used three times ! The Epistle is therefore to 
him an "Embryo einer Christlichen Dichtung." Admissirisumteneatis? The " Vorwurf 
der Hyperkritik, eines ubertriebenen Misstrauens, einer alles angreif enden Zweif elsucht " 
is, however, one which applies not only to his criticism of this Epistle, but to much of 
Ms general method j only in this instance, as Wiesinger says, it is not only Hyperkritik 
but Unkritik. 

o o 2 



528 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Pliny thinks that the young freedman may offend again. Pliny assumes thai 
Sabinianus is and will be angry ; Paul has no such fear about Philemon. 
Paul pleads on the broad ground of Humanity redeemed in Christ; Pliny 
pleads the youth and the tears of the freedman, and the affection which his 
master had once felt for him. Paul does not think it necessary to ask 
Philemon to spare punishment ; Pliny has to beg his friend not to use torture. 
Paul has no reproaches for Onesimus ; Pliny severely scolded his young 
suppliant, and told him — without meaning to keep his word — that he should 
never intercede for him again. The letter of Pliny is the letter of an excellent 
Pagan ; but the differences which separate the Pagan from the CL istian stand 
out in every line. 1 



CHAPTER LI. 

THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. 



" Servi sunt ? immo conservi." — Sen. 

" Evangelico decore conscripta est." — Jer. 

"Epistola familiaris, mire aareTos summae sapientiae praebitura specimen." — 
Ben gel. 

" Ita modeste et suppliciter pro infimo homine se dimittit ut vix alibi usquam 
magis ad vivum sit expressa ingenii ejus mansuetudo." — Calvin. 

"Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy the brother, to Philemon, our 
beloved and fellow- worker, and to Apphia the sister, 2 and to Archippus our fellow- 
soldier, and to the Church in thy house ; grace to you, and peace from God our 
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

" I thank my God always, making mention of thee in my prayers — hearing thy 
love, and the faith thou hast towards the Lord Jesus and unto all the saints 3 — that 
the kindly exercise of thy faith may become effectual, in the full knowledge of every 
blessing we possess, unto Christ's glory. For I had much joy and consolation in 
thy love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by thee, brother. 

" Although, then, I feel much confidence in Christ to enjoin upon thee what is 
fitting, yet I rather entreat thee for love's sake, being such an one as Paul the aged, 4 
and at this moment also a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I entreat thee about my child, 
whom I begot in my bonds — Onesimus — once to thee the reverse of his name — profit- 

1 A translation of Pliny's letter will be found in Excursus XXIII. {Ep. ix. 21.) 

2 The reading is uncertain, but n, A, D, E, F, G (B is here deficient) read ASeX^p, and 
we judge from Theodore of Mopsuestia that dya^T^ may in his age, and perhaps m tb*» 
Apostle's, have given rise to coarse remarks from coarse minds. 

3 Ver. 5, Trpbs . . . et?. 

4 Ver. 9, toiovtos wv to? is not unclassical, as Meyer asserts. (See instances in Light- 
foot, Col., p. 404.) St. Paul must at this time have been sixty years old, and people of 
that age, particularly when they have been battered, as he had been, by all the storms 
of life, naturally speak of themselves as old. I cannot think that this means "an ambas- 
sador (Eph. vi. 20). To say nothing of the fact that the reading is Trpeo-pvrqs, not 
Trpea73evT7}5, and allowing that the two might often have been confused (just as, indeed, 
rrpeo-jSOs and 7rpe<r/3evT^? interchange the meanings of their plurala), ye\ would Paul have 
(«iid "an ambassador " without saying of whom ? 



THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. 629 

less l not ' profitable,' and no Christian, but now truly profitable 2 and a good 
Christian — whom I send back to thee. Him that is the son of my bowels, 3 whom I 
should have preferred to retain about my own person that he may on thy behalf 
minister to me in the bonds of the Gospel — but without thy opinion I decided to do 
nothing, that thy kindly deed may not be a matter of compulsion, but voluntary. 
For perhaps on this account he was parted for a season, that thou mayst have him 
back for ever, no longer as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved, especially 
to me, but how far more to thee, both naturally and spiritually. If, then, thou 
holdest me as a comrade, receive him. like myself. But if he wronged thee in any 
respect, or is in thy debt, set that down to me. I Paul write it with my own hand, 
I will repay it 4 — not to say to thee that thou owest me even thyself besides. Yes, 
brother, may I ' profit ' by thee in the Lord. 5 Eefresh my heart in Christ. Con- 
fiding in thy compliance I write to thee, knowing that even more than I say thou 
wilt do. But further than this, prepare for me a lodging, for I hope that by means 
of your prayers I shall be granted to you. 

" There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, Marcus, Aris- 
tarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow-labourers. 

" The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with the spirit of you and yours." • 

1 ixp- Litotes ; erat enim noxius (Bengel). 

8 Ver. 11. There seems here, as Baur acutely observes, to be a double paronomasia, 
which I have endeavoured to indicate. For Xpiorb? and Xp^crrbs were confused with each 
other, and the Christians did not dislike this. 'Ek tou xa-nj-yopou/xeVov^ tjjuwv bv6y.a.Tos 

XPTjcTTOTaroi vndpxoiJiev xP ia " rLav0L V^P etvai Kanjyopovp-efla rbv Se XPW'OV /oucreurfjai oi> SUatov 

(Justin, Apol. i. 4). (Tert. Apol. 3.) Supra, p. 

3 "Son of my bowels, Anselm !" (Browning, The Bishop's Tomb.) InKdyxva. = cor - 
culum, "my very heart;" "the very eyes of me;" com. The elliptic form of the 
sentence, so characteristic of St. Paul, is filled up in some MSS. by 2v Se avrov, tov'tcctti 

to. e/u.a a-nkdyxva vpoaXafiov . 

* 'Avri ypannarCov (a bond) Tjjvfie icarex* rqv eincrro\r\v' naa-av avrrji' yeypaxfra (Theodoret). Some 

have supposed that Paul here took the pen from the amanuensis, and that this is the 
only autograph sentence. Oosterzee, &c, treat this as "a good-humoured jest;" and 
others think it unlike the delicacy which never once reminds the Judaisers of the chaluka 
which St. Paul had toiled to raise. But a slave was valuable, and something in the 
character of Philemon may have led to the remark. Bengel rightly says, "Vinctus 
scribit serio," as a father pays the debts of his son. Schrader, Lardner, Bleek, Hackett 
regard it as "no better than calumny" to say that Onesimus had stolen anything. 

5 Ver. 20, bvaC^v. " I send you back an Onesimus now worthy of his name ; will 
you be my Onesimus?" It is vain for critics to protest against these plays on names. 
They have been prevalent in all ages, and in all writers, and in all countries, as I have 
shown by multitudes of instances in Chapters on Language, ch. xxii. As a parallel to 
this play on Onesimus, compare "Whitefield's personal appeal to the comedian Shuter, 
who had often played the character of Kamble — " And thou, poor Ramble, who hast so 
often rambled from Him .... Oh, end thy ramblings and come to Jesus." 

6 Paul had been trained as a Rabbi. To see what Christianity had taught him we 
have only to compare his teachings with those of his former masters. Contrast, for 
instance, the Rabbinic conception of a slave with that tender estimate of human worth 
— that high conception of the dignity of man as man — which stands out so beautifully 
in this brief letter. The Rabbis taught that on the death of a slave, whether male or 
female — and even of a Hebrew slave — the benediction was not to be repeated for the 
mourners, nor condolence offered to them. It happened that on one occasion a female 
slave of Rabbi Eliezer died, and when his disciples came to condole with him he retired 
from them from room to room, from upper chamber to hall, till at last he said to them, 
"I thought you would feel the effects of tepid water, but you are proof even against hot 
water. Have I not taught you that these signs of respect are not to be paid at the death 
of slaves?" "What, then," asked the disciples, "are pupils on such occasions to say to 
their masters?" "The same as is said when their oxen and asses die," answered the 
Rabbi — " May the Lord replenish thy loss." They were not even to be mourned for by 
their masters; Rabbi Jose only permitted a master to say — "Alas, a good and faithful 
man, and one who lived by his labour!" But even this was objected to as being too 
much (Berachoth, f. 16, 2 ; Maimonides, Milch. Aval., § 12 ; Hal. 12). 



bSO THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

When Pliny interceded with Sabinianus for the offending freedman, he 
was able to write shortly afterwards, " You have done well in receiving back 
your freedman to your house and heart. This will give you pleasure, as it 
certainly gives me pleasure ; first, because it shows me your self-control, and 
secondly, because you esteem me sufficiently to yield to my authority, and 
make a concession to my entreaties." What was the issue of St. Paul's letter 
we are not told, but we may feel quite sure that the confidence of one who 
was so skilful a reader of human character was not misplaced ; that Philemon 
received his slave as kindly as Sabinianus received his freedman ; that he for- 
gave him, and not merely took him into favour, but did what St. Paul does 
not ask, but evidently desired, namely, set him free. 1 We may be sure, too, 
that if St. Paul was ever able to carry out his intended visit to Colossse, it was 
no mere " lodging " that Philemon prepared for him, but a home under his 
own and Apphia's roof, where they and the somewhat slack Archippus, and 
the Church that assembled in their house, might enjoy his beloved society, and 
profit by his immortal words. 



CHAPTER LII. 

THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 

T?7 'EK/cA-Tjafaj rrj a^iojjLaKapTaTWTrj ovay iv 'Ecpeffaj ttjs Aaias. — IoNAT. ad Eph. i. 
" Nulla Epistola Pauli tanta habet mysteria tarn reconditis sensibus involuta." — 
Jer. in Eph. iii. 

"Ei/ adtjxa teal '4v irvevfia. — Eph. iv. 4. 

The polemical speciality of the Epistle to the Colossians, compared with 
the far more magnificent generality of the great truths which occupy the 
earlier chapters of the Epistle to " the Ephesians," 2 seems (as we have already 

1 The ecclesiastical traditions about Philemon's episcopate, martyrdom, &c, are too 
late and worthless to deserve mention ; and the same may be said of those respecting 
Onesimus. As far as dates are concerned, he might be the Onesimus, Bishop of Ephesus, 
mentioned forty-fonr years later by St. Ignatius. A postscript in two MSS. says that he 
was martyred at Rome by having his legs broken on the rack. 

2 That the Epistle was meant for the Ephesians, among others, is generally admitted, 
and Alford points out the suitableness of "the Epistle of the grace of God " to a church 
where Paul had specially preached " the Gospel of the grace of God" (Acts xx. 24, 32). 
And the pathetic appeal contained in the words 6 Sea-^io^ (iii. 1 ; iv. 1) would come home 
to those who had heard the prophecy of Acts xx. 22. Other points of parallel between 
this Epistle and that to the Ephesian elders are the rare use of 0ovArj (i. 11 ; Acts xx. 27), 
of 7rept7rotT)a-is (i. 14 ; cf. Acts xx. 28), and of K\r]povoiJ.Ca (i. 14, 18 ; v. 5 ; Acts xx. 32 ; and 
Maurice, Unity, 512 — 514). But without going at length into the often-repeated argu- 
ment, the mere surface-phenomena of the Epistle — not by any means the mere omission 
of salutations, and of the name of Timothy — but the want of intimacy and speciality, 
the generality of the thanksgiving, the absence of the word " brethren " (see vi. 10), the 
distance, so to speak, in the entire tone of address, together with the twice-repeated elye 
(iii. 2 ; iv. 21), and the constrained absence of strong personal appeal in iii. 2 — 4, would 
alone be inexplicable, even if there were no external grounds for doubting the authenticity 
of the words iv 'E^ea-w. But when we find these words omitted for no conceivable reason 
in a, B, and know, on the testimony of Basil, that he had been traditionally informed of 



THE EPISTLE TO " THE EPHESIANS." 631 

observed) to furnish a decisive proof that the latter, to some extent, sprang 
out of the former, and that it was written because the Apostle desired to 
utilise the departure of Tychicus with the letter which had been evoked by 
the heresies of Celossae. 

Of the genuineness of the Epistle, in spite of all the arguments which have 
been brought against it, I cannot entertain the shadow of a doubt. I examine 
the question without any conscious bias. If the arguments against its Pauline 
authorship appeared valid, I am aware of no prepossession which would lead 
me to struggle against their force, nor would the deepest truths of the Epistle 
appear to me the less profound or sacred from the fact that tradition had erred 
in assigning its authorship. 1 

To the arguments which endeavoured to show that the Phaedo had not 
been written by Plato it was thought almost sufficient to reply — 

d fie Ukdruv ov ypdtye Su» iyevovro UKarcoves. 

Certainly if St. Paul did not write the Epistle to " the Ephesians," there must 
have been two St. Pauls. Baur speaks contemptuously of such an objection ; 2 
but can any one seriously believe that a forger capable of producing the 
Epistle to the Ephesians could have lived and died unheard of among the 
holy, but otherwise very ordinary, men and mediocre writers who attracted 
notice in the Church of the first century ? It is true that De Wette, and his 
followers, 3 treat the Epistle de haut en has as a verbose and colourless repro- 
duction, quite inferior to St. Paul's genuine writings, and marked by poverty 
of ideas and redundance of words. We can only reply that this is a matter of 
taste. The colour red makes no impression on the colour-blind ; and to some 
readers this Epistle has seemed as little colourless as is the body of heaven in 

their omission, and found them omitted, ev tois n-aXatoi? rav avTt.ypa<f>u>v, as also did Marcion, 
Tertullian, and Jerome, we are led to the unhesitating conclusion that the letter was not 
addressed exclusively to the Ephesians. The view which regards it as an encyclical, sent, 
among other places, to Laodicea, is highly probable (Col. iv. 16). In Eph. vi. 21, *ai 
v/u.ei? is most easily explicable, on the supposition that the letter was to go to different 
cities. In any case, the absence of greetings, &c, is a clear mark of genuineness, for a 
forger would certainly have put them in. The Epistle is by no means deficient in external 
evidence. Irenaeus (Haer. v. 2, 3), Clement of Alexandria (Strom, iv. 8), Polycarp {ad 
Phil. L, xii.), Tertullian [adv. Marc. v. 1, 17), and perhaps even Ignatius {ad Eph. vi.), 
have either quoted or alluded to it ; and it is mentioned in the Muratorian Canon. Im- 
pugners of its authenticity must account for its wide and early acceptance, no less than 
for the difficulty of its forgery. It is a simple fact that the Epistle was accepted as 
unquestionably Pauline from the days of Ignatius to those of Schleiermacher. " Penan 
sums up the objections to its authenticity under the heads of (i.) Recurrent phrases and 
anal- A.ey6/u.eva ; (ii. ) style weak, diffused, embarrassed ; (iii. ) traces of advanced Gnosticism ; 
(iv.) developed conception of the Church as a living organism ; (v.) un-Pauline exegesis ; 
(vi.) the expression "holy Apostles;" (vii.) un-Pauline views of marriage. I hope to 
show that these objections are untenable. 

1 That the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by the Apostle is now almost 
universally believed, yet this conviction has never led the Church to underrate its value 
as a part of the sacred canon of the New Testament Scriptures. 

2 Paul. ii. 2. 

3 Dr. Davidson, Introd. ii. 388. In his earlier edition, Dr. Davidson thought 
*' nothing more groundless " than such assertions, and he then said, "The language ia 
rich and copious, but it is everywhere pregnant with meaning," (Sea Gloag, Introd., 
d. 313.) 



632 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

its clearness. Chrysostom — no bad judge surely of style and rhetoric — spoke 
of the lofty sublimity of its sentiments. Theophylact dwells on the same 
characteristics as suitable to the Ephesians. Grotius says St. Paul here 
equals the sublimity of his thoughts with words more sublime than any human 
tongue has ever uttered. Luther reckoned it among the noblest books of the 
New Testament. Witsius calls it a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of 
Christian love, and the splendour of holy light, and flowing with fountains of 
living water. Coleridge said of it, " In this, the divinest composition of man, 
is every doctrine of Christianity: first, those doctrines peculiar to Chris- 
tianity ,• and secondly, those precepts common to it with natural religion." 
Lastly, Alford calls it " the greatest and most heavenly work of one whose 
very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens, and even his 
fancy rapt into the visions of God." Pfleiderer, though he rejects the 
genuineness of the Epistle, yet says that " of all the forms which Paulinism 
went through in the course of its transition to Catholicism, that of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians is the most developed and the richest in dogma." 

The close resemblance in expression, and in many of the thoughts, to 
the Epistle to the Colossians, when combined with the radical differences 1 
which separate the two Epistles, appears to me an absolutely irresistible 
proof in favour of the authenticity of both, even if the external evidence 
were weaker than it is. Roughly speaking, we may say that the style 
of Colossians shows a " rich brevity ; " that of Ephesians a diffhiser fulness. 
Colossians is definite and logical; Ephesians is lyrical and Asiatic. In 
Colossians, St. Paul has the error more prominently in view ; in Ephesians 
he has the counteracting truth. In Colossians he is the soldier; in Ephe- 
sians the builder. In Colossians he is arguing against a vain and deceitful 
philosophy; in Ephesians he is revealing a heavenly wisdom. Colossians 
is " his caution, his argument, his process, and his work-day toil ; " Ephe- 
sians is instruction passing into prayer, a creed soaring into the loftiest of 
Evangelic Psalms. Alike the differences and the resemblances are stamped 
with an individuality of style which is completely beyond the reach of 
imitation. 2 A forger might indeed have sat down with the deliberate pur- 
pose of borrowing words and phrases and thoughts from the Epistle to 
the Colossians, but in that case it would have been wholly beyond his 
power to produce a letter which, in the midst of such resemblances, con- 

1 There is the general resemblance that in both (Col. iii. ; Eph. iv. 1) the same tran- 
sition leads to the same application — the humblest morality being based on the sublimest 
truths ; and there are the special resemblances (a) in Christological views ; (0) in phrase- 
ology— seventy-eight verses out of 155 being expressed in the same phrases in the two 
Epistles. On the other hand, there are marked differences — (a) there are anai- \ey6/j.eva 
in both ; (/3) the leading word to. Znovpavia is peculiar to Ephesians ; (y) Ephesians has 
deep thoughts and whole sections (i. 3—14 ; iv. 5—15 ; v. 7—14 ; 23—31 ; vi. 10—17) 
which are not found in Colossians ; (8) there are seven Old Testament allusions or 
quotations in Ephesians, and only one in Colossians (ii. 21). 

2 Hence the critics are qnite unable to make up their minds whether the Epistles were 
written by two authors, or by one author ; and whether St. Paul was in part the author 
of either or of neither ; and whether the Colossians was an abstract of the Ephesiami, oi 
the Ephesians an amplification of the Colossiana. 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE 3PHESIANS. 633 

veyed so different an impression in a style so characteristic and so intensely 
emotional. 1 Even if we could regard it as probable that any one could 
have poured forth truths so exalted, and moral teaching so pure and pro- 
found, in an Epistle by which he deliberately intended to deceive the 
Church and the world, 2 it is not possible that one actuated by such a pur- 
pose should successfully imitate the glow and rush of feeling which marks 
the other writings of the Apostle, and expresses itself in the to-and-fro- 
connicting eddies of thought, in the one great flow of utterance and pur- 
pose. The style of St. Paul may be compared to a great tide ever advanc- 
ing irresistibly towards the destined shore, but broken and rippled over 
every wave of its broad expanse, and liable at any moment to mighty 
refluences as it foams and swells about opposing sandbank or rocky cape. 3 
With even more exactness we might compare it to a river whose pure 
waters, at every interspace of calm, reflect as in a mirror the hues of 
heaven, but which is liable to the rushing influx of mountain torrents, and 
whose reflected images are only dimly discernible in ten thousand fragments 
of quivering colour, when its surface is swept by ruffling winds. If we 
make the difficult concession that any other mind than that of St. Paul 
could have originated the majestic statement of Christian truth which is 
enshrined in the doctrinal part of the Epistle, we may still safely assert, 
on literary grounds alone, that no writer, desirous to gain a hearing for such 
high revelations, could have so completely merged his own individuality in 
that of another as to imitate the involutions of parentheses, the digressions 
at a word, the superimposition of a minor current of feeling over another 

1 The similarity of expressions (Davidson, Introd. i. 384) often tltrows into more 
marked relief the dissimilarity in fundamental ideas. It is another amazing sign of the 
blindness which marred the keen insight of Baur in other directions, that he should say 
the contents of the Epistles ' ' are so essentially the same that they cannot well be dis- 
tinguished"! {Paul. ii. 6.) The metaphysical Christology, which is polemically dwelt 
upon in the Colossians, is only assumed and alluded to in the Ephesians; and the 
prominent conceptions of Predestination and Unity which mark the doctrinal part of the 
Ephesians find little or no place in the Colossians. The recurrence of any word tjtis 
aeiSovreo-o-t vewraTr) anfanek-qron. is a common literary phenomenon, and any careful student 
of iEschylus is aware that if he finds a startling word or metaphor he may find it again 
in the next hundred lines, even if it occurs in no other play. Nothing, therefore, was 
more natural than that there should be a close resemblance, especially of the moral parts 
of two Epistles, written perhaps within a few days of each other ; and that even though 
the doctrinal parts had different objects, and were meant for different readers, we should 
find alternate expansions or abbreviations of the same thoughts and the repetition of 
phrases so pregnant as 6 nAovros tt}s Sofa (Eph. i. 18 ; Col. i. 27) ; to vkqpuna (Eph. i. 23 ; 

Col. i. 19) ; 7reptTOju.rj axeipo7roirjTo? (Eph. ii. 11 ; Col. ii. 11) ; and 6 7raA.aibs avBptairos (Eph. 

iv. 22 ; Col. iii. 9). When Schneckenburger talks of " a mechanical use of materials " he 
is using one of those phrases which betray a strong bias, and render his results less 
plausible than they might otherwise seem. " How can he have overlooked the 
memorable fact, which all readers of the Epistle have noticed, that the idea of catho- 
licity is here first raised to dogmatic definiteness and predominant significance?" 
(Pfleiderer, ii. 164.) 

2 iii. 1, 8, &c. 

3 " Every one must be conscious of an overflowing fulness in the style of this Epistle, 
as if the Apostle's mind could not contain the thoughts that were at work in him, as if 
each one that he uttered had a luminous train before it and behind it, from which it 
«ould not disengage itself " (Maurice, Unity of the New Testament, p. 535). 



634 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

that is flowing steadily beneath it, the unconscious recurrence of haunting 
expressions, the struggle and strain to find a worthy utterance for thoughts 
aud feelings which burst through the feeble bands of language, the dominance 
of the syllogism of emotion over the syllogism of grammar — the many other 
minute characteristics which stamp so ineffaceable an impress on the Apostle's 
undisputed works. This may, I think, be pronounced with some confidence 
to be a psychological impossibility. The intensity of the writer's feelings is 
betrayed in every sentence by the manner in which great truths interlace each 
other, and are yet subordinated to one main and grand perception. Mannerisms 
of style may be reproduced ; but let any one attempt to simulate the lan- 
guage of genuine passion, and every reader will tell him how ludicrously he 
fails. Theorists respecting the spuriousness of some of the Pauline Epistles 
have, I think, entirely underrated the immense difficulty of palming upon the 
world an even tolerably successful imitation of a style the most living, the 
most nervously sensitive, which the world has ever known. The spirit in 
which a forger would have sat down to write is not the spirit which could 
have poured forth so grand a eucharistic hymn as the Epistle to the Ephe- 
sians. 1 Fervour, intensity, sublimity, the unifying — or, if I may use the 
expression, esemplastic — power of the imagination over the many subordinate 
truths which strive for utterance ; the eagerness which hurries the Apostle to 
his main end in spite of deeply important thoughts which intrude themselves 
into long parentheses and almost interminable paragraphs — all these must, 
from the very nature of literary composition, have been far beyond the reach 
of one who could deliberately sit down with a lie in his right hand to write a 
false superscription, and boast with trembling humility of the unparalleled 
spiritual privileges entrusted to him as the Apostle of the Gentiles. 

A strong bias of prejudice against the doctrines of the Epistle may 
perhaps, in some minds, have overborne the sense of literary possibilities. 
But is there in reality anything surprising in the developed Christology of 
St. Paul's later years ? That his views respecting the supreme divinity of 
Christ never wavered will hardly, I think, be denied by any candid contro- 
versialist. They are as clearly, though more implicitly, present in the First 
Epistle to the Thessalonians as in the Second Epistle to Timothy. No human 
being can reasonably doubt the authenticity of the Epistle to the Romans ; 
yet the Pauline evangel logically argued out in that Epistle is identical with 
that which is bo triumphantly preached in this. They are not, as Reuss has 
observed, two systems, but two methods of exposition. In the Romans, 
Paul's point of view is psychologic, and his theology is built on moral facts — 
the universality of sin, and the insufficiency of man, and hence salvation by 
the grace of God, and union of the believer with the dead and risen Christ. 
But in the Ephesians the point of view is theologic — the idea of God's eternal 
plans realised in the course of ages, and the unity in Christ of redeemed 
humanity with the family of heaven. " The two great dogmatic teachers of 

» J. LL Davies, Eph., p. 19. 



THE EPISTLE TO " THE EPHESIANS." 635 

the sixteenth century, both essentially disciples of St. Paul, have both, so to 
speak, divided between them the inheritance of their master. The manual of 
Melancthon attaches itself to the Epistle to the Romans; the 'Institutes' 
of Calvin follow the direction marked out in that to the Ephesians ; party 
spirit will alone be able to deny that, in spite of this difference of method, the 
system of the two writers has, after all, been one and the same." x Is there a 
word respecting Christ's exaltation in the Epistle to the Ephesians which 
implies a greater or diviner Being than Him of whom St. Paul has spoken as 
the Final Conqueror in the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians ? 

We can imagine that when he began to dictate this circular letter to the 
Churches of Asia, the one overwhelming thought in the mind of the Apostle 
was the ideal splendour and perf ectness of the Church of Christ, and the con- 
sequent duty of holiness which was incumbent on all its members. The thought 
of Humanity regenerated in Christ by an eternal process, and the consequent 
duty of all to live in accordance with this divine enlightenment — these 
are the double wings which keep him in one line throughout his rapturous 
flight. Hence the Epistle naturally fell into two great divisions, doctrinal and 
practical ; the idea and its realisation ; pure theology and applied theology ; 
the glorious unity of the Church in Christ its living head, and the moral 
exhortations which sprang with irresistible force of appeal from this divine 
mystery. But as he was in all his doctrine laying the foundations of practice, 
and throughout founded the rules of practice on doctrine, the two elements 
are not so sharply divided as not to intermingle and coalesce in the general 
design. The glory of the Christian's vocation is inseparably connected with the 
practical duties which result from it, and which it was directly intended to 
educe. Great principles find their proper issue in the faithful performance of 
little duties. 

It is naturally in the first three chapters that St. Paul is most overpowered 
by the grandeur of his theme. Universal reconciliation in Christ as the central 
Being of the Universe is the leading thought both of the Ephesians and the 
Colossians, and it is a deeper and grander thought than that of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, which only sees this unity in Christ's priesthood, or that of the 
Pseudo-Clementines, which sees it in Christ as the Prophet of Truth/ St. 
Paul is endeavouring to impress upon the minds of all Christians that they 
have entered upon a new ceon of God's dispensations — the ceon of God's ideal 
Church, which is to comprehend all things in heaven and on earth. Round this 
central conception, as round a nucleus of intense light, there radiate the con- 
siderations which he wishes them specially to bear in mind : — namely, that this 
perfected idea is the working out of a purpose eternally conceived ; that the 
ceconomy — i.e., the Divine dispensation 3 — of all the past circumstances 
of history has been fore-ordained before all ages to tend to its completion ; 
that it is a mystery — i.e., a truth hidden from previous ages, but now revealed j 

1 Reuss, Les Epitres Paulin. ii. 146. 

* Baur, First Three Cent. i. 126. 8 oUovonCa, Eph. i. 10; iii. 2. 



636 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

that each Person of tne Blessed Trinity has taken direct part therein ; that 
this plan is the result of free grace ; that it is unsurpassable in breadth and 
length, and height and depth, being the exhibition of a love of which the 
wealth is inexhaustible and passes knowledge ; that the benefits of it extend 
alike to Jew and Gentile ; that it centres in the person of the risen Christ ; 
and that to the Apostle himself, unworthy as he is, is entrusted the awful 
responsibility of preaching it among the Gentiles. 

The incessant recurrence of leading words connected with these different 
thoughts is a remarkable feature of the first three chapters. 1 Thus, in the 
endeavour to express that the whole great scheme of redemptive love is part of 
the Divine "Will" and "Purpose," those two words are frequently repeated. 
Grace (x*P 15 ) is so prominent in the Apostle's mind that the word is used 
thirteen times, and may be regarded as the key-note of the entire Epistle. 2 
The writer's thoughts are so completely with the risen and ascended Christ 
as the head, the centre, the life of the Church, that he six times uses the 
expression " the heavenlies " without any limitation of time or place. 3 He 
feels so deeply the necessity of spiritual insight to counteract the folly 
of fancied wisdom, that the work of the Spirit of God in the spirit of man 
is here peculiarly prominent. 4 The words " wealth," 5 and " glory," 6 and 
"mystery," 7 and "plenitude," 8 show also the dominant chords which are 
vibrating in his mind, while the frequent compounds in vir\p, irpd, and afo, 9 
show how deeply he is impressed with the loftiness, the fore-ordainment, and 
the result of this Gospel in uniting the Jew and Gentile within one great 
spiritual Temple, of which the middle wall has been for ever broken down. " It 
would, indeed," says Mr. Maurice, "amply repay the longest study to examine 
the order in which these details are introduced, in what relation they stand to 
each other, how they are all referred to one ground, the good pleasure of His 

1 eeXtj/xa, Eph. i. 1, 5, 9, 11 (v. 17 ; vi. 6) ; /3ouAtj, i. 11 ; evSoieCa, i. 9 ; Trpo'fleors, iii. 11. 

2 X (£ pts , i. 2, 6 {bis), 7 ; ii. 5, 7, 8 ; iii. 2, 7, 8 ; iv. 7, 32 ; vi. 24. 

8 to. enovpdvLa, i. 3, 20; ii. 6; iii. 10; vi. 12. "The Apostle carries us into 'the 
heavenlies ' (not 'the heavenly places,' as our translators render it, so perverting the 
idea of a sentence from which place and time are carefully excluded), into a region of 
voluntary beings, of spirits, standing by a spiritual law, capable of a spiritual blessing " 
(Maurice, Unity of the New Testament, p. 523). 

4 irvevfia and irvevfiariKo^ occurs thirteen times in this Epistle (i. 3, 13, 17 ; ii. 18, 22 ; 
iii. 5, 16 ; iv. 3, 4, 23, 30 j v. 18; vi. 17, 18) ; and only once in the Colossians (i. 8, 9). 
(Baur, Paul. ii. 21.) 

5 ttAovtos, 7rA.ovcnos, i. 7, 18 ; ii. 4, 7 ; iii. 8, 16. This word is only used in this sense 
by St. James (ii. 5). See Paley, Horae Paulinae, Ephes. ii. But see 2 Cor. viii. 9 ; 
Phil. ii. 7. 

6 Sdfo, L 6, 12, 14, 17, 18 ; iii. 16, 21, &c. 

7 fi.v<TTripiov, Eph. i. 9 ; iii. 3, 4, 9 (v. 32) ; vi. 19. In no other Epistle, except that to 
the Colossians and 1 Cor., does it occur more than twice. 

8 TrAijpwjaa, i. 23 ; iii. 19 ; iv. 10 — 13 (i. 10). In the quasi-technical sense it is only 
found in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 19 ; ii. 9. 

9 VTrep^aAAov, i. 19 J urrepava), 21. Cf. iii. 19, vn<:peicTrepicr<rov ', 20 ; iv. 10, &C. 

These compounds are characteristic of the emphatic energy of St. Paul's style. 

Dpoopuras, i. 5 ; npoeOeTO, i. 9 ; npor)Toip.a(rev, ii. 10 ; Trpo'fleons, iii. 11. 

SwefjcooTToujo-e, ii. 5 ; ovvriyeipe, <rvveica.6i.<rev, 6 ; o-v/u.7roA.iTai, ii. 19 (a late and bad Word, 
Phryn., p. 172); avvoiKoSofieicrOe, 22; o-uyKA.Tjporofxa, owawfxa, cu/x^ieTo^a, 1U. 6 J owficoyMfi 
IV. 3 ; (rvufii^a^ofxtvov, trvvapfi.o\oyov^evoi' t 16. 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 637 

will, and to one end, the gathering up of all things in Christ. 1 But however 
desirable the minute investigation is, after the road has been travelled 
frequently, the reader must allow the Apostle to cany him along at his 
own speed on his own wings, if he would know anything of the height from 
which he is descending and to which he is returning." 2 

After his usual salutation to the saints that are in (perhaps leaving a 

blank to be filled up by Tychicus at the places to which he carried a copy of 
the letter), he breaks into the rapturous sentence which is "not only the 
exordium of the letter, but also the enunciation of its design." 

" Blessed be the G-od and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us with 
all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, even as He chose us out in Him 
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before 
Him, in love ; fore-ordaining us to adoption by Jesus Christ into Himself, according 
to the good pleasure of His will, for the praise of the glory of His grace wherewith 
He graced us in the beloved."* 

This leads him to a passage in which the work of the Son in this great 
fore-ordained plan is mainly predominant. 

"In whom we have our redemption through His blood, the remission of trans- 
gressions, according to the wealth of His grace, wherewith He abounded towards 
us, in all wisdom and discernment, making known to us the mystery of His will, 
according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, with a view to the 
dispensation of the fulness of the seasons — to sum up all things in Christ, both the 
things in the heavens and the things on the earth —in Kim. In whom we also were 
made an inheritance, being fore-ordained according to the purpose of Him who 
worketh all things according to the counsel of His will, that we should be to the 
praise of Mis glory who have before hoped in Christ." 4 

This repetition of the phrase " to the praise of His glory," introduces the 
work of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. 

" In whom (Christ) ye also " (as well as the Jewish Christians who previously 
had hoped in Christ) " on hearing the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, 
in whom (I say), believing, ye too were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who 
is the earnest of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of the purchased 
possession unto the praise of His glory." ' 5 

Since, therefore, it is the fixed ordinance, from all eternity, of the Blessed 
God, that man should be adopted through the redemption of Christ to the 
praise of the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and should receive the seal of the 

1 The Epistle may be thus briefly summarised :— Salutation (i. 1, 2). Thanksgiving 
for the election of the Church, and the unity wrought by Christ's redemption and calling 
of both Jews and Gentiles (i. 3—14). Prayer for their growth into the full knowledge of 
Christ (15 — 23). Unity of mankind in the heavenlies in Christ (ii. 1 — 22). Fuller ex- 
planation of the mystery, with prayer for the full comprehension of it, and doxology 
(iii. 1 — 21). Exhortation to live worthily of the ideal unity of the Catholic Church in 
love (iv. 1—16). Exhortation to the practical duties of the new life, in the conquest 
over sin (iv. 17— v. 21), and in social relations (v. 22— vi. 9). The armour of God 
(vi 10- 17). Final requests and farewell (vi. 10 — 24). 

2 Unity of the New Testament, p. 525. See Excur. XXV., " Phraseology and Doctrines 
of the Epistle to the Ephesians." 

3 i. 3 — 6. Notice the marvellous compression and exhaustive fulness of this great 
outline of theology. 

* I 7—12. s i i 3m 14 



638 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTI*. 

Spirit as the pledge of full and final entrance into his heritage, St. Paul tells 
them that, hearing of their faith and love, he ceaselessly prayed that God — 
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of the Glory — would grant them 
a full knowledge 1 of Himself, giving them " illuminated eyes in their hearts" 
to know what their calling means, and the wealth and glory of this heritage, 
and the surpassing greatness of the power which He had put forth in raising 
Christ from the dead, and seating Him at His right hand in the heavenlies, as 
the Supreme Ruler now and for ever of every spiritual and earthly power, and 
as the Head over all things to the Church, — which is His body, " the Pleroma* 
(i.e., the filled continent, the brimmed receptacle) " of Him who filleth all 
things with all things." 2 

But for whom were these great privileges predestined, and how were they 
bestowed ? The full answer is contained in the second chapter. They were 
intended for all, both Jews and Gentiles, and were bestowed by free grace. 
In this section the leading conception is the unity of mankind, in the heaven- 
lies, in Christ. The Gentiles had been dead in transgressions and sins, 
absorbed in the temporal and the external, 3 showing by their disobedience the 
influence of the Prince of the power of the air ; and the Jews, too, had been 
occupied with the desires of the flesh, doing the determinations of the flesh 
and the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath 4 even as the rest; 
but God in His rich love and mercy quickened both Jews and Gentiles to- 
gether, while still dead in their transgressions, and raised them together, and 
seated them together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus — a name that occurs in 
verse after verse, being at the very heart of the Apostle's thoughts. The in- 
strumental cause of this great salvation is solely free grace, applied by faith, 
that this grace might be manifested to the coming ages in all its surpassing 
wealth of kindness; and that we, thus created anew in Christ, and so pre- 
vented from any boast 5 that we achieved by good works our own salvation, 
might still walk in good works, to which God predestined us. 6 The Gentiles, 

1 'EirCyvuo-is, i. 17 ; iv. 13. I have already alluded to the importance attached to true 
knowledge in these Epistles, written as it was to counteract the incipient but already 
baneful influence of a " knowledge falsely called." Hence we have also yvoxris, iii. 19 ; 
oweo-i?, iii. 4; <$>p6vr\<ri<;, i. 8 ; <ro<f>la, ib. ; airoKd\v^i.<;, iii. 3; (putTL^eiv, iii. 9; &c. &c. 

2 i. 15—23. See iv. 10. Cf . Xen. Hell. vi. 2, 14, ris vaO? e^pou-re. On the different 
application of the word Pleroma here and in Col. i. 19, v. supra. The view that it here 
means "complement" like parapleroma seems to me much less probable. On the expres- 
sion the " God of our Lord Jesus Christ," cf. ver. 3 ; John xx. 17. In the unique phrase, 
" the Father of the Glory," 6 nary\p ttjs 66£i?s, Canon Barry sees an allusion to the Jewish 
identification of "the Word" with "the Shechinah. Compare the use of Ao'£a in 
James ii. 1 ; Titus ii. 13 ; Heb. i. 3. 

3 ii. 2, Kara Toy aiSiva tou koV/oiov tou'tov. 

4 Mr. Maurice's rendering, "children of impulse" is untenable. 

5 ii. 9. The last appearance of the word ' ' boast " in St. Paul. 

c ii. 10. It is interesting to see how the epoch c f controversy on the great topic of 
these verses is here assumed to be closed ; e^* Ipyois ayaOols, oh irpoviToCfwavv 6 @ebs iW ei> 
avTo'ts neptnaTYiouifjiev. Certainly ols may be by attraction for a ; but it is surely a v^ry 
awkward expression to say that " God created good worlcs that we should walk in them," 
and although ^p.as is not expressed, it is involved in 7repi7raTrjo-w/u.ei>. AIKtu, \»he Adopts 
the E.V., compares it with John v. 38, which is, however, no parallel. Nowhere ij the 
harmonising of good works with free grace more admirably illustrated than h.e*<*. <j}pqJ 



THE EPISTLE TO " THE EPHESIANS." 639 

then, were to remember that their former uncircumcision, so far as it was of 
any importance, was that spiritual uncircumcision which consisted in utter 
alienation from Christ, His kingdom, and His promises. But now in Christ, 
by the blood of Christ, the once afar have been made near. For He is our 
Peace; He has broken dowm the separating partition — the enmity between 
the two members of His great human family — by doing away with the law of 
ordinances and decrees, 1 that He might create the two — Jew and Gentile— 
into one fresh human being, making peace ; and might reconcile them both in 
one body to God by the cross, slaying thereby the enmity between them both, 
and between them and God. The result, then, of His advent is peace to the 
far-off and to the nigh ; for through Him we both have access by one Spirit 
to the Father. The Gentiles are no longer aliens, but fellow-citizens with the 
saints, built on the corner-stone of Christ which the Apostles and prophets 
laid — like stones compaginated 2 into the ever-growing walls of the one 
spiritual House of God. 3 

Then follows a chapter of parentheses, or rather of thoughts leading to 
thoughts, and linked together, as throughout the Epistle, by relatival con- 
nexions. 4 Resuming the prayer (i. 17) of which the thread had been broken 
by the full enunciation of the great truths in which he desired them to be 
enlightened : " For this cause," he says — namely, because of the whole blessed 
mystery which he has been expounding, and which results in their corporate 
union in Christ — " I, Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, on behalf of you Gentiles " 
— and there once more the prayer is broken by a parenthesis which lasts 
through thirteen verses. For, remembering that the letter is to be addressed 
not only to the Ephesians, of whom the majority were so well known to him, 
but also to other Asiatic Churches, some of which he had not even visited, and 
which barely knew more of him than his name, 6 he pauses to dwell on the 
exalted character of the mission entrusted to him, and to express at the same 
time his own sense of utter personal unworthiness. Having called himself 
" the prisoner of the Lord on behalf of you Gentiles," he breaks off to say — 

" Assuming that you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God given 
me towards you — that by revelation was made known to me the myotery [of the 

works are here included in the predestined purpose of grace, so that they are not a con- 
d ition of salvation, but an aim set before us, and rendered practicable by God's uncon- 
ditional favour. (See Pfleiderer, ii. 189.) 

1 Cf. Col. i. 20 — 22. The application of the word is somewhat different ; but it is 
exactly the kind of difference which might be made by an author dealing independently 
with his own expressions, and one on which a forger would not have ventured. The 
breaking down of the Chel, "the middle wall of partition," was that part of Christ's 
work which it fell mainly to St. Paul to continue. The charge that he had taken 
Trophimus into the Court of Israel, literally false, was ideally most true. And Paul the 
Apostle was the most effectual uprooter of the "hedge,'' which Saul the Pharisee 
thought it his chief work to make around the Law. 

2 This word, used by St. Jerome, may express the unusual owopjuoAoyovfjien). 
a ii. 1—22. 4 See Ellicott, ad iii. 5. 

5 Although undoubtedly the elye fiKovcrare, like the similar expression in iv. 21, 
Gal. iii. 4, &c, implies that the fact is assumed, yet it is certainly not an expression 
which would well accord with a letter addressed only to a church in which the writer had 
long laboured. 



540 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

calling of the Gentiles], as I previously wrote to you in brief, 1 in accordance with 
which you can, as you read it, perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ 
— a mystery which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as 
it is now revealed to His holy Apostles 2 and prophets by the Spirit — (namely) that 
the Gentiles are 3 co-heirs, and concorporate, and comparticipant 4 of the promise in 
Christ Jesus by the Gospel, of which I became a minister, according to the gift of 
the grace of God given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the 
less-than-least 5 of all saints, was given this grace, to preach among the Gentiles the 
untrackable 6 wealth of Christ ; and to enlighten all on the nature of the dispensa- 
tion of the mystery that has been hidden from the ages in God, who created all 
things ; that now to the principalities and the powers in the heavenlies may be made 
known by the Church the richly- variegated wisdom of God, 7 according to the pre- 
arrangement of the ages which He made in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have 
our confidence and our access by faith in Him : wherefore I entreat you not to lose 
heart in my afflictions on your behalf, seeing that this is your glory. For this 
cause, then" (and here he resumes the thread of the prayer broken in the first verse) 
" I bend my knees to the Father, 8 from whom every fatherhood 9 in heaven and on 
earth derives its name, that He would give you, according to the wealth of His 
glory, to be strengthened by power through His Spirit into spiritual manhood, 10 that 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith — ye having been rooted and founded in 
love, that ye may have strength to grasp mentally with all saints what is the length 
and breadth and depth and height, and to know (spiritually) the knowledge-sur- 
passing love of Christ, that ye may be filled up to all the plenitude of God." n 

" Now to Him that is able above all things to do superabundantly above 12 all that 
we ask or think, according to the power [of the Holy Spirit] which worketh in us, 

1 i. 9 seq. ; ii. 13 seq. 

2 Serious objections have been made to this phrase, as proving that it could not have 
been written by the pen that wrote Gal. ii. The objection is groundless. Assuming the 
aytois to be correct (though not found in every MS. ; cf. Col. i. 26) — i. It is perfectly 
generic, not individual ; cf . ver. 8 and ii. 20 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 15. ii. Apostles and prophets 
are bracketed, and the epithet "holy " means " sanctified," a title which they share with 
all " saints." iii. "Apostles" does not here necessarily bear its narrower sense. 

3 Not " should be," as in A.V. 

4 iii. 6, <rvyj«\T)p6vo/u.a, owa-w/ua, crunixeToxa. The two parts — Jews and Gentiles — are to 
become one body, the body of Christ, the Christian Church (ii. 16). The strange English 
words may perhaps correspond to the strange Greek words which St. Paul invented to 
express this newly-revealed mystery in the strongest possible form, as though no words 
could be too strong to express his dominant conception of the reunion in Christ of those 
who apart from Him are separate and divided. 

5 iii. 8, eXaxto-Torepw. Would a forger have made St. Paul write thus ? The expression 
has been compared to' 1 Cor. xv. 9, but expresses a far deeper humility, because it is used 
when the writer is alluding to a far loftier exaltation. Those who criticise the phrase as 
exaggerated must be destitute of the deepest spiritual experiences. The confessions of 
the holiest are ever the most bitter and humble, because their very holiness enables them 
to take the due measure of the heinousness of sin. The self-condemnation of a Cowper 
or a Fenelon is far stronger than that of a Byron or a Voltaire. " The greatest sinner, 
the greatest saint, are equi-distant from the goal where the mind rests in satisfaction 
with itself. With the growth in goodness grows the sense of sin. One law fulfilled 
shows a thousand neglected " (Mozley, Essays, i. 327). 

6 iii. 8, ave^ixvtaOTOf . Job V. 9, "!j?rT yvt. Cf . Rom. xi. 33, ace£ epevvrira to. tcpifiara avrov icaX 
ave£ ixviacrToi al bSoi. 

~' iro\vnoiici\o<;. Cf. <rre<pai/ov n. avfleW. Eubulus, Ath. XV. 7, p. 679. 

8 The addition " of our Lord Jesus Christ," however ancient, is probably spurious, as 
it is not found in N, A, B, C, the Coptic, the iEthiopic versions, &c. 

9 Not "the whole family," as in A.V. 10 iii. 16, elsrbv eo-w SvOpuvw. 

11 iii. 1 — 19. In other words, " that ye may be filled with all the plenitude of good- 
ness wherewith God is filled ; " omnes divinae naturae divitiae " (Fritzsche). 

12 Of twenty-eight compounds in ivip in the New Testament, no less than twenty are 
found iu St. Paul alone. 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 641 

to Him be glory in the Church, in Christ Jesus, to all the generations of the age of 
the ages. Amen." 1 

With this prayer he closes the doctrinal part of the Epistle ; the remaining 
half of it is strictly practical. St. Paul would have felt it no descent of 
thought to pass from the loftiest spiritual mysteries to the humblest moral 
duties. He knew that holiness was the essence of God's Being, and he saw 
in the holiness of Christians the beautiful result of that predestined purpose, 
which, after being wrought out to gradual completion in the dispensation of 
past (Rons, was now fully manifested and revealed in Christ. He knew that 
the loftiest principles were the necessary basis of the simplest acts of faithful- 
ness, and that all which is most pure, lovely, and of good report, in the 
Christian life, is the sole result of all that is most sublime in the Christian's 
faith. The lustre of the planets may be faint and poor, but yet it is reflected 
from the common sun ; and so the goodness of a redeemed man, however pale 
in lustre, is still sacred, because it is a reflexion from the Sun of righteousness. 
The reflected light of morality is nothing apart from the splendour of that 
religion from which it is derived. There is little which is admirable in the 
honesty which simply results from its being the best policy ; or in the purity 
which is maintained solely by fear of punishment ; or even in the virtue which 
is coldly adopted out of a calculation that it tends to the greatest happiness of 
the greatest number. It was not in this way that St. Paul regarded morality. 
Many of the precepts which he delivers in the practical sections of his 
Epistles might also have been delivered, and nobly delivered, by an Epictetus 
or a Marcus Aurelius ; but that which places an immeasurable distance 
between the teachings of St. Paul and theirs, is the fact that in St. Paul's 
view holiness is not the imperfect result of rare self- discipline, but the natural 
outcome of a divine life, imparted by One who is the common Head of all the 
family of man, and in participation with whose plenitude the humblest act of 
self-sacrifice becomes invested with a sacred value and a sacred significance. 
And there are these further distinctions (among many others) between the 
lofty teachings of Stoicism and the divine exhortations of Christianity. 
Stoicism made its appeal only to the noble -hearted few, despising and despair- 
ing of the vulgar herd of mankind in all ranks, as incapable of philosophic 
training or moral elevation. Christianity, in the name of a God who was no 
respecter of persons, appealed to the very weakest and the very worst as being 
all redeemed in Christ. Again, Stoicism was dimmed and darkened to the 
very heart's core of its worthiest votaries by deep perplexity and incurable 
sadness ; Christianity breathes into every utterance the joyous spirit of victory 
and hope. Even the best of the Stoics looked on the life of men around them 
with a detestation largely mingled with contempt, and this contempt weakened 
the sense of reciprocity, and fed the fumes of pride. But St. Paul addresses 
a revelation unspeakably more majestic, more profound, more spiritual, than 
any which Stoicism could offer, to men whom he well knows to have lived in 

* iii. 20, 21. 

P P 



642 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

the trammels of the vilest sins of heathendom, and barely even yet to have 
escaped ont of the snare of the fowler. He confidently addresses exhortations 
of stainless purity and sensitive integrity to men who had been thieves and 
adulterers, and worse ; and so far from any self -exaltation at his own moral 
superiority, he regards his own life as hid indeed with Christ in God, but as 
so little fit to inspire a feeling of satisfaction that he is lost in the conviction 
of his own unworthiness as contrasted with the wealth of G-od's compassion, 
and the unspeakable grandeur of the long-hidden mystery which now in due 
time he is commissioned to set forth. The mingled prayer and paean of 
this magnificent Epistle is inspired throughout " by a sense of opposites — of 
the union of weakness and strength, of tribulation and glory, of all that 
had been and all that was to be, of the absolute love of God, of the discovery 
of that love to man in the Mediator, of the working of that love in man 
through the Spirit, of the fellowship of the poorest creature of flesh and blood 
on earth with the spirits in heaven, of a canopy of love above and an abyss of 
love beneath, which encompasses the whole creation." The Apostle would 
have delighted in the spirit of those words which a modern poet has learnt 
from the truths which it was his high mission to reveal : — 

" I say to thee, do thou repeat 
To the first man thou mayest meet 
In lane, highway, or open street, 
That he, and we, and all men move 
Under a canopy of love 
As broad as the blue sky above." * 

" I then," continues the Apostle — and how much does that word " then " 
involve, referring as it does to all the mighty truths which he has been setting 
forth ! — " I then, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthily of the 
calling in which ye were called." This is the keynote to all that follows. So 
little was earthly success or happiness worth even considering in comparison 
with the exceeding and eternal weight of glory which affliction was working 
out for them, that while he has urged them not to lose heart in his tribula- 
tions, he makes those very tribulations a ground of appeal, and feels that he 
can speak to them with all the stronger influence as " a prisoner in the Lord," 
and " an ambassador in a chain." And the worthy elevation to the grandeur 
of their calling was to be shown by virtues which, in their heathen condition, 
they would almost have ranked with abject vices — lowliness, meekness, en- 
durance, the forbearance of mutual esteem. The furious quarrels, the mad 
jealousies, the cherished rancours, the frantic spirit of revenge which charac- 
terised their heathen condition, are to be fused by the heat of love into one 
great spiritual unity and peace. Oneness, the result of love, is the ruling 
thought of this section (iv. 3 — 13). " One body, and one spirit, even as also 
ye were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, 
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all." a 
Yet this unity is not a dead level of uniformity. Each has his separate 

1 Archbishop Trench. 2 Omit wlv> N, A, B, O, Ac 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 643 

measure of grace given by Him who, ascending in triumph, with Sin and 
Death bound to His chariot- wheels, "gave gifts for men," 1 having first 
descended that by ascending " far above all heavens " He might fill all things. 
Apostles therefore, and Prophets, and Evangelists, and Pastors, and Teachers 
were all appointed by virtue of the gifts which He gave, with a view to per- 
fect the saints, and so to build up the Church which is the body of Christ, 
until we all finally attain 2 to the unity of the faith, and the full knowledge of 
the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the measure of the stature of the 
Plenitude of Christ." But to contribute to this perfect growth we must lay 
aside moral and spiritual childishness ; we must keep the hand firmly on the 
helm that we may not be tossed like dismantled hulks by every wave and 
storm of doctrine, in that fraudful sleight and craft which many devote to 
further the deliberate system of error. To be true and to be loving is the 
secret of Christian growth. 3 Sincerity and charity are as the life-blood in the 
veins of that Church, of which Christ is the Head and Heart, " from whom 
the whole body being fitly framed and compacted by means of every joint of 
the vital supply, according to the proportional energy of each individual part, 
tends to the increase of the body, so as to build itself up in love." 4 

After this expansion of the duty of Unity, he returns to his exhortation ; 
and, as before he had urged them to walk worthily of their vocation, he now urges 
them not to walk, as did the rest of the Gentiles, in the vanity of their mind, 
having been darkened in their understanding, and utterly alienated from the 
life of God because of their ignorance and the callosity of their hearts, 6 seeing 
that they, having lost all sense of shame or sorrow for sin, 6 abandoned themselves 
to wantonness for the working of all uncleanness, in inordinate desire : 7 — 

" But not so did ye learn Christ — assuming that ye heard Him, and were taught 
in Him as the truth is in Jesus, 8 that ye put off, as concerns your former conversa- 
tion, the old man which is ever being corrupted according to the lusts of deceit, and 
undergo renewal by the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man which after 
God was created in righteousness and holiness of truth." 9 

Then follow the many practical applications which result from this clothing 
of the soul with the new-created humanity. Put away lying, because we are 

1 On this singular reference to Ps. lxviii., and the change of the eA.a6es Stf/mara «• 
«tv0p<o7rois, see Davies, p. 44. It is at least doubtful \vhether there is the slightest allusion 
to the descent into hell. The point is the identity of Him who came to earth (i.e., the 
historic Jesus) and Him who ascended, i.e., of the Eternal and the Incarnate Christ. 

2 The omision of h> marks the certain result. 

3 iv. 15, ak-qeevovTes Se Iv ay6.Trri — not merely " speaking the truth," but " being true." 

4 iv. 1—16. 

5 7rwpo?, " tufa-stone," is used, secondarily, for a hard tumour, or cattus at the end ot 
injured bones. 

6 o.7r»jA.yT/K6Te?. "Qui postquam peccaverint, non dolent." "A sin committed a 
second time does not seem a sin " {Moed Katon, f. 27, 2). 

' irkeove^ia. 

s The form of expression might seem to point to a warning against any incipient 
docetic tendency (cf . 1 John iv. 2, 3) to draw a distinction between Christ and Jesuaj 
between the Eternal Christ and the human Jesus. 

» iv. 17—24, 
p p 2 



644 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

members of one another. 1 Let not just anger degenerate into chronic ex- 
asperation, neither give room to the devil. Let honest work, earning sufficient 
even for charity, replace thievishness. For corruption of speech 2 let there be 
such as is "good for edification of the need 3 that it may give grace to tho 
hearers," since unwholesome impurity is a chronic grief to that Holy Spirit 
who has sealed you as His own to the day of redemption. Then, returning to 
his main subject of unity, he says : — 

" Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put away 
from you with all malice, and become kind to one another, compassionate, freely 
forgiving one another, as God also in Christ 4 freely forgave you. Become, then, 
imitators of God as children beloved, and walk in love, even as Christ loved us and 
gave Himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God for a savour of sweet smell." 5 

Then, proceeding to other practical duties, he forbids every form of im- 
purity or obscenity, in word or deed, with the worldly polish 6 which was often 
nearly akin to it, since they are unsuitable to the Christian character, and they 
who are addicted to such things have no inheritance in the kingdom of God, 
and whatever men may say, such things are the abiding source of God's wrath. 7 
Let thanksgiving take the place of indecency of speech. For though they 
were darkness, they are now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. 
For the fruit of light 8 is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth. Light 
is the prevalent conception here, as love was in the last chapter. 9 Let them 
not participate in the unfruitful infamies of secret darkness, "but rather 
even convict them, for all things on being convicted are illumined by the light, 
for all that is being illumined is light." 10 And this is the spirit of what is 
perhaps a Christian hymn : — 

1 The necessity of the following moral exhortations will excite no astonishment in the 
minds of those who have studied the Epistle to the Corinthians, or who have sufficient 
knowledge of the human heart to be aware that the evil habits of a heathen lifetime 
were not likely to be cured in all converts by a moment of awakenment, or by an 
acceptance of Christian truths, which in many cases may have been mainly intellectual. 

- iv. 29, o-an-pbs, "rotten" (Matt. vii. 17), the opposite of vyi^, "sound," in 2 Tim. 
i. 13, &c, and " seasoned with salt," Col. iv. 6. 

3 Not "for the use of edification," as in E.V., but for such edification as the occasion 
requires. 

4 iv. 32, iv Xpio-Tiu, not as in E. V., " for Christ's sake." 

5 iv. 25— v. 2. 

6 Ver 4, eurpaTreXia. Aristotle defines it as "cultivated impertinence " {Rhet. ii. 12), 
and places the polished -worldling {evrpdnekos, facetus) midway between the boor [aypoKos) 
and the low flatterer (/3ojp.oA.6xo?) {Eth. N. ii. 7). The mild word, to. ovk. avrjKovra, is due, 
not to the comparatively harmless " polish " which has been last mentioned, but to litotes 
— the use of a soft expression (like Virgil's " illaudati Busiridis aras "), to be corrected 
by the indignant mental substitution of a more forcible word. See infra, p. 694. 

< Ver. 6, Ipxerat, is ever coming. 

8 This is the true reading (4>wrb<;), not "fruit of the Spirit," as in the E.V. The 
reading was doubtless altered to soften the harshness of the metaphor ; but St. Paul is 
as indifferent as Shakespeare himself to a mere verbal confusion of metaphors when the 
sense is clear. To see allusions here to Ormuzd and Ahriman is surely absurd. 

9 Paley (Hor. Paul.) says that St. Paul here " goes off " at the word light ; but thia 
is not nearly so good an instance of this literary peculiarity as iv. 8, "ascended." 

10 Deeds of darkness must cease to be deeds of darkness when the light shines on 
them. The light kills them. Everything on which light is poured is light, because it 
reflects light, ^avtpov^evov cannot mean "that maketh manifest," as in the E.V. 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 645 

'Eyeipe 6 KaOevSwv 
'Avdcrra i.< twv vsKpwv 
'Eirupaixrei croi 5 XpicrrSs. 

(" Awake thee, thou that sleepest, 
And from the dead arise thou, 
And Christ shall shine upon thee.") l 

u Take heed, then, how ye walk carefully, not as unwise hut as wise, buying up 
the opportunity because the days are evil. Do not prove yourselves senseless, but 
understanding what is the will of the Lord." 2 

Thus, mingling special exhortation with universal principles, he proceeds to 
warn them against drunkenness, and recalling perhaps the thrill of emotion 
with which he and they have joined in such stirring words as those he 
has just quoted, he bids them seek rather the spiritual exaltations of that holy 
enthusiasm which finds vent in the melodies of Christian hymnology, and in 
the eucharistic music of the heart, while at the same time all are mutually 
submissive to each other in the fear of God. 3 

The duty of submissiveness thus casually introduced is then illustrated 
and enforced in three great social relations. 4 Wives are to be submissive 
to their husbands, as the Church is to Christ ; and husbands to love their 
wives, as Christ loved the Church, to sanctify it into stainless purity, and 
to cherish it as a part of Himself in inseparable union. Children are to obey 
their parents, and parents not to irritate their children. Slaves are to render 
sincere and conscientious service, as being the slaves of their unseen Master, 
Christ, and therefore bound to fulfil all the duties of the state of life in which 
He has placed them ; and masters are to do their duty to their slaves, abandon- 
ing threats, remembering that they too have a Master in whose sight they all 
are equal. 5 

Having thus gone through the main duties of domestic and social life as 
contemplated in the light of Christ, he bids them finally " grow strong in the 
Lord and in the might of His strength." 6 The exhortation brings up the 
image of armour with which the worn and aged prisoner was but too familiar. 
Daily the coupling-chain which bound his right wrist to the left of a Roman 
legionary clashed as it touched some part of the soldier's arms. The baldric, 
the military boot, the oblong shield, the .cuirass, the helmet, the sword of the 
Praetorian guardsman were among the few things which he daily saw. But 

1 Isa. lx. 1, 2. The versification is of the Hebrew type. On Christian hymnology, 
v. supra, on Col. hi. 16. Antiphonal congregational singing was very early introduced 
(Kev. xix. 1 — 4). 

2 Vers. 3—17. 3 Vers. 18—21. 

4 All commentators have felt a difficulty in seeing the connexion between singing and 
subjection. I believe that it lies in a reminiscence of the unseemly Babel of contentioui 
vanities which St. Paul had heard of, perhaps even witnessed, at Corinth, where such 
disorder had been caused by the obtrusive vanity with which each person wished to 
display his or her particular xapia-fia. If so — or even if the association was something 
else — we have another inimitable mark of genuineness. No forger would dream of 
appending a most important section of his moral teaching to a purely accidental thought. 

6 Ver. 22— vi. 9. 

6 vi 10, The afieA$oi is wanting in », B, D, E, and does not occur in Eph. or CoL 



64£ THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

we cannot donbt that, with his kindly human interest in life and yonth, tha 
Apostle, who knew that heathendom too was redeemed in Christ, whose boy- 
hood had been passed in a heathen city, who loved man as man because he saw 
a vision of all humanity in God — would have talked often to the weary soldiers 
who guarded him ; would have tried by wholesome and courteous and profitable 
words to dissipate their tedium, until we can well imagine that the legionaries 
who had to perform the disagreeable task would, in spite of intense national 
repugnances, prefer to be chained to Paul the Jewish prisoner than to any 
whom caprice, or justice, or tyranny consigned to their military charge. 
Doubtless the soldiers would tell him in what countries they had been stationed, 
what barbarians they had helped to subdue. He would ask them in what 
tumult they had got that fracture in the helmet, in what battle that dint upon 
the shield, by what blow they had made that hack in the sword. 1 They would 
tell him of the deadly wrestle with foes who grappled with them in the melee, 
and of the falaricae, 2 the darts wrapped round with flaming tow, from which 
their shields had saved them in the siege. And thinking of the sterner 
struggle against deadlier enemies, even against the world-rulers of this dark- 
ness, against the spiritual powers of wickedness in the heavenlies, 3 in which 
all God's children are anxiously engaged, he bids the Christian converts assume, 
not " the straw-armour of reason," but the panoply of God, that they may be 
able to withstand in the evil day. Let spiritual truth be their baldric or bind- 
ing girdle ; 4 moral righteousness their breastplate ; zealous alacrity in the 
cause of the Gospel of Peace their caligae of war ; 5 and in addition to these, 
let faith be taken up as their broad shield 6 against the darts of the evil one, 
however fiercely ignited. Their one weapon of offence is to be the sword of 
the Spirit, which is the Word of God. 7 Prayer and watchfulness is to be 
their constant attitude ; and in their prayers for all saints he begs also for 
their prayers on his own behalf, not that his chains may be loosed, but that he 
may boldly and aptly make known the mystery of the Gospel, on behalf of 

1 The pilum, or heavy javelin, which a soldier would not bring with him to the 
guard-room, is omitted. 

2 Or malleoli (Ps. vii. 13). 

3 The Eabbinical miDnp'DDip. Similarly, in 2 Cor. iv. 4, St. Paul goes so far as to call 
"the Prince of the power of the air," 6 6ebs toC aiwvos rovrov. (Cf. 1 John v. 19 ; John xiv. 
30 ; xvi. 11.) "The spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies" are the Geisterchaft of 
iniquity in the regions of space ; but one would expect vn-ovpavi'ois. The E.V. conceals 
th c difficulty by its " high places ;" but if Zirovpavioi*; be right, it can only be in a physical 
sense. As for mortal enemies: "vasa sunt, alius utitur; organa sunt, alius jungit" 

(Aug.). 

4 '" Veritas astringit hominem, mendaciorum magna est laxitas " (Grot.). 

5 Cf. Rom. iii. 16 ; x. 15 ; kroifxaa-ia may, however, mean "basis," sole" (p3£, Ezra iii. 
3 • Ps. lxxxviii. 15, LXX.). The Gospel of Peace gives a secure foothold even in war. 

' 6 Faith, not merit, as in Wisd. v. 19. (Cf. Ps. xviii. 31, &c.) Notice the emphatic 

position of neirupt»lJ.eva.. 

7 Dr. Davidson finds this a tedious and tasteless amplification of 1 The?s. v. S, 
2 Cor. x. 3, 4, and has many similar criticisms {Iiitrod. i. 388, 390). It is impossible to 
ar"ue* against such criticisms as bearing on the question of genuineness. The general 
metaphor is not uncommon (Isa. lix. 16—19 ; 1 Thess. v. 8 ; Wisd. v. 17—20 ; Bleeck, 
Zrnd Avesta p. 90 ; Davies, p. 61). (See the account of the arms in the Interpreter'! 
Houae in Pilgrim's Progress, and GurnaU's Christian Armwr .) 



r ^HE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 647 

which he is an ambassador — not inviolable, not splendid, bnt — " an ambassador 
in a coupling-chain." 1 

He sends no news or personal salutations, because he is sending the faithful 
and beloved Tychicus, who will tell them, as well as other cities, all his affairs ; 
bat he concludes with a blessing of singular fulness : 

" Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord 
Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption." 2 



We have now examined all the Epistles of St. Paul except the last group 
of all— the three addressed to Timothy and Titus. These are usually known 
as the Pastoral Epistles, because they sketch the duties of the Christian 
Pastor. Of the Epistle to the Hebrews I have said nothing, because I hope 
to speak of it hereafter, and because, for reasons which appear to me abso- 
lutely convincing, I cannot regard it as a work of St. Paul's. But even if the 
Epistle to the Hebrews be accepted as having been written by the Apostle, it 
adds nothing to our knowledge of his history. But for the preservation of 
the Pastoral Epistles, we should not know a single additional fact about him. 
except such as we can glean from vague and wavering traditions. 

The Acts of the Apostles ends with the statement that Paul remained a 
period of two whole years in his own hired lodging, and received all who 
came in to visit him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things 
concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence unmolestedly. 3 The 
question why St. Luke deliberately ended his sketch of the Apostle at that 
point, is one which can never receive a decisive answer. He only related cir- 
cumstances of which he was an eyewitness, or which he knew from trustworthy 
information, and for that reason his narrative, in spite of its marked lacunae, 
is far more valuable than if it had been constructed out of looser materials. 
It may, however, be safely asserted that since he had been with St. Paul 
during at least a part of the Roman imprisonment, he brought down his story 
to the period at which he first wrote his book. A thousand circumstances may 
have prevented any resumption of his work as a chronicler, but it is incon- 
ceivable that St. Paul should have died almost immediately afterwards, by a 
martyr's death, and St. Luke have been aware of it before his book was pub- 
lished, and yet that he should not have made the faintest allusion to the 
subject. 4 The conjecture that Theophilus knew all the rest, so that it was 
needless to commit it to writing, is entirely valueless, for whoever Theophilus 

1 vi. 10 — 20. In ver. 18 it is nepl Trdvruv twv aylmp koX virep e/u.ov. "Paradoxon : mundus 
habet splendidos legatos " (Bengel). * vi. 21 — 24. 

3 The cadence is expressive of stability ; of motion succeeded by rest ; of action settled 
in repose. "An emblem of the history of the Church of Christ, and of the life of every 
true believer in Him " (Bishop Wordsworth). 

4 So far as anything can be said to be probable in the midst of such uncertainties, the 
probability is that the leisure of his attendance on St. Paul during the Eoman imprison- 
ment had enabled St. Luke to draw up the main part of his work ; that he concluded it 
exactly at the point at which St. Paul was expecting immediate liberation, and that 
he either published it at the first favourable opportunity after that time, or was pro- 
vented— it may be even by death— from ever continuing or completing his task. 



648 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

may have been, it is clear that St. Luke was not writing for him alone. It is 
also, to say the least, a probable conjecture that soon after the close of those 
two whole years some remarkable change took place in the condition of the 
prisoner. That such a change did take place is the almost unanimous tradi- 
tion of the Church. However slight may be the grounds of direct testimony, 
it has been generally believed in all ages that (about the beginning of the year 
A.D. 64) St. Paul was tried, acquitted, and liberated ; and that after some two 
years of liberty, during which he continued to prosecute his missionary 
labours, he was once more arrested, and was, after a second imprisonment, put 
to death at Rome. This would, at least, accord with the anticipations 
expressed in his own undoubted Epistles. Although he was still a prisoner 
when he wrote the letter to the Philippians, his trial was near at hand, and 
while promising to send Timothy to inquire about their fortunes, he adds, 
" But I am confident in the Lord that I myself too shall come speedily ;" and 
this is so far from being a casual hope that he even asks Philemon " to get a 
lodging ready for him, for he hopes that he shall be granted to them by their 
prayers." It is, of course, quite possible that St. Paul's sanguine expectations 
may have been frustrated, 1 but he certainly would not have expressed them so 
distinctly without good grounds for believing that powerful friends were at 
work in his favour. Whether Festus, and Agrippa, and Lysias, and Publius 
had used their influence on his behalf, or whether he had reason to rely on any 
favourable impression which he may have made among the Praetorian soldiers, 
or whether he had received intelligence that the Jews had seen reason to 
abandon a frivolous and groundless prosecution it is impossible to conjecture; 2 
but his strong impression that he would be liberated at least helps to confirm 
the many arguments which lead us to believe that he actually was. If so, it 
must have been very soon after the close of that two years' confinement with 
which St. Luke so suddenly breaks off. 

For in July, A.D. 64, there broke out that terrible persecution against the 
Christians, from which, had he been still at Rome, it is certain that he could 

1 For this reason I have not here laid any stress on his once-purposed visit to Spain 
(Rom. xv. 24, 28). It seems clear from Philem. 22 that he had either abandoned this 
intention, or at any rate postponed it till he had re-visited Asia. 

2 It is undesirable to multiply uncertain conjectures, but perhaps the Jews may have 
sent their documents, witnesses, &c, with Josephus when he went to Rome, A.D. 64. 
He tells us that, by the influence of the Jewish pantomimist Aliturus and of Poppsea, he 
was enabled to secure the release of some Jewish priests, friends of his own, whom 
Festus had, on grounds which Josephus calls trivial, sent bound to Rome. Josephus was 
doubtless one of a commission dispatched for this purpose, and it is conceivable that 
the prosecution of St. Paul's trial may have been a subordinate object of this com- 
mission, and that the trial may have broken down all the more completely from the 
loss of witnesses and evidence in the shipwreck which Josephus underwent. His vessel 
foundered on the voyage, and out of two hundred souls only eighty were picked up by 
a ship of Cyrene, after they had swum or floated all night in the waves. Josephus 
then proceeded to Puteoli in another ship. He makes little more than a dry allusion to 
these events [Vit. 3), which contrasts singularly with the vivid minuteness of St. Luke: 
but the general incidents so far resemble those of St. Paul's shipwreck that some have 
conjectured that the two events were identical. Chronology and other considerations 
render this impossible, nor is there any great reason to suppose that Josephus js herp 
introducing embellishments from the story of St. Paul. 



THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 649 

not have escaped. If, therefore, the Pastoral Epistles be forgeries, we have 
heard thfc last words of St. Paul, and at the last verse of the Acts the curtain 
rushes down in utter darkness upon the remainder of his life. Let us, then, 
consider what tradition says, and whether we can still accept as genuine the 
Epistles to Timothy and Titus. If the indications derived from these sources 
are in any degree trustworthy, we have still to hear some further thoughts and 
opinions of the Apostle. We catch at least a glimpse of his final movements, 
and attain to a sure knowledge of his state of mind up to the moment of his 
death. If tradition be mistaken, and if the Epistles are spurious, then we 
must acquiesce in the fact that we know nothing more of the Apostle, and that 
he perished among that " vast multitude " whom, in the year 64, the vilest of 
Emperors, nay, almost of human beings, sacrificed to the blind madness which 
had been instigated against them by a monstrous accusation. If, indeed, St. 
Paul perished amid that crowd of nameless martyrs, there is but little pro- 
bability that any regard would have been paid to his claim as a Roman citizen. 
He may have perished, like them, by crucifixion ; or have been covered, like 
them, in the skins of wild beasts, to be mangled by dogs ; or, standing in his 
tunic of ignited pitch, may with his dying glance have caught sight of the 
wicked Emperor of triumphant Heathendom, as the living torch of hideous 
martyrdom cast a baleful glare across the gardens of the Golden House. 1 
From all this, however, we may feel a firm conviction that, by the mercy of 
God, he was delivered for a time. 2 

It is true that, so far as direct evidence is concerned, we can only say that 
St. Paul's own words render it probable that he was liberated, and that this 
probability finds some slight support in a common tradition, endorsed by the 
authority of some of the Fathers. But this tradition goes little further than 
the bare fact. If we are to gain any further knowledge of the biography of 
St. Paul, it must be derived from the Pastoral Epistles, and from them alone. 
If they be not genuine, we know no single further particular respecting his 
fortunes. 

Now, it must be admitted that a number of critics, formidable alike in 
their unanimity and their learning, have come to the conclusion that the 
Epistles to Timothy and Titus were not written by St. Paul. 3 Their arguments 
are entitled to respectful attention, and they undoubtedly suggest difficulties, 
which our ignorance of all details in the history of those early centuries 
renders it by no means easy to remove. Nevertheless, after carefully and 
impartially weighing all that they have urged — of which some account will be 
found in the Excursus at the end of the volume — I have come to the decided 
conviction that the Epistles are genuine, and that the first two of them were 
written during the two years which intervened between St. Paul's liberation 
and his martyrdom at Rome. ^ 

i Tac. Ann. xv. 44 (cf. Mart. x. 25 ; Juv. Sat. viii. 235) ; Sen. Up. 14, 4 ; Schol. in 
Juv. i. 155 ; Tert. Apol. 15 ; ad JSfat. i. 18 ; ad Mart. 5. 

2 See Excur. XXVI., " Evidence as to the Liberation of St. Paul." 

3 Schmidt, Schleiermacher, Eichhorn, Credner, De Wette, Baur, Zeller, ITilgenfeld, 
SchenkeL Ewald, Hausrath, Renan, Pfieiderer, Krenkel, Davidson, &e. 



650 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

CHAPTER LUX 

THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 

'Ev &5^\(jf) irov ffKdret <pa>\tv6vra>v elffert Tore rcov, el /ecu rives virrjpxov, irapa<p6eipeip 
^irixeipoivruv rhv vyirj Kav6va rov (rarrjptov KTjpvy/xaros. — Hegesippus ap. Euaob. 
H.E. lii. 32. 

I shall not attempt, by more than a few sentences, to dispel the obscurity of 
that last stage of the Apostle's life which began at the termination of his 
Roman imprisonment. We feel that our knowledge of his movements 
is plunged in the deepest uncertainty the moment that we lose the guidance 
of St. Luke. I cannot myself believe that he was able to carry out his 
intention of visiting Spain. The indications of his travels in the two later 
Pastoral Epistles seem to leave no room for such a journey ; nor, if it had 
really taken place, can we imagine that no shadow of a detail respecting it 
should have been preserved. But even if he did accomplish this new mission, 
we cannot so much as mention a single church which he founded, or a single 
port at which he touched. To speak of his work in Spain could only therefore 
leave a fallacious impression. If he went at all, it must have been im- 
mediately after his imprisonment, since his original object had been merely 
to visit Rome on his way to the " limit of the West." In writing to the 
Romans he had expressed a hope that he would be furthered on his journey 
by their assistance. Judging by the indifference with which they treated him 
in both of his imprisonments, there is too much reason to fear that this hope 
was in any case doomed to disappointment. The next trace of his existence is 
the First Epistle to Timothy. That Epistle is less organic — that is, it has less 
structural unity — than any other of St. Paul's Epistles. The time and place 
at which it was written are wholly uncertain, because the only historic 
indication which it contains is that " on his way to Macedonia Paul had 
begged Timothy to remain at Ephesus." x 

' ' Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the commandment of God our 
Saviour, 2 and Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy my true child in the faith ; grace, 
mercy, and peace from God the Father 3 and Christ Jesus our Lord." 4 

This salutation is remarkable for the title " Saviour " applied to God the 

1 The general outline of the Epistle is as follows : — Salutation (i. 1, 2). The object 
of the letter to encourage Timothy to resist false teachers, and hold fast the faith (3 — 
11, 18 — 20), with the Apostle's thanks to God for the mercy which had made him a 
minister of the Gospel (12 — 17). The duty of praying for rulers, with rules about the 
bearing of women in public worship (ii.). The qualifications of "bishops" (presbyters) 
and deacons (iii.). Fresh warnings respecting the false teachers, and the way in which 
Timothy is to deal with them (iv.). His relations to elders (v. 1, 2) ; to the order of 
" widows" (3 — 16) ; and to presbyters, with rules as to their selection (17 — 25). Direc- 
tions concerning slaves, especially with reference to the false teachers ; warnings against 
covetousness ; with final exhortations and benediction (vi.). 

2 Not, of course, "a Saviour." The spread of Christianity is naturally marked by 
the increasing anarthrousness (omission of the article) of its commonest terms. We 
mark this fact in the word Christ, which is an appellative in the Gospels (almost always 
"the Christ" — i.e., the Messiah) , but has become, in the Epistles, a proper name. 

» Omit tjjxw, m, A, D, F, G (B, deficient). « 1. 1, 2. 



THE PIBST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 651 

Fathoi, perhaps derived from some recent study of Psalm lxiii. 7, and 
continued throughout.the Pastoral Epistles when once adopted ; for the name 
" our Hope," applied to Christ, and not improbably borrowed from the same 
verse ; and for the word " mercy " so naturally introduced by the worn and 
tried old man, between the usual greetings of " grace and peace." 1 

" As I begged thee to remain still in Ephesus, on my way to Macedonia, that 
thou mightest command some not to teach different doctrine, nor to give heed to 
myths and interminable genealogies, 2 seeing that these minister questions rather 

than the dispensation of God 3 which is in faith " 4 The sentence, quite 

characteristically, remains unfinished; but St. Paul evidently meant to say, "I 
repeat the exhortation which then I gave." 

In contrast with these false teachers he tells him that the purpose of the 
Gospel is love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned, 
failing of which some turned aside to vain jangling. They wanted to pass 
themselves off as teachers of the Jewish Law, but their teaching was mere 
confusion and ignorance. 

The mention of the Law leads him to allude to its legitimate function.* 
To those who were justified by faith it was needless, being merged in the 
higher law of a life in unity with Christ ; but its true function was to warn 
and restrain those who lived under the sway of mere passion in heathenish 
wickedness. 6 For these, though not for the regenerate, the thunders of Sinai 
are necessary, "according to the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God, 
wherewith I was entrusted." 7 

He then at once digresses into an expression of heartfelt gratitude to God 
for that grace which superabounded over his former ignorant faithlessness, a 
faithlessness which had led him to outrage and insult, such as only his 
ignorance could palliate. 

" Faithful is the saying, 8 and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. 9 But on this account I 
gained mercy, that in me first and foremost Christ Jesus might manifest His entire 
long-suffering as a pattern for those who were hereafter to believe on Him to 

» Cf. Gal. vi. 16. 

2 Though the Sephiroth of the Kabbala belong to a much later period, and the Zohar 
is probably a mediaeval book, yet Judaic speculations of the same kind seem to have been 
the prototype of the Valentinian emanations with their successive intermarriages of ceons. 

3 i. 4; leg. oiKoi/o/ouav (n, A, B, F, G, &c). The questions do not further the divine 
scheme of God, which works, not in the sphere of misty uncertainties, but in the sphere 
of faith. 

4 3, 4. For similar anakolutha, see Gal. ii. 4, 5 ; Bom. v. 12, &c. 
i. 8, 9, vofio^ . . . vojou'jiitos. 

6 For the true use of the Law, and the limitation to its validity, see Bom. vii. 12 ; 
Gal. iii. 19 ; Phil. iii. 9. It is idle to pretend that there is anything un-Pauline in this 
sentiment. "With the list of crimes — which is, however, varied with perfect independence 
— cf. Bom. i. 29 ; 1 Cor. vi. 9 : Gal. v. 19. 

7 i. 8—11. 

8 This arresting formula would naturally arise with the rise of Christian axioms ; 
of. " These words are faithful and true " (Bev. xxi. 5 ; xxii. 6). 

9 Cf. " God be merciful to me the sinner " (Luke xviii. 13 j wptbros, " non tempore sed 
malignitate " (Aug. m Ps. lxxi. 1). 



652 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

life eternal Now to the King of the Ages, 1 the incorruptible, in risible, only God, 8 
honour and glory unto the ages of the ages. Amen. 3 

" This charge I commit to thee, son Timothy, in accordance with the prophecies 
which in time past were prophesied of thee, 4 that thou in them mayest war the good 
warfare, 5 having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have been 
wrecked as regards the faith; of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I 
handed over to Satan, that they may be trained not to blaspheme." 6 

It will be seen that in this section he begins with the false teachers, and 
after two digressions — one suggested by the mention of the Law, the other by 
his personal commission to preach the Gospel — returns to them again. 

The second chapter contains regulations for public worship, the duty of 
praying for those in authority, and the bearing and mutual relations of men 
and women in religious assemblies — broken by brief and natural digressions 
on the universality of God's offered grace, and on his own Apostolic office. He 
directs that 

"Petitions, prayers, supplications, and thanksgivings 7 should be made for all, 
and especially for kings, 8 and those in authority, that we may spend a calm and 
quiet life in all godliness and gravity. This is fair and acceptable before our 
Saviour, God, who wills all men to be saved, and to come to full knowledge of the 
truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man 
Christ Jesus, 9 who gave Himself a ransom for all — the testimony in its own seasons. 
For which testimony I was appointed an herald and an Apostle (I speak the 
truth; 10 I He not, 11 ) in faith and truth." 12 

1 Not here in its technical sense of ' ' the ceons ; " cf . Ps. cxlv. 13, "a kingdom of all ages. " 

2 Omit <ro<f>o> («, A, D, F, G, &c). 

3 For similar personal digressions, see Gal. i. 12 ; 1 Thess. ii. 4 ; 2 Cor. iii. 6 ; iv. 1, 
&c. ; and for the doxology (Kom. xv. 33 ; xvi. 27 ; 2 Cor. ii. 14; ix. 15; Phil. iv. 20, 
&c. The passage is intensely individual, for " all Paul's theology is in ultimate analysis, 
the reflex of his personal experience " (Reuss, Les EpUres, ii. 352). 

4 Perhaps a reference to his solemn ordination, as in iv. 14, when Silas, who was a 
prophet (Acts xv. 32), was present among others (Acts xiii. 3). 

5 a-Tparda, not ax^v, as in 2 Tim. iv. 7. It is St. Paul's favourite metaphor (Rom. xiii. 
12; 2 Cor. x. 5 ; 1 Thess. v. 8, &c). 

6 i. 12 — 20. It is impossible to know the exact circumstances referred to. For 
Hymenaeus, see 2 Tim. ii. 17. For Alexander, 2 Tim. iv. 14 ; Acts xix. 33 ; but even 
the identifications are precarious. For " delivering to Satan," see 1 Cor. v. 5. Whether 
it was excommunication, or generally giving up from all Church influences, and leaving 
Satan to deal with them, or the delivery to preternatural corporal sufferings, the intention, 
we see, was merciful and disciplinary (iraiSevOuxTi)' 

7 The synonyms are mainly cumulative, though perhaps Sojo-eis means special, 
Trpoo-evxas general, and evTeu£eis earnest prayers (see Phil. iv. 6). 

8 Baur sees in this plural an indication that the Epistle was written in the times of 
the Antonines, when Emperors took associates in the Empire. Can theorising be more 
baseless ?— The word "kings "does not necessarily refer only to local viceroys, &c, like 
the Herods, but was in the provinces applied generically to the Emperors, as it constantly 
is in the Talmud. It was most important to both Jews and Christians that they should 
not be suspected of civic turbulence (Jos. B. J. ii. 10, § 4 ; Bingham, xv. 8, 14). Hence 
we see how baseless is the conjecture of Pfleiderer (Protestanten bibcl) that it was written 
in the time of Hadrian, who befriended the Christians (Euseb. H. E. iv. 8, 9). 

9 The word /aeo-iTTjs as applied to Christ is new, but not the conception (Rom. v. 10 ; 
2 Cor. v. 19). There may be a silent condemnation of incipient Docetism in dp0pw7ios, 
as well as of the supposed mediation of angels in els (Col. ii. 15, 18). 

10 Om. kv Xpto-roJ (A, D, F, G, &c). 

11 A natural reminiscence of the occasions when such asseverations had beon BC 
necessary that they had become habitual (2 Cor. xi. 31 ; Rom. xi. 1), 

is ii. 1—7. 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 653 

After this double digression lie expresses his wish that the men * should 
pray in every place, " uplifting holy hands, 2 without wrath and doubting ; and 
that women, with shamefastness and sobriety, should adorn themselves, not 
with plaits of hair, and gold or pearls, or costly raiment, but, in accordance 
with their Gospel profession, with good works." Let them be silent and 
submissive, not obtrusive and didactic. This rule he supports by the 
narrative of the Fall, as illustrative of generic differences between the sexes, 3 
adding, however, that in spite of the greater liability to deception and sin, 
woman " shall be saved through motherhood, if they abide in faith and love 
and sanctification with sober-mindedness." 4 

The third chapter passes into the qualifications for office in the Church. 
It is introduced by a sort of Christian aphorism, " Faithful is the saying, If 
any man desires the office of the pastorate, 5 he desires a good work." The 
qualifications on which St. Paul insists are irreproachableness, faithful 
domestic life, 6 soberness, sobermindedness, decorousness, hospitable dispo- 
sition, and aptitude to teach. He who is quarrelsome over wine, given to 
blows and covetousuess, is unfit. Moderation, peacefulness, indifference to 
money, a well-ordered household, grave and obedient children, are signs that a 
man may aspire to the sacred work ; but he must not be a neophyte, 7 that he 

* Toil? avUpas (ll. 8). 

2 The ancient attitude of prayer (Bingham, Antiq. xiii. 8, 10 ; Ps. xxiv. 4 ; xxvi. 6) ; 
of. Tennyson — 

'* For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If knowing God they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?" 

3 This is quite independent of, yet exactly analogous to, his reasoning in 1 Cor. xL 
8, 9 (cf. 2 Cor. xi. 3 ; Wisd. xxv. 24). 

4 ii. 8 — 15. It "wall be seen that he is here looking at the question from a wholly 
different point of view to that in 1 Cor. vii., which applies not to the whole sex, but to 
a chosen few. So, too, in the previous verses, he is considering concrete facts, not the 
abstract abolition of all sexual distinctions in Christ (Gal. iii. 28). The vj reKvoyovCa is 
probably not specific {"tfie child-bearing" — i.e., the Incarnation — surely a most obscuie 
allusion), but generic — i.e., a holy married life, with the bearing and training of children, 
is, as a rule, the appointed path for women, and it will end in their salvation, in spite 
of their original weakness, if that path be humbly and faithfully pursued. Doubtless 
St. Paul was thinking of Gen. iii. 16. 

5 To translate this "the office of a bishop" is, as Alford says in his usual incisive 
way, " merely laying a trap for misunderstanding." Episcopacy proper was developed 
after the death of St. Paul, but before that of St. John, as a bulwark against heresy. 

6 I am not persuaded that M i5? yvj/ai/cb? avSpa really implies more than this, with 
reference to the prevalence of divorce, &c. The early prejudice against second marriages 
naturally inclined the ancient commentators to take it exclusively in one way ; but the 
remark of Chrysostom, -rqv i/xerpiav KwXu'ei, seems to me to be nearest the truth. St. Paul's 
opinion was not in the least that of Athenagoras, that a second marriage is "specious 
adultery," since in some cases he even recommends it (v. 14; 1 Cor. vii. 39; Rom. vii., 
2, 3), but he would possibly have held with Hermas {Pastor, ii. 4), that though a second 
marriage is no sin, it is a better and nobler thing to avoid it. It is as Gregory of 
Nazianzus says, "a concession" {crvyxupw* — Orat. xxxi.). 

7 The first occurrence of the word " neophyte" — " newly -planted " — a recent convert. 
For the metaphor, see 1 Cor. iii. 6. At Ephesus there must have been a choice of 
presbyters who were not "neophytes." Perhaps the reason why this qualification ii 
omitted in Tit. i. 6 is that there would have been greater difficulty in carrying it rat in 
the more recent Churches of Crete. 



654 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

may not, through the cloudy fumes of pride, fall into the devil's judgment. 1 
He must be well thought of by his Pagan neighbours, that he may not fall 
into disrepute, and the devil's snare which such loss of character involves. 2 

Deacons, too, must be grave, straightforward, sober, not avaricious, sound 
in faith, and pure of conscience ; and their freedom from reproach must be 
tested before they are appointed. 3 

Deaconesses 4 must be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful. The domestic 
relations of deacons and deaconesses must be irreproachable; for an 
honourable diaconate secures an honourable position, 5 and boldness in the 
faith. 6 

" These things I write to thee, though I hope to come to you unexpectedly 
soon ; 7 but in order that, if I am delayed, thou mayest know how to bear thyself in 
the house of God— seeing that it is the Church of God — as a pillar and basis of the 
truth. 8 

" And confessedly great is the mystery of godliness — who was 8 

" Manifested in the flesh, 
Justified in the Spirit, 

Seen of angels, 
Preached amoDg the Gentiles, 
Believed on in the world, 

Taken up in glory." 10 

1 These Epistles are peculiar in the use of the word " devil. " Elsewhere St. Paul 
uses " Satan," except in Eph. iv. 27 ; vi. 11. It is impossible to say whether "thedevil'e 
judgment" means "that which he has incurred " or "that which he inflicts." 

2 iii. 1—7. 

3 iii. 8—10. Besides the " Seven," deacons properly so called may be referred to in 
1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Eom. xii. 7 ; 1 Pet. iv. 11 ; as well as in Phil. i. 1. 

4 TvvaiKai must mean "deaconesses" (Rom. xvi. 1. "Ancillae quae ministrae dice- 
bantur " — Plin. ix. 27), because the wives of deacons were certainly not selected by the 
Church. 

5 iii. 11—13. 

6 koAos /3a0jubs can only mean "a fair standing-point," "an honourable position," from 
which to discharge nobly his Christian duties. The notion that it means "earning 
preferment " would be an immense anachronism. Cf. vi. 19 : >ca\bv Oefxikiov. 

7 Tdx.i.ou — an untranslatable ellipse. John xiii. 27 ; Heb. xiii. 23. 

8 Apart from the awkwardness of the Church being, in the same verse, the house of 
God and also a pillar and base of the truth, the expression is one of the most difficult and 
surprising — one of the least obviously Pauline — in the whole Epistle. The separate 
metaphors occur in Gal. ii. 9 and Eph. ii. 20, but only of persons. There is, therefore, 
much to be said for attaching them to ava<rTpe<pe<r0ai, and making them apply to Timothy, 
as I have done. (See Dean Stanley, Sermons on the Apostolic Age, p. 115.) The words 
are applied to the martyr Attalus in the Epistle of the Church of Lyons, c. 5. Others 
attach them to the next sentence — which they would turn into a most awkward and 
unnatural an ti- climax. If, however, they are applied to the Church, the meaning is 
clear enough — namely, that apart from the Church the truth of the Gospel would be 
without that earthly institution on which, by Christ's ordinance, its stability and perma- 
nence depends. _ 

9 "O? is read by «, A, C, F, G. (The reading of A was once supposed to be &C, but 
Bishop Ellicott testifies that the apparent line across the O was originally due to the 
sagitta of the e in the word evo-epdav on the other side of the page. See his Pastoral 
Epistles, p. 103.) Besides this, it is so unquestionably supported by every canon of 
criticism that it may now be regarded as a certain reading. 

10 iii. 14 — 16. These last phrases are so rhythmic in their introverted parallelism 
with the varied order of their triple antitheses, that they have, with much probability, 
been supposed (like Eph. v. 14) to belong to some ancient hymn or creed. The extreme 
antiquity of Christian hymns is proved by Eph. v. 19, and by Plin. Epp. x. 97. " Justi- 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 655 

The true doctrine again recalls him to the subject of the false teachers. 
Beyond the present peril lies the prophecy of future apostasies, in which some 
shall give heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of devils, by means of the 
hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences have been seared. This apostasy, partly 
present, partly future, is marked by dualistic tendencies. It hinders mar- 
riage, 1 and commands abstinence from meats, 2 forgetting that thankfulness 
and prayer sanctify everything. Another feature of the nascent heresy is a 
fondness for profane and anile myths. A third is mere bodily asceticism. 
This training may indeed have a partial advantage ; but better is the gymna- 
sium which trains for godliness, since godliness is profitable both for this life 
and the next (" faithful is the saying ") : for with a view to this — because we 
have hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all, specially of the faith- 
ful 3 — we are enabled to endure both toil and struggle. 4 These truths Timothy 
is to teach, showing himself an example to the faithful in speech, conversa- 
tion, love, spirituality, faith, purity, so that none may despise his youth. 5 Till 
St. Paul arrives he is bidden to occupy himself in reading, 6 exhortation, teach- 
ing; securing progress by diligence, and not neglecting — which possibly 
Timothy, in his retiring character, was tempted to do — the grace which was 
solemnly bestowed on him at his ordination. 7 

Then he is advised how to behave towards various orders in his Church. 
He is not to use severe language to an elder, but to exhort them as fathers ; 
the younger men as brothers ; the elder women as mothers, the younger as 
sisters, in all purity. 8 Special directions are given about widows. 9 Those are 
true widows who rightly train their children or grandchildren, who do their 
duty to their parents, who devote themselves to constant prayer. But in a 
widow, a prurient, frivolous character is a living death ; for, in a Christian, 
neglect of domestic duties and relations is worse than heathenism. No widow 
is therefore to be put on the list before sixty years of age, after one honour- 
able marriage, 10 and after having acquired a character for motherliness, hospi- 

fied in the Spirit " means that Christ was manifested to be the Son of God (Eom. i. 4) by 
the workings of His higher spiritual life ; " seen of angels " refers to the various angelic 
witnesses of scenes of His earthly life. 

1 Not yet "forbids," but somewhat " discourages." Cf. Jos. B. J. ii. 8, 2, and 13. 

2 Cf. Rom. xiv. 1^ ; 1 Cor. viii. 8 ; x. 20. 

8 The universalism of expression is here even more remarkable than in ii. 4. 

4 Leg. ayuvi&neea, a, A, F, C, G, K. 

5 The sneers that Timothy " seems to have been endowed by Christian legend with 
the girt of immortal youth " are very groundless. If he were converted in A.D. 45, at 
the age of sixteen, he would now (A.D. 66) be only thirty-seven — a very youthful age 
for so responsible a position. The aged rector of one who has now become a very exalted 
ecclesiastic, and is long past sixty, still says of his first curate, " I always told you that 
young man was very ambitious ; " and when M. Thiers was Prime Minister of France, 
and called on his old schoolmaster, he found that he was only remembered as "the little 
Adolphus who played tricks." 

6 Perhaps the earliest allusion to the duty of reading Scripture. 

7 iv. 1 — 16. Acts xvi. 1, and 2 Tim. i. 6, where he receives a similar injunction. 

8 " Omnes puellas et virgines Christi aut aequaliter ignora aut aequaliter dilige " (Jer.). 
But how inferior to the direction of St. Paul ! 

9 Acts ii. 44 ; vi. 1. 

10 Cf. Tit. L 6. It is a remarkable sign of the position of widows in the Church that 



656 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

tality, kindly service, succour to the afflicted, and continuance in every good 
work. But Timothy is to have nothing to say to younger widows who want 
to marry again when they begin to wax restive against the yoke of Christ — . 
and so are convicted of setting at nought their first faith. 1 To avoid the 
danger of gadding idleness and unseemly gossiping, it is better that such 
should avoid all chance of creating scandal by quietly re-entering into mar- 
ried life. Hence all younger widows must be supported by their own relations, 
and not at the expense of the Church. 2 

Returning to the Presbyters, he quotes the passage of Deuteronomy, 
" Thou shalt not muzzle a threshing ox," and adds the maxim, " The labourer 
is worthy of his hire," 3 to support his rule that "double honour" be paid to 
faithful and laborious pastors. 4 If they do wrong they must indeed be 
rebuked, but never on ill-supported accusations. " I solemnly charge thee 
before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, 5 to observe these 
rules without prejudice, and without doing anything by favour." He is not 
to ordain any one too hastily, lest he be involved in the responsibility for their 
sins ; and this discrimination is the more necessary because there are flagrant 
sins which marshal men to judgment, and hidden sins which stealthily follow 
behind them ; just as also there are some good works which are openly mani- 
fest, and others which are concealed, although ultimately all shall stand 
revealed in their true light. 

In the very midst of these wise and serious directions are introduced two 
personal exhortations. One of them — " Keep thyself pure " — may naturally 
have been suggested by the passing thought that he whose duty it was to 
exercise so careful an oversight over others must be specially watchful to be 
himself free from every stain. The other, " Be no longer a water-drinker, but 
use a little wine because of thy stomach, and thy frequent infirmities," 6 is so 
casual that, though we see at once how it may have occurred to St. Paul's 

Polycarp calls them evo-uurr/jpiov &eov, " an altar of God " {ad Phil. 4). From the severity 
of some of St. Paul's remarks, Reuss thinks that he may have had in view the occasional 
second marriage of Christian widows with Pagans, which would be a disgraceful pro- 
ceeding after they had received assistance from the Church. They might be "dea- 
conesses " earlier than sixty, but not " widows." 

1 In their practical pledge not to marry again when they were placed on the official 
fist of widows. 

2 v. 1—16. 

3 1 Cor. ix. 9. Those who apply v ypa<f>v to both clauses must admit that the Gospel of 
St. Luke had been published, and had come to be regarded of Divine authority, before 
this Epistle (Luke x. 7). But the inference is most precarious, for our Lord often 
alluded to current proverbs, and v ypa<f>r) may here only apply to the quotation from 
Deut. xxv. 4. 

4 8ur\fj ti/u-ij is a perfectly general expression. The spirit of foolish literalism led 
to double rations for the Presbyters at the Agapae. 

5 See 1 Cor. xi. 10 ; 1 Pet. i. 12. It is not possible to explain the exact shade of 
meaning in the word "elect." They are probably so called, as Calvin says, "excellentiae 
causa." Cf. tov? iepovs ayye'Aovs in Agrippa's adjuration to the Jews not to rebel against 
Rome (Jos. B. J. ii. 16, and Tobit xii. 15). 

6 These "frequent infirmities" perhaps explain the timidity of Timothy's character 
(1 Cor. xvi. 10, 11). Some have seen a reflex of this in the reproaches addressed, in the 
midst of praise, "to the angel rf the Church of Ephesua." 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 657 

thoughts — since otherwise the former rule might have led to a self-denial still 
more rigid, 1 and even injurious to health — it is far tot natural and spon- 
taneous, too entirely disconnected from all that precedes and follows it, to have 
occurred to any imitator. An imitator, if capable of introducing the natural 
play of thought to which the precept " Keep thyself pure " is due, would have 
been far more likely to add — and especially in an Epistle which so scrupu- 
lously forbids indulgence in wine to all Church officials — " And, in order to 
promote this purity, take as little wine as possible, or avoid it altogether." 2 

He then passes to the duties of slaves. 3 Their conversion is not to be 
made a plea for upsetting the social order, and giving any excuse for abusing 
the Gospel. Christian masters are still to be treated as masters, and to be 
served all the more heartily "because all who are partakers of this kindly 
service are faithful and beloved." Here again he reverts to the false teachers 
— who had perhaps perverted the truth of Christian equality into the falsehood 
of socialism — to denounce their inflated ignorance and unwholesome loquacity 
as the source of the jealousies and squabbles of corrupt men, who look on 
religion as a source of gain. 4 A iource of gain indeed it is when accompanied 
with the contentment 6 arising from the sense of the nakedness of our birth 
and death, and the fewness of our real needs, 6 whereas the desire of wealth 
breeds the numerous forms of foolish desire which plunge men into destruc- 
tion and perdition. For all evils spring from the root of covetousness, 7 which 
has led many into heresy as well as into manifold miseries. The Apostle 
appeals to his son in the faith to flee these things : to pursue 8 righteousness, 
godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness ; to strive the good strife of faith ; 
to grasp eternal life, " to which also thou wert called, and didst confess the 
good confession before many witnesses." He most solemnly adjures him, by 
Christ and His good confession before Pontius Pilate, 9 to keep the command- 
ment without spot, without reproach, till the manifestation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, which He shall show in His own seasons, who is the blessed and only 
Potentate, the Xing of kings and Lord of lords, who alone hath immortality, 

1 Bom. xiv. 2. Plutarch speaks of an aou/os ayvela {Be Isid. et Osvr, § 6). 

2 Ver. 17—23. 

3 Some have fancied, with very little probability, that the topic is suggested by the 
mention of those whose good works cannot be finally hid, but are little likely to be noticed 
in this world. 

4 Gal. iii. 28. The recognition of the existing basis of society is found throughout 
the Epistles (1 Cor. vii. 21 ; Col. iii. 22, &c). 

5 avTap/ceia, self -sufficing independence (2 Cor. ix. 8 ; Phil. iv. 11). Cf. Prov. xiv. 14, 
"The good man shall be satisfied from himself." 

6 Phil. iv. 11-13. 

7 p t '£<x need not be rendered " a root," for it is a word which does not require the 
article ; but St. Paul does not, of course, mean that it is the only root from which all 
evils spring, but the root from which all evils may spring. So Diogenes Laertius calls it 
" the metropolis of all evils " {Vit. Diogen. vi. 50 ; and Philo, Be Spec. Legg. 346, calls it 

op/XTj-nypiov ira.vT<av 7rapavoju,rj/u.dTwv (cf . Luke XU. 15 — 21). 

8 BiooKe, e7riXa/3ou. 

9 There is an obvious allusion in the koXq o/xo\oyia of Christ to that of the previous 
verse, but in the latter instance it seems to mean the faithful performance of the will of 
God even to death. 



658 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man ever saw, or can see — to 
whom honour and eternal strength. Amen. 1 

With this majestic description of the Divine attributes it might well have 
been thought that the Epistle would close. A forger might naturally desire a 
climax; but St. Paul is never influenced by such considerations of style. 
Filled with the thought of the perils of wealth in a city like wealthy Ephesus, 
he once more, in a sort of postscript, 2 advises Timothy to warn the rich " not 
to be high-minded, nor to fix their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on 
the living God, who richly affords us all things for enjoyment," and to use 
their riches wisely and generously, " treasuring up for themselves a fair founda- 
tion for the future, that they may grasp that which is really life." 3 

Then, with one parting reference to the false teachers, the Epistle ends : — 

" O Timothy, guard the trust committed to thee, turning away from these pro- 
fane babblings, and "antitheses" of the knowledge which usurps the name; which 
some professing have gone astray as regards the faith. Grace be with thee." 4 

The " Amen " 5 is probably a pious addition, and the various superscriptions 
which tell us that the Epistle was written from Laodicea, " which is the 
metropolis of Phyrgia Pacatiana," or "from Nicopolis," or "from Athens," 
" by the hands of his disciple Titus," or " from Macedonia," are idle guesses, 
of which the latter alone has any plausibility, though even this is only a pre- 
carious inference from the verse which suggested it. 



CHAPTER LIT. 

THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 



" Lord Jesus, I am weary in Thy work, but not of Thy work. Let me go and 
speak for Thee once more . . . seal Thy truth, and then die." — Whitefield. 

From St. Paul's message to Philemon we infer that as speedily as possible 
after he was set free he visited Ephesus and the cities of the Lycus. Even if 
he deferred this visit till he had carried out his once-cherished plan of visiting 
Spain, we know that the moment his destiny was decided he sent Timothy to 
Philippi, with the intention of following him at no long interval. 6 Hence 
when Timothy rejoined him, probably at Ephesus, he left him there, as we 
have seen, to finish the task of setting the Church in order, and himself set out 
on his promised journey to Macedonia. It is not likely that he felt any desire 
to revive the gloomy reminiscences of Jerusalem, and to incur a second risk 
of being torn to pieces by infuriated Pharisees. In that unhappy city a fresh 
outburst of the spirit of persecution had ended the year before (A.D. 63) in 

1 vi. 1—16. 2 Reuss, Les Epitres, ii. 378. 

3 vi. 17—19. Leg. 5i™ ? , A, D, E, F, G. 

4 M, A, F, G, read tuff vumv, as in 2 Tim. iv. 22 ; Tit. iii. 15. 

6 Omitted b,y n, A, D, F, G. 6 Phil. ii. 19—23. 



THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 669 

the murder of James the Lord's brother. 1 Soon after the accession of Gessins 
Floras to the post of Procurator, there were violent disturbances throughout 
Judaea. The war which culminated in the total destruction of the Jewish 
polity did not indeed break out till A.D. 66, but the general spirit of 
turbulence, the deeply- seated discontent with the government of Agrippa II., 
and the threatening multiplication of the Sicarii, showed that everything 
was ripening for the final revolt. 2 We may be sure that when the ship of 
Adramyttium sailed from Tyre, St. Paul had seen his last of the Holy Land. 
From Macedonia he doubtless went to Corinth, and he may then have sailed 
with Titus to Crete. 

On the southern shores of that legendary island he had involuntarily 
touched in the disastrous voyage from Myra, which ended in his shipwreck 
at Malta. But a prisoner on his way to trial, in a crowded Alexandrian 
corn-vessel which only awaited the earliest opportunity to sail, could have had 
but little opportunity to preach the gospel even at the Fair Havens and Lassea, 
and we may at once reject the idle suggestion that the Church of Crete had 
then first been founded. It is probable that the first tidings of Christianity 
had been carried to the island by those Cretan Jews who had heard the 
thrilling words of St. Peter at Pentecost ; and the insufficiency of knowledge 
in these Churches may be accounted for in part by these limited opportunities, 
as well as by the inherent defects of the Cretan character. The stormy shores 
of Crete, and the evil reputation of its inhabitants even from mythical days, 
may well have tended to deter the evangelising visits of the early preachers 
of Christianity; and the indication that the nascent faith of the converts 
was largely tainted with Jewish superstition is exactly what we should have 
expected. St. Paul's brief sojourn in the island with Titus was probably 
the first serious effort to consolidate the young, struggling, and imperilled 
Churches ; and we can easily imagine that it was the necessity of completing 
an anxious work which reluctantly compelled the Apostle to leave his com- 
panion behind him. The task could not have been left in wiser or firmer 
hands than those of one who had already made his influence felt and his 
authority respected among the prating and conceited sophists of turbulent 
Corinth. Those who argue that, because Paul had but recently parted with 
Titus, the advice contained in the letter would be superfluous, are starting a 
purely imaginary difficulty, and one of which the futility is demonstrated by 
the commonest experiences of daily life. Objections of this kind are simply 
astonishing, and when we are told that the instructions given are too vague 
and commonplace to render them of any value, and that " the pointlessness of 
the directions must have made them all but worthless to an evangelist," 3 we 
can only reply that the Christian Church in all ages, in spite of the incessant 
tendency to exalt dogma above simple practice, has yet accepted the Pastoral 
Epistles as a manual which has never been surpassed. 

1 Jos. Antt. xx. 9, 1, 2 ; Acts xii. 1— 1L 2 Jos. B. J. ii., xiv. % 

3 Davidson, Introd. ii. 129 ; Reuss, Les Epitres, ii. 333. 
M2 



660 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

From Crete, St. Paul may have returned by Ephesus and Troas to Mace- 
donia, and thence to Dalmatia and Illyricum ; x and we learn from the Epistle 
to Titus that he was accompanied by several friends, for whom he found the 
amplest employment in missions to various Churches. He intended to spend 
the winter at Nicopolis, which, beyond all question, must be the well-known 
and flourishing city of Epirus, built by Augustus to commemorate his victory 
at Actium. When he wrote the Epistle to Titus, he was about to send 
Artemas or Tychicus to him in Crete, to continue the work of organisation 
there, while Titus is directed to join the Apostle at Nicopolis before the winter 
comes on. 

How little we really know about Titus will be best seen by the theories 
which attempt to identify him with Titus (or, Titius) Justus (Acts xviii. 7), 
with Silas, and even with Timothy ! Though he is not mentioned in the Acts 
— probably because he never happened to be a companion of the Apostle at 
the same time that Luke was with him — he seems to have been one of the 
trustiest and most beloved members of the noble little band of St. Paul's 
friends and disciples. As he was a Greek by birth, St. Paul, whose convert 
he was, had chosen to take him to Jerusalem on that memorable visit, which 
ended in the recognition of Gentile emancipation from the yoke of Mosaism. 2 
If we were right in the conjecture that the generous self-sacrifice of Titus on 
this occasion rescued Paul from a grievous struggle, if not from an immense 
peril, we may imagine how close would have been the personal bond between 
them. He had special connexions with Corinth, to which he had three times 
been sent by the Apostle during the troubles of that distracted Church. 3 
The warm terms in which St. Paul always speaks of him as his brother, 
and associate, and fellow-labourer, and the yearning anxiety which made him 
utterly miserable when he failed to meet him in Troas, show that he was no 
ordinary man ; and the absence from this Epistle of the personal warnings 
and exhortations which are found in those to Timothy, lead us to believe that 
Titus was the more deeply respected, even if Timothy were the more tenderly 
beloved. The last notice of him is his visit to Dalmatia during the second 
imprisonment, and we may feel the strongest confidence that this was under- 
taken as a special duty, and that he did not voluntarily desert his friend and 
teacher whom he had so long and faithfully served. The Epistle which St. 
Paul addresses to him goes over much the same ground as that to Timothy, 
but with additional particulars, and in a perfectly independent manner. It 
excited the warm admiration of Luther, who says of it : " This is a short 
Epistle, but yet such a quintessence of Christian doctrine, and composed in 
such a masterly manner, that it contains all that is needful for Christian 
knowledge and life.*' The subjects are touched upon in the same easy and 
natural order as in the otjier Pastoral Epistles, and the incidental mention of 
people so entirely unknown in the circle of the Apostle's friends as Artemas 
and Zenas, the lawyer, together with the marked variations in the initial and 

I Rom. xv. 19. 2 Gal. ii. 3 ; Tit. i. 4. 8 2 Cor. vii., viii. 



THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 661 

final salutations, are among the many incidental circumstances which powerfully 
strengthen the argument in favour of its authenticity. 

The greeting with which the Apostle opens is somewhat obscure and 
involved, owing to the uncertainty of the exact meaning of the various 
prepositions employed. It differs from all other salutations in the phrase " a 
slave of God," instead of a " a slave of Jesus Christ," and it is marked by the 
prominence of the title Saviour, which is applied throughout this Epistle both 
to God and to Christ. 1 

" Paul, a slave of God, but an Apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of the elect 
of God and the full knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, (based) 
on the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before eternal 
times, but manifested His word in His own seasons in the preaching with which I 
was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Saviour — to Titus, my 
true son after the common faith, grace and peace, from God our Father, and the 
Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour." 

After this solemn greeting he proceeds at once to the many practical 
directions which are the object of his writing. He left Titus in Crete to 
finish all necessary regulations, and especially to ordain presbyters in every 
city, who are to be men of irreproachable character, and well-ordered domestic 
positions, for a " bishop " must be blameless as God's steward, not self-willed, 
not passionate, and with the other positive and negative qualifications which 
he has already mentioned in the Epistle to Timothy — with the addition that 
he is to love what is good, and to hold fast the faithful word according to the 
instruction he has received that he may be able to exhort with healthy teaching 
and to refute the gainsayers. 2 

These opponents are described as being disorderly, prating, and self- 
deceiving Jewish Christians, who for the sake of filthy lucre turn whole 
families upside down. To these, as to the Cretans in general, St. Paul applies 
the stinging line of their fellow-countryman Epimenides — 

" The Cretans are always liars, evil wild beasts, lazy gluttons," 3 

—for which reason they must be sharply rebuked, that they may be healthy 

1 If the idea of God the Father as a Saviour had not occurred both in the Old 
Testament and elsewhere in St. Paul, the expression might fairly have been called 
un-Pauline. But the idea is distinctly found in 1 Cor. i. 21. 

2 i. 5—9. 

3 The line is an hexameter from the poem on ' ' Oracles " by Epimenides, the Cretan 
poet and philosopher. It was quoted by Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus, 8, and well known 
in antiquity because it gave rise to the syllogistic catch known as "the Liar." 

They were among the three very bad K's of antiquity. 

KprJTe?, Ka.TnraSoKa.1, KiAtKes, rpi'a nanna. K.a.Ki<na. 

As for their lying, Kp-qrl^iv meant "to tell lies;" of their ferocity, gluttony, drunken- 
ness, and sensuality, and above all of their greed, ample testimonies are quoted — 
"Cretenses spem pecuniae secuti" (Liv. xliv. 45); tois xpyi* -™, wo-jrep K-qpiois ftetarroi, 
Trpoo-A.i7rapovvTes (Plut. Paul. jEmil. 23) ; Polyb. vi. 46, &c, and a remarkable epigram of 
Leonides — 

Ale! Aijiorat naX aAi<f>66poi oure Blkoliol 
Kprjre? " ti? KprjTwi' oiSe 8iKai.o<Tvvr}v. 

(See Meursius's Creta, and "Wetstein ad loc,) 



662 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

in the faith, ceasing to heed Jewish myths and the commandments of men 
who turn away from the truth. 1 Among these commandments there seem to 
have been many distinctions between things clean and unclean, all of which 
the Apostle sweeps aside in his clear decisive manner by the deep truth that 
to the pure all things are pure ; — whereas nothing is or can be pure to men of 
denied mind and conscience, such as these, who, professing knowledge of God, 
in deeds denied Him, being detestable, and disobedient, and to every good 
deed reprobate. 2 

" But speak thou the things which become the healthy teaching." The 
keynote of this wholesome teaching is sober-mindedness. Aged men are to be 
temperate, grave, sober-minded, sound in love, in faith, in endurance. Aged 
women are to show a sacred decorum in demeanour, free from slander and 
intemperance, 3 teachers of what is fair, that they may train the younger 
women, too, to be sober-minded, ennobling the estimate of their Christian 
profession by humble, diligent, submissive performance of their home duties. 
Titus must also exhort young men to be sober-minded, and in all respects he 
is to set them a pure example of dignity, and faithfulness to the truth. Slaves 
are to " adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things," by silent 
obedience and cheerful honesty. 

' ' For God's grace was manifested bringing salvation to all men, training us to 
the end that once for all rejecting impiety and all worldly desires, we should live in 
the present age soberly, and righteously, and godly, expecting the blessed hope and 
manifestation of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, 4 who gave 
Himself for us, that He might ransom us from all lawlessness, and purify for 
Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and rebuke 
and exhort with all authority. Let no man despise thee." 5 

After this swift and perfect summary of the Christian life, alike in its 
earthly and spiritual aspects, he reverts to necessary subjects for practical 
exhortation. Naturally turbulent, the Cretans are to be constantly reminded 
of the duty of submission in all things right and good. Naturally ferocious, 
they are to be exhorted to meekness of word and deed towards all men. For 
even so God showed gentleness to us when we were living in foolish and 
disobedient error, the slaves of various passions, in a bitter atmosphere of 

1 Possibly Titus had tried to regard these " myths " as harmless. 

2 i. 10—16. 

3 ii. 3, "Not enslaved by much wine." On the proverbial intemperance of women 
among the ancients, see Antholog. xi. 298 ; Aristoph. Thesur. 735 and passim ; Athen. 
x.57. 

4 The question as to whether these words should be rendered as in the text, or 
"our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ," is simply a critical question. The analogy 
of other passages throughout these and other Epistles (1 Tim. i. 1 ; v. 21 ; vi. 13 ; and, 
above all, ii. 3—5 ; 2 Peter i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 12 ; Jude 4, &c), and the certainty that this 
translation is not required either by the anarthrous Swnjp, or by the word eTre^ai^, show 
that the view taken by our English Version, and the majority of Protestant and other 
versions, as well as by many of the ancient versions, is correct. 

3 "Which of all the Fathers of the first or second century was in the smallest degree 
capable of writing so masterly a formula of Christian doctrine and practice as these 
verses (ii. 11 — 14), or the perfectly independent yet no less memorable presentation of 
Gospel truth — with a completeness only too many-sided for sects and parties— in iij. 



THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 663 

reciprocal hatred. "But when" — and here follows another concentrated 
summary of Pauline doctrine unparalleled for beauty and completeness — 

" But when the kindness and love towards man of G-od our Saviour was mani- 
fested, not in consequence of works of righteousness which we did, but according to 
His mercy Hs a&ved us, by means of the laver of regeneration, and renewal by the 
Holy Ghost, vhich He poured upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, 
that being justified by His grace we might become heirs, according to hope, of 
eternal life." 

Faitlif ul is the saying * — and in accordance with it he desires Titus to 
teach with due insistence, that all who have believed may live up to their pro- 
fession. This teaching is fair and beneficent, but foolish speculations and 
discussions, 2 and genealogies and legalist disputes are vain and useless. But 
if, after one or two admonitions, a man would not give up his own depraved 
and wilful perversities, then Titus is to have nothing more to say to him. 3 

The brief letter closes with a few personal messages. Titus may soon ex- 
pect the arrival of Artemas or Tychicus, 4 and on the arrival of either, to take up 
his work, he is with all speed to join Paul at Nicopolis for the winter. He is 
also asked to do anything he can to further the journey and meet the require- 
ments of Zenas the jurist, 5 and Apollos. And St. Paul hopes that all our 

5 — 7 ? Will any one produce from Clemens, or Hermas, or Justin Martyr, or Ignatius, 
or Polycarp, or Irenseus — will any one even produce from Tertullian, or Chrysostom, or 
Basil, or Gregory of Nyssa— any single passage comparable for terseness, insight, and 
mastery to either of these ? Only the inspired wisdom of the greatest of the Apostles 
could have traced so divine a summary with so unfaltering a hand. If the single chorus 
of Sophokles was sufficient to acquit him of senility —if the thin unerring line attested 
the presence of Apelles— if the flawless circle of Giotto, drawn with one single sweep of 
his hand, was sufficient to authenticate his workmanship and prove his power — surely 
such passages as these ought to be more than adequate to defend the Pastoral Epistles 
from the charge of vapidity. "Would it not be somewhat strange if all the great 
Christian Fathers of three centuries were so far surpassed in power and eloquence by the 
supposed falsarii who wrote the Epistles of the First and Second Captivity of St. Paul ? 

1 n. 6 Adyos here refers to what has gone before, and it is remarkable that this favourite 
formula is generally applied, as here, to expressions which have something solemn and 
almost rhythmic in the form of their expression (1 Tim. i. 15 ; iii. 1 ; 2 Tim. ii. 11 — 
the analogous 1 Tim. iii. 16). Were the quotations from Lymus ? The contrast between the 
regenerate present and the unregenerate past is common in St. Paul (1 Cor. vi. 11 ; Gal. 
iv. 3 ; Eph. ii &c, ). If any one were asked to fix on two passages which contained the 
essence of all Pa ulin e theology he would surely select Rom. iii. 21 — 26 and Tit. iii. 5— 
7 ; and the latter, though less polemical, is in some respects more complete. Again I 
ask, Would it not be strange if the briefest yet fullest statement of his complete message 
should come from a spurious Epistle ? 

2 St. Paul stigmatises these sophistic discussions as both xevol andju.aTou.ol — i.e., empty 
in their nature, and void of all results. 

3 atpe'o-ei? only occurs in 1 Cor. xi. 19 ; Gal. v. 20, and means, not "heresies," but 
"ecclesiastical divisions." 

4 "Artemas or Tychicus." Who was Artemas, or Artemidorus ? That he, like Tro- 
phimus and Tychicus (Acts xx. 4 ; xxi. 29), was an Ephesian, we may perhaps conjecture 
from his name, and Paul may have met with him in his recent visit to Ephesus ; but 
what could possibly have induced a forger to insert a totally unknown name like that of 
Artemas ? or to imagine any uncertainty in the mind of Paul as to which of the two he 
should send? (On Tychicus, see Col. iv. 7 ; Eph. vi. 21.) 

5 Does this mean ' ' a lawyer " in the same sense as voju-oSiSacncaAoj in Luke v. 17 ? Was 
he a Jewish scribe, or a Greek or Eoman legist ? It is quite impossible to say ; and who 
was this Zenas, or Zenodorus ? What should put such a name and such an allusion int/ 
a forger's mind ? 



664 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTIi. 

people also ■will learn to follow the example of these kindly services to all who 
require them, that they may not be unfruitful. " All who are with me salute 
thee. Salute those who love us in the faith. God's grace with you all." 

These last three greetings have several points of interest. They show us 
that Paul, who was soon to be so sadly and unworthily deserted, was still 
carrying on his manifold missionary activities as one in a band of devoted 
friends. The fact that they differ in expression from every other closing 
salutation is a mark of authenticity, because a forger would have been sure 
to confine himself to a servile and unsuspicious repetition of one of the forms 
which occur elsewhere. But what does St. Paul mean by the remarkable ex- 
pression, " let our people also learn to be forward in good works"? It is 
usually explained to mean "the other believers as well as thou; " but this is 
obviously unsatisfactory. On the other hand, we have no sufficient data to 
interpret it of the existence of converts of Apollos forming a different body 
from those of Paul. Its very obscurity is a sign that the allusion is to some 
fact which was known to the correspondent, but is unknown to us. 

Titus here disappears from Christian history. The rest of his biography 
evaporates into the misty outlines of late ecclesiastical conjecture scarcely to 
be dignified by the name of tradition. 



CHAPTER LY. 

THE CLOSING DAYS. 



" Chri&tianus etiam extra carcerem saeculo remintiavit, in carcere autein etiam 
carceri. . . . Ipsam etiam conversationen saeculi et carceris comparemus, si 
non plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit." — Tert. ad Mart. 2. 

"In a free state Gaius would have found his way to Bedlam, and Nero to 
Tyburn." — Freeman, Essays, ii. 337. 

Some of those critics who have been most hostile to the genuineness of the 
Pastoral Epistles have felt and expressed a certain reluctance to set down the 
Second Epistle to Timothy as the work of a forger, and to rob the world of 
this supremely noble and tender testament of the dying soldier of Christ. 
And some who have rejected the two other Epistles have made an exception 
in favour of this. For myself I can only express my astonishment that any 
one who is sufficiently acquainted with the Christian literature of the first 
two centuries to see how few writers there were who showed a power even 
distantly capable of producing such a letter, can feel any hesitation as to its 
having been written by the hand of Paul. The Tubingen critics argue that 
the three Epistles must stand or fall together, and think that the Ifirst 
Epistle to Timothy ehows signs of spuriousness, which drags the other two 
letters into the sami condemnation. Accepting the close relationship which 
binds the three letters together, and seeing sufficient grounds in the First 
Epistle to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus to furnish at least a very strong 



THE CLOSING DAYS. 665 

probability of their genuineness, it seems to me that the probability is raised 
to certainty by the undoubted genuineness of the Second Epistle to Timothy. 
If, indeed, St. Paul was never liberated from his first Roman imprisonment, 
then the Pastoral Epistles must be forgeries ; for the attempts of Wieseler 
and others to prove that they might have been written during any part of the 
period covered by the narrative of the Acts — during the three years' stay at 
Ephesus, for instance, or the stay of eighteen months at Corinth — sink to the 
ground not only under the weight of their own arbitrary hypotheses, but even 
more from the state both of the Church and of the mind and circumstances of 
the Apostle, which these letters so definitely manifest. But as the liberation 
and second imprisonment of St. Paul are decidedly favoured by tradition, and 
give a most easy and natural explanation to every allusion in these and in 
earlier Epistles, and as no single valid objection can be urged against this belief, 
I believe that there would never have been any attempt to disprove its possi- 
bility except from the hardly-concealed desire to get rid of these letters and 
the truths to which they bear emphatic witness. 

The allusions in the Second Epistle, though too fragmentary and insig- 
nificant to have been imagined by an imitator, are only allusions, and it is quite 
possible that they may not supply us with sufficient data to enable us to 
arrive at any continuous narrative of events in the Apostle's history between 
his first and second imprisonment. To dwell on these events at any length 
would therefore be misleading ; but it is perfectly allowable to construct an 
hypothesis which is simple in itself, and which fits in with every circumstance 
to which any reference is made. The probability of the hypothesis, and the 
natural manner in which it suits the little details to which St. Paul refers, is 
one more of the many indications that we are dealing here with genuine letters. 

If, then, we piece together the personal notices of this Epistle, they enable 
us to trace the further fortunes of St. Paul after the winter which he spent 
at Nicopolis, in the society of Titus. At his age, and with his growing 
infirmities — conscious too, as he must have been, from those inward intima- 
tions which are rarely wanting, that his life was drawing to a close — it is most 
unlikely that he should have entered on new missions, and it is certain that 
he would have found more than sufficient scope for all his energies in the 
consolidation of the many Greek and Eastern Churches which he had 
founded, and in the endeavour to protect them from the subtle leaven of 
spreading heresies. The main part of his work was accomplished. At 
Jerusalem and at Antioch he had vindicated for ever the freedom of the 
Gentile from the yoke of the Levitic Law. In his letters to the Romans and 
Galatians he had proclaimed alike to Jew and Gentile that we are not under 
the Law, but under grace. He had rescued Christianity from the peril of 
dying away into a Jewish sect, only distinguishable from Judaism by the 
accepted fulfilment of Messianic hopes. Labouring as no other Apostle had 
laboured, he had preached the Gospel in the chief cities of the world, from 
Jerusalem to Rome, and perhaps even as far as Spain. During the short 
space of twenty years he had proclaimed Christ crucified to the simple 



666 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

Pagans of Lycaonia, the fickle fanatics of Galatia, the dreamy mystics of 
Phrygia, the vigorous colonists of Macedonia, the superficial dilettanti of 
Athens, the sensual and self-satisfied traders of Corinth, the semi-barbarous 
natives of Dalmatia, the ill-reputed islanders of Crete, the slaves and 
soldiers and seething multitudes of Rome. He had created the terminology, 
he had formulated the truths of Christianity. It had been his rare blessedness 
to serve the Gospel at once as an active missionary and as a profound thinker. 
The main part of his work was done. There was no further danger to be 
apprehended from "them of the circumcision," or from "certain who came 
from James." New dangers were arising, but their worst developments lay 
far in the future. 1 As Karl the Great burst into tears when, after a life spent 
in subjugating Lombards and Saxons, he saw in the offing the barques of the 
pirate Norsemen, and knew that they would never give much trouble in his 
own days, but wept to think of the troubles which they would cause hereafter, 
so Paul felt the presentiment of future perils from the Essenic elements 
which were destined to ripen into Gnosticism, but he did not live to witness 
their full development. His desire would be, not to attempt the foundation 
of new Churches, but to forewarn and to strengthen the beloved Churches 
,vhich he had already founded. 

And therefore, after he left Nicopolis, he would naturally travel back to 
Bercea, Thessalonica, Philippi, and so by Neapolis to Troas, where he stayed 
in the house of a disciple named Carpus. Here it was that the final crisis of 
his fate seems to have overtaken him. It is at least a fair conjecture that he 
would not have left at the house of Carpus his precious books, and the cloak 
which was so necessary to him, unless his departure had been hasty and 
perhaps involuntary. His work and his success in that town had been suffi- 
ciently marked to attract general attention, and it was exactly the kind of 
town in which he might have been liable to sudden arrest. Since Nero's 
persecution of the Christians, they must have been more or less the objects 
of hatred and suspicion throughout the Empire, and especially in the 
provincial towns of Asia Minor, which were ever prone to flatter the Emperor, 
because their prosperity, and sometimes almost their existence, depended. on 
his personal favour. Any officer eager to push himself into notice, any angry 
Jew, any designing Oriental, might have been the cause of the Apostle's 
arrest ; and if it took place at Troas, especially if it were on some pretext 
suggested by Alexander the coppersmith, or connected with St. Paul's long 
and active work at Ephesus, he would, in the ordinary course of things, have 
been sent under guard to Ephesus to be judged by the Proconsul. While 
awaiting his trial there he would, of course, have been put in prison ; and the 
fact that his place of imprisonment is still pointed out among the ruins of 
Ephesus, although no imprisonment at Ephesus is directly mentioned in 
Scripture, adds perhaps a slight additional probability to these conjectures. 
1 1 was here that he experienced at the hands of Onesiphorus the kindness 

• 2 Tim. iifc 1, ivar^aovTai acupoi x<iAtiroL 



THE CLOSING DATS. 667 

which was continued to him at Rome, 1 and to which he alludes with a 
gratitude all the more heartfelt, because very shortly afterwards Onesiphorus 
seems to have died. 

From the trial at Ephesus, where his cause might have suffered from 
local prejudices, he may once more have found it necessary to appeal to 
Caesar. Barea Soranus, the then Proconsul, may have been glad, as Pliny 
afterwards was in Bithynia, to refer the case to the'highest tribunal. Timothy 
would naturally desire to accompany him, but at that time the Apostle — still 
sanguine, still accompanied by other friends, still inclined to believe that his 
life, which had long been valueless to himself, might be saved from human 
violence, however near might be its natural close — thought it necessary to 
leave his friend at Ephesus to brave the dangers, and fulfil the duties of 
that chief pastorate, respecting which he had recently received such 
earnest instructions. It was natural that they should part with deep emotion 
at a time so perilous and under circumstances so depressing. St. PauL 
sitting in his dreary and desolate confinement at Eome, recalls with gratitude 
the streaming tears of that farewell, which proved how deeply his affection 
was requited by the son of his heart. In all his wanderings, in all his 
sickness, in all his persecutions, in all his imprisonments, in all his many and 
bitter disappointments, the one spot invariably bright, the one permanent 
consolation, the one touch of earthly happiness, had been the gentle com- 
panionship, the faithful attendance, the clinging affection of this Lycaonian 
youth. For St. Paul's sake, for the Gospel's sake, he had left his mother, and 
his home, and his father's friends, and had cheerfully accepted the trying life 
of a despised and hunted missionary. By birth a Greek, he had thrown in 
his lot by circumcision with the Jew, by faith with the Christian ; and his 
high reward on earth had been, not the shadow of an immortal honour, but the 
substance of lofty service in the cause of the truth which was to subdue the 
world. The affection between him and the Apostle began in the spiritual 
sonship of conversion, and was cemented by community of hopes and perils 
until it had become one of the strongest ties in life. For troubled years they 
had cheered each other's sorrows in the midst of painful toils. The very 
difference in their age, the very dissimilarity of their characters, had but 
made their love for each other more sacred and more deep. The ardent, 
impetuous, dominant character and intense purpose of the one, found its 
complement and its repose in the timid, yielding, retiring, character of the 
other. "What Melancthon was to Luther, whom Luther felt that he could not 
spare, and for whose life when all hope seemed over he stormed heaven with 
passionate and victorious supplication, 2 — that and more than that was the 
comparatively youthful Timothy to the more tried and lonely Paul. 

• * 2 Tim. i. 18, So-a ev 'E^eVw SiTj/covrjcre, "how many acts of service lie rendered" to 
Pfttd and others. "Wieseler's inference that Onesiphorus was a deacon is hardly sup- 
ported by so general a verb. 

3 " Allda musste mir unser Herr Gott herhalten. Denn ich rieb Ihm die Ohren mii 
alien promissionibus exaudiendarum precum." (Luther.) 



668 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

We may hope that the Apostle, now once more a prisoner, was not alone 
when he left Ephesus to cross the Mediterranean for the last time. Titus 
and Tychicus 1 had probably accompanied him from Nicopolis ; Demas may 
have joined him at Thessalonica, Luke at Philippi ; and Trophimus, unde- 
terred by his past dangers at Jerusalem, volunteered to accompany him from 
the Ionian capital. But the kindly intentions of the latter were frustrated, 
for he fell ill at Miletus, and there the sad little band of Christians had to 
leave him when the vessel started. 2 Erastus, if he was with him at Ephesus, 
stayed behind when they reached his native Corinth. 

Of the particulars of the voyage we know nothing. It may very possibly 
have been from Ephesus to Cenchreae, over the Diolkos to Lechaeum, and 
then along the Gulf of Corinth and across the Adriatic to Brundisium, whence 
the prisoner, his guards and his companions, would make their dreary way 
along the great Appian road to Rome. This time no disciples met them at 
the Appii Forum or the Three Taverns, nor could anything have well occurred 
to make Paul thank God and take courage. The horrible Neronian persecu- 
tion had depressed, scattered, and perhaps decimated the little Christian 
community; and the Jews, who had received Paul at the time of his first 
imprisonment with an ostentatiously indifferent neutrality, had been trans- 
formed since then — partly, no doubt, by the rumours disseminated by emissaries 
from Jerusalem, and partly by the mutual recriminations after the fire of 
Eome — into the bitterest and most unscrupulous enemies. On the former 
occasion, after a short detention in the Praetorian camp, St. Paul had been 
allowed to live in his own lodging ; and even if this had been in the humblest 
purlieus of the Trastevere, among the Jewish vendors of sulphur matches and 
cracked pottery, 3 it had still been his own, and had allowed him to continue, 
in a sphere however restricted, his efforts at evangelisation. But Christianity 
was now suspected of political designs, and was practically reduced to a religio 
illicita. This time he had no kindly-disposed Lysias to say a good word for 
him, no friendly testimonies of a Festus or an Agrippa to produce in his 
favour. The government of Nero, bad almost from the first, had deteriorated 
year by year with alarming rapidity, and at this moment it presented a spectacle 
of awful cruelty and abysmal degradation such as has been rarely witnessed 
by the civilised world. While an honest soldier like Burrus held the high 

» Hence we infer that Artemas, and not Tychicus, had been sent to replace Titus at 
Crete ; and the mention of the name Artemas first in Tit. iii. 12 is yet another of the 
numberless subtle traces of genuineness. 

2 This incidental allusion {most unlike a forger) throws a valuable light, as also does 
the almost fatal illness of Epaphroditus at Rome, on the limitation which the Apostles 
put on the exercise of any supernatural gift of healing. It is, further, an insuperable 
stumblingblock in the way of every possible theory which denies the second imprisonment. 
Some have suggested a desperate alteration of the text to Me\Crp, and Schrader is content 
with the preposterous fiction of a Miletus in Crete ! But why should St. Paul tell 
Timothy that Trophimus was sick at Miletus ? For the same reason that a person writing 
to London might, even in these days of rapid communication, tell a correspondent that 
their common friend was ill at Southend. Miletus was more then thirty miles ft>m 
Ephesus, and Trophimus might be ill for months without Timothy knowing of it. 

3 But ». •» supra, p. 582. 



THE CLOSING DAYS. 659 

post of Praetorian Praefect, a political prisoner was at least sure that ho would 
not be treated with wanton severity ; but with a Tigellinus in that office — a 
Tigellinus whose foul hands were still dripping with Christian blood, and 
whose foul life was stained through and through with every form of detestable 
wickedness — what could be expected ? We catch but one glance of this last 
imprisonment before the curtain falls, but that glimpse suffices to show how 
hard it was. Through the still blackened ruins of the city, and amid the 
squalid misery of its inhabitants — perhaps with many a fierce scowl turned 
on the hated Christian — Paul passed to his dungeon, and there, as the gate 
clanged upon him, he sat down, chained night and day, without further hope 
— a doomed man. 

To visit him now was no longer to visit a man against whom nothing 
serious was charged, and who had produced a most favourable impression on 
the minds of all who had been thrown into relation with him. It was to visit 
the bearer of a name which the Emperor and his minions affected to detest ; 
it was to visit the ringleader of those who were industriously maligned as the 
authors of a calamity more deadly than any which had afflicted the city since 
its destruction by the Gauls. Merely to be kind to such a man was regarded 
as infamous. No one could do it without rendering himself liable to the 
coarse insolence of the soldiers. 1 Nay, more, it was a service of direct political 
danger. Rome swarmed with spies who were ready to accuse any one of 
laesa majestas on the slightest possible occasion. Now who but a Christian 
would visit a Christian? What could any respectable citizen have to do 
with the most active propagandist of a faith which had at first been ignored 
as contemptible, but which even calm and cultivated men were beginning to 
regard as an outrage against humanity ? 2 And if any Christian were charged 
with being a Christian on the ground of his having visited St. Paul, how could 
he deny the charge, and how, without denying it, could he be saved from 
incurring the extremest danger ? 

Under these circumstances the condition of the Apostle was very different 
from what it had been three years before. His friends had then the freest 
access to him, and he could teach Christ Jesus with all boldness undisturbed. 
Now there were few or no friends left to visit him; and to teach Jesus Christ 
was death. He knew the human heart too well to be unaware how natural 
it was that most men should blush to associate themselves with him and his 
chain. One by one his Asiatic friends deserted him. 3 The first to leave 
him were Phygellus and Hermogenes. 4 Then the temptations of the present 
course of things, the charm of free and unimperilled life, were too much for 
Uemas, and he too — though he had long been his associate — now forsook him, 

1 See Juv. Sat. xvi. 8—12. 

• " Odio generis humani convicti sunt." (Tac. Arm. xv. 44 ; cf. H. v. 5.) 

* 2 Tim. i. 15. 

4 Nothing whatever is known of these two. In later days the Christians, under the 
stress of persecution, had learnt their lessons better, so that their tender faithfulness 
to one another in distress excited the envious astonishment of Pagans (Lucian, De Morti 
Peregr. § 13). 



670 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

Oescens departed, perhaps on some necessary mission, to the Churches of 
Galatia, and Titus to those of Dalmatia. He had dispatched Tychicus to 
Ephesus shortly before he wrote this letter. One friend alone was with him 
— the beloved physician, the faithful, unobtrusive, cultivated Luke. 1 Of 
hardship Paul recked nothing ; he had spent a life of endless hardship, and 
had learnt a complete independence of the outward elements of comfort ; but 
to one situated as he was, and liable to constant pain, to be utterly companion- 
less would have been a trial too hard to bear. 

A single happy unexpected visit broke the continuity of his loneliness, and 
cheered him amid the sense of desertion. The good-hearted Ephesian Onesi- 
phorus, who had already made himself conspicuous among the Christians of 
his native city by his active kindliness, came to Rome. He knew that St. 
Paul was somewhere in that city as a prisoner, and he rose above the timid 
selfishness of his fellow-countrymen. He set about searching for the captive 
Jew. In a city thronged with prisoners, and under a government rife with 
suspicions, upon which it acted with the most cynical unscrupulousness, it was 
by no means a safe or pleasant task to find an obscure, aged, and deeply 
implicated victim. Had Onesiphorus been less in earnest, it would have 
been easy for him to make an excuse to other Christians, and to his own 
conscience, that he had not known where Paul was, and that he had looked 
for him but could not find him. But he would not abandon his earnest search 
until it led him to the side of the Apostle. 2 Nor was he content with a single 
visit. Glad to face the shame and scorn of befriending one whose condition 
was now so abject, he came to the Apostle again and again, and refreshed his 
soul with that very consolation — the sense of human sympathy — f or which most 
of all it yearned. 3 Probably the death of this true and warm-hearted Ephesian 
took place at Rome, for St. Paul utters a fervent wish that he may find mercy 
of the Lord in the great day, and in writing to Timothy he sends a greeting to 
his household, but not to him. 4 The tone of intense gratitude which breathes 
through the few verses in which the Apostle alludes to him makes us feel that 
the brave and loving friendliness of this true brother, contrasted as it was with 
the cowardly defection of the other Asiatics, was the brightest gleam of light 
which fell on the dense gloom of the second imprisonment. 

At last the time came when the Apostle had to stand before the great 
Roman tribunal. What was called in Roman law the prima actio came on. 5 
The Scriptures were written with other objects than to gratify our curiosity 
with the details of historic scenes, however memorable or however important. 

1 Where was Aristarchus (Acts xxvii. 2 ; Col. iv. 10 ; Phil. 24) ? We cannot tell ; but 
his name would not have been omitted by an ingenious imitator. 

2 2 Tim. i 17, crnovSaLorepov e^r/TTfcrev fxe icai eJipev. 

» 2 Tim. i. 16, ttoAAcxkis fie avexf;v£e V . 4 2 Tim. iv. 19. 

6 Such certainly seems to be the natural meaning of irpurq ano\oyia (2 Tim. iv. 16), 
and it is not certain that this method of procedure and the ampliatio or comperendinatio 
had been entirely abandoned. In these matters the mere caprice of the Emperor was all 
that had to be consulted. It is, however, possible that the Trpajri) anoKoyCa may refer to the 
first count of the indictment, since Nero had introduced the custom of hearing every 
count separately. 



THE CLOSING DAYS. 671 

That which God has revealed to us in Scripture is rather the ceconomy — the 
gradual unfolding and dispensation — of His eternal scheme for the salvation 
of mankind, than the full biography of those whose glory it was to be en- 
trusted with the furtherance of His designs. Eagerly should we have desired 
to know the details of that trial, but St. Paul only tells us a single particular. 
His silence once more illustrates the immense difference between ancient and 
modern correspondence. A modern, in writing to a dear friend, would have 
been sure to give him some of the details, which could hardly fail to interest 
him. It may be said that these details might have been supplied by the bearer 
of the letter. It may be so ; but if we judge St. Paul by his own writings, 
and by the analogy of other great and spiritually-minded men, Ave should 
infer that personal matters of this kind had but little interest for him. 
Accustomed to refer perpetually to his high spiritual privileges — digressing 
incessantly to the fact of his peculiar Apostolate — he yet speaks but little, 
and never in detail, of the outward incidents of his life. Tliey did but belong 
to the world's passing show, to the things which were seen and evanescent. 
Two vivid touches alone reveal to us the nature of the occasion. One is the 
deplorable fact that not a single friend had the courage to stand by his 
side. He had to defend himself single-handed. No patronus would encourage 
him, no advocatus plead his cause, no dejprecator say a word in his favour. 
" No man took his place by my side to help me ; all abandoned me ; God 
forgive them." The other is that even at that supreme moment, with tin 
face of the threatening tyrant fixed loweringly upon him, and the axed fasces 
of the lictors gleaming before his eyes, his courage did not quail. If man 
forsook him, God strengthened him. If even Luke left him to face the 
court alone, the Lord Himself stood by him. He spoke, and spoke in 
a manner worthy of his cause. How much heathen literature would we 
freely sacrifice for even a brief sketch of that speech such as Luke could 
so well have given us had he only been present! How supreme would 
have been the interest of a defence uttered by St. Paul in the Roman 
forum, or in a Roman basilica ! Alas ! the echoes of his words have died 
away for ever. We only know what he who uttered it tells us of it. But he 
was satisfied with it. He felt that the Lord had strengthened him in order 
that, through his instrumentality, the preaching of the Gospel might be ful- 
filled to the uttermost, and that all the Gentiles might hear it. And he was 
successful — successful, we cannot doubt, not merely that he might prolong his 
days in useless and hopeless misery, but for some high design, and perhaps 
among other reasons that he might leave us his last precious thoughts in the 
Second Epistle to his dearest convert. But the danger had been imminent, 
and the too- certain result was only postponed. " I was rescued," he says, 
"out of the lion's mouth." Each juror received three voting tablets — one 
marked with A., for Absolvo ; another with C, for Condemno ; and a third with 
N.L., for Non liquet, or " not proven." The majority of votes had been of the 
third description, and the result had been the arrvpliatio, or postponement of 
the trial for the production of further evidence. But St. Paul was not deceived 



672 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

by any false hopes. " I was rescued out of the lion's mouth. The Lord shall 
deliver me " — not necessarily from death or danger, but — " from every evil 
woik, 1 and shall save me unto His heavenly kingdom." Death by martyrdom 
was no such " evil work; " 2 from that he did not expect to be saved — nay, he 
knew, and probably even hoped, that through that narrow gate an entrance 
might be ministered unto him abundantly into Christ's heavenly kingdom. 
But he must have passed through perilous and exciting hours, or he would 
have hardly used that metaphor of the lion's mouth, 3 prompted perhaps by a 
reminiscence of the powerful image of the shepherd prophet, " As the shepherd 
tears out of the mouth of a lion two legs and the piece of an ear." 4 

But who was the lion ? Was it Satan ? 5 or Helius the Praef ect of the 
city ? or Nero ? 6 or is the expression a merely general one ? Even if so, 
it is not impossible that he may have pleaded his cause before Nero himself. 
The power of deciding causes had been one which the Roman Emperors had 
jealously kept in their own hands ; and if the trial took place in the spring of 
A.D. 66, Nero had not yet started for Greece, and would have been almost 
certain to give personal attention to the case of one who had done more than 
any living man to spread the name of Christ. Nero had been intensely anxious 
to fix on the innocent Christians the stigma of that horrible conflagration, 
of which he himself had been dangerously suspected, and the mere suspicion 
of which, until averted into another channel, had gone far to shake even his 
imperial power. And now the greatest of the Christians — the very coryphceus 
of the hated sect — stood chained before him. He to whom popularity, forfeited 
in part by his enormous crimes, had become a matter of supreme importance, 
saw how cheaply it could be won by sacrificing a sick, deserted, aged, fettered 
prisoner, for whom no living soul would speak a word, and who was evidently 
regarded with intense hatred by Gentiles from Asia, by the dense rabble of 
the city, and by Jews from every quarter of the world. Cicero has preserved 
for us a graphic picture of the way in which, nearly a century and a half 
before this time, a screaming, scowling, gesticulating throng of Jews, unde- 
terred by soldiers and lictors, surrounded with such threatening demonstrations 
the tribunal before which their oppressor, Flaccus, was being tried, that he, 
as his advocate, though he had been no less a person than a Roman Consul, 
and " father of his country," was obliged to plead in low tones for fear of 
their fury. If in B.C. 59 the Romish Jews could intimidate even a Cicero in 

i From all that can be really called wowipov. " Liberabit me ne quid agam " (and we 
may add, ne quid patiar) " Christiano, ne quid Apostolo indignum ' (Grot.). 

2 " Decollabitur ? liberabitur, liberante Domino "(Bengel). It would be difficult for 
me to exaggerate my admiration for this truly great commentator. On the following 
words, "to whom be glory for ever and ever," he remarks, "Doxologiam parit spes, 
qunnto majorem res." 

s 2 Tim. iv. 17. 

« Amos iii. 12. Cf. kv^mov toO Aeovros, referring to Xerxes (Apocr. Esth. xiv. 13). 

* 1 Pet. v. 8. 

6 AeWa -yap rov Neptora <f>J)<n fiia to 07}p«iSes (Chrys.). Ti6i>r)Kev 6 AeW (of the death OI 

Tiberius) (Jos. Antt. xviii. 6, § 10) ; but here AeW-ro? has no article. The metaphor is 

Erobably general, as in Ps. xxii. 21. Esther is said to have cried. "Save me from tin 
on's mouth," when she went to Ahasuerus {Megillah, f. 15, 2). 



THE CLOSING DAYS. 673 

their hatred to a Flaccus, is it likely that they would have abstained from 
hostile demonstrations against an enemy so detested and so perfectly defence- 
less as St. Paul ? 

Paul before Nero ! if indeed it was so, what a contrast does the juxta- 
position of two such characters suggest — the one the vilest and most wicked, 
the other the best and noblest of mankind ! Here, indeed, we see two races, 
two civilisations, two religions, two histories, two ceons brought face to face. 
Nero summed up in his own person the might of legions apparently in vincible ; 
Paul personified that more irresistible weakness which shook the world. The 
one showed the very crown and flower of luxurious vice and guilty splendour ; 
the other the earthly misery of the happiest saints of God. In the one we see 
the incarnate Nemesis of past degradation ; in the other the glorious prophecy 
of Christian sainthood. The one was the deified autocrat of Paganism ; the 
other the abject ambassador of Christ. The emperor's diadem was now con- 
fronted for the first time by the Cross of the Yictim before which, ere three 
centuries were over, it was destined to succumb. 

Nero, not yet thirty years of age, was stained through and through with 
every possible crime, and steeped to the very lips in every nameless degrada- 
tion. Of all the black and damning iniquities against which, as St. Paul had 
often to remind his heathen converts, the wrath of God for ever burns, there 
was scarcely one of which Nero had not been guilty. A wholesale robber, 
a pitiless despot, an intriguer, a poisoner, a murderer, a matricide, a liar, 
a coward, a drunkard, a glutton, incestuous, unutterably depraved, his evil 
and debased nature — of which even Pagans had spoken as " a mixture of 
blood and mud " — had sought abnormal outlets to weaiy, if it could not 
sate, its insatiable proclivity to crime. He was that last worst specimen 
of human wickedness — a man who, not content with every existing form 
of vice and sin in which the taint of human nature had found a vent, 
had become " an inventor of evil things." He had usurped a throne ; he 
had poisoned, under guise of affection, the noble boy who was its legitimate 
heir ; he had married the sister of that boy, only to break her heart by his 
brutality, and finally to order her assassination; he had first planned the 
murder, then ordered the execution, of his own mother, who, however deep 
her guilt, had yet committed her many crimes for love of him ; he had 
treacherously sacrificed the one great general whose victories gave any 
lustre to his reign ; among other murders, too numerous to count, he had 
ordered the deaths of the brave soldier and the brilliant philosopher who 
had striven to guide his wayward and intolerable heart ; he had disgraced 
imperial authority with every form of sickening and monstrous folly ; he had 
dragged the charm of youth and the natural dignity of manhood through the 
very lowest mire ; he had killed by a kick the worthless but beautiful woman 
whom he had torn from her own husband to be his second wife ; he had 
reduced his own capital to ashes, and buffooned, and fiddled, and sung with 
his cracked voice in public theatres, regardless of the misery and starvation 
of thousands of its ruined citizens; he had charged his incendiarism upon 

& B. 



674 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

the innocent Christians, and tortured them to death by hundreds in hideous 
martyrdoms ; he had done his best to render infamous his rank, his country, 
his ancestors, the name of Roman — nay, even the very name of man. 

And Paul had spent his whole life in the pursuit of truth and the practice 
of holiness. Even from boyhood a grave and earnest student of the Law of 
God, he surpassed in learning and faithfulness all the other " pupils of the 
wise " in the school of the greatest Doctor of the Law ; and if the impetuous 
ardour of his nature, and that commonest infirmity of even noble minds — the 
pride of erroneous conviction which will not suffer itself to be convinced of 
error — had for a time plunged him into a course of violent intolerance, 
of which he afterwards repented with all the intensity of his nature, yet 
even this sin had been due to the blind fury of misdirected zeal in a cause 
which he took — or for a time thought that he took —to be the cause of God. 
Who shall throw the first stone at him ? not even those learned and holy men 
whose daily lives show how hard it is to abdicate the throne of infallible 
ignorance, and after lives of stereotyped error to go back as humble learners 
to the school of truth. But, if for a moment he erred, how grandly — by what 
a life of heroic self-sacrifice — had he atoned for his fault ! Did ever man toil 
like this man ? Did ever man rise to a nobler superiority over the vulgar 
objects of human desire ? Did ever man more fully and unmurmuringly 
resign his whole life to God ? Has it ever been granted to any other man, 
in spite of all trials, obstructions, persecutions, to force his way in the very 
teeth of " clenched antagonisms "to so full an achievement of the divine 
purpose which God had entrusted to his care ? Shrinking from hatred with 
the sensitive warmth of a nature that ever craved for human love, he had yet 
braved hatreds of the most intense description — the hatred not only of enemies, 
but of friends; not only of individuals, but of entire factions; not only of 
aliens, but of his own countrymen ; not only of Jews, but even of those who 
professed the same faith with himself. 1 Shrinking from pain with nervous 
sensibility, he yet endured for twenty years together every form of agony 
witL % body weakened by incessant hardship. The many perils and miseries 
which we ha ye recounted are but a fragment of what he had suffered. And 
what had he ione ? He had secured the triumph, he had established the 
universality, he had created the language, he had co-ordinated the doctrines, 
he had overthrown the obstacles of that Faith which is the one source of the 
hope, the love, the moral elevation of the world. 

And now these two men were brought face to face— imperial power and 
abject weakness ; youth cankered with guilt, and old age crowned with 
holiness ; he whose whole life had consummated the degradation, and he 
whose life had achieved the enfranchisement of mankind. They stood face to 
face the representatives of two races — the Semitic in its richest glory, the 
Aryan in its extremest degradation : the representatives of two trainings — 

i "They who hurt me most are my own dear children— my brethren— fraterculi mei, 
aurei amic'ilimei" (Luther, Cochlearius, 146.) 



THE CLOSING DAYS. 675 

the life of utter self-sacrifice, and the life of unfathomable self-indulgence : 
the representatives of two religions —Christianity in its dawning brightness, 
Paganism in its effete despair : the representatives of two theories of life — the 
simplicity of self-denying endurance ready to give up life itself for the good 
of others, the luxury of shameless Hedonism which valued no consideration 
divine or human in comparison with a new sensation : the representatives of 
two spiritual powers — the slave of Christ and the incarnation of Antichrist. 
And their respective positions showed how much, at this time, the course of 
this world was under the control of the Prince of the Power of the Air— for 
incest and matricide were clothed in purple, and seated on the curule chair, 
amid the ensigns of splendour without limit and power beyond control ; and 
he whose life had exhibited all that was great and noble in the heart of 
man stood in peril of execution, despised, hated, fettered, and in rags. 

But Roman Law was still Roman Law, and, except where passions of 
unusual intensity interfered, some respect was still paid to the forms of 
justice. For the time, at any rate, Paul was rescued out of the lion's mouth. 
There was some flaw in the indictment, some deficiency in the evidence ; and 
though St. Paul well knew that it was but a respite which was permitted him, 
for the time at any rate he was remanded to his prison. And Nero, if indeed 
he were "the lion" before whom this first defence had been pleaded, had no 
further door for repentance opened to him in this life. Had he too trembled, 
as Paul reasoned before him of temperance, righteousness, and the judgment 
to come ? Had he too listened in alarm as Herod Antipas had listened to 
the Baptist ? Had he too shown the hue of passing shame on those bloated 
features so deformed by the furrows of evil passion — as, at the Council of 
Constance, the Emperor Sigismund blushed when John Huss upbraided him 
with the breach of his pledged word ? The Emperor, who stood nearest to 
Nero in abysmal depravity, and who, like him, being himself unutterably 
impure and bad, had the innermost conviction that all others were at heart 
the same, used to address grave men with the most insulting questions, and 
if the indignant blood mantled on their cheeks, he used to exclaim, " Erubuit, 
salva res est." x " He blushed ; it is all right." But of Domitian we are 
expressly told that he could not blush; that his flushed cheeks were an 
impervious barrier against the access of any visible shame. 2 And in all 
probability Nero was infinitely too far gone to blush. It is far more probable 
that, like Gallio, he only listened to the defence of this worn and aged Jew 
with ill-concealed impatience and profound disdain. He would have regarded 
such a man as this as something more abject than the very dust beneath his 
feet. He would have supposed that Paul regarded it as the proudest honour 
of his life even to breathe the same atmosphere as the Emperor of Rome. 
His chance of hearing the words of truth returned no more. About this time 
he sailed on his frivolous expedition to Greece ; and after outraging to an 
extent almost inconceivable the very name of Roman, by the public singings 

1 Heliogabalus. 3 Tac. Agric. 45 ; Suet. Dom. 18 ; Plin. Paneg. 48. 

ft B 2 



676 THE LIFE AND WOltK OP ST. PAUL. 

of his miserable doggrel, and the sham victories in which the supple and 
shameless Greeks fooled him to the very top of his bent, he returned to find 
that the revolt of Galba was making head, until he was forced to fly at night in 
disguise from his palace, to quench his thirst with ditch-water, to display a 
cowardice which made him contemptible to his meanest minions, and finally 
to let his trembling hand be helped by a slave to force a dagger into his 
throat. 

But it is no wonder that when, over the ruins of streets which the fire had 
laid in ashes, St. Paul returned to his lonely prison, there was one earthly 
desire for the fulfilment of which he still yearned. It was once more to see 
the dear friend of earlier years — of those years in which, hard as were their 
sufferings, the hope of Christ's second coming in glory to judge the world 
seemed still so near, and in which the curtains of a neglected death and an 
apparently total failure had not yet been drawn so closely around his head. 
He yearned to see Timothy once more ; to be refreshed by the young man's 
affectionate devotion ; to be cheered and comforted by the familiar attendance 
of a true son in Christ, whose heart was wholly at one with his ; who shared 
so fully in all his sympathies and hopes ; who had learnt by long and familiar 
attendances how best to brighten his spirits and to supply his wants. It was 
this which made him write that second letter to Timothy, which is, as it were, 
his " cycnea oratio," and in which, amid many subjects of advice and exhorta- 
tion, he urges his friend with reiterated earnestness to come, to come at once, 
to come before winter, 1 to come ere it is too late, and see him, and help him, 
and receive his blessing before he died. 



CHAPTER LYI. 

PAUL'S LAST LETTER. 
ITavAo* to 6 Tpi<r/u.a»capios lyv Ke<f>a\riv ^<<pet aireTix-qOi) 6 avetcSiriyriTOS avflpwiros. — Ps. CHRYB. 

Orat. Bnam. 

" Testamentum Pauli et cycnea cantio est haec Epistola." — Bengel. 

"Hoc praestat career Christiano, quod eremus Prophetis." — Tert. ad Mart. 3. 

" Mortem habebat Paulus ante oculos. . . . Quaecunque igitur hie legimus 
de Christi regno, de spe vitae aeternae, de Christiana militia, de fiducia confessionis, 
de certitudine doctrinae, non tanquam atramento scripta, sed ipsius Pauli sanguine 
accipere convenit. . . . Proinde haec Epistola quasi solennis quaedam est sub- 
scriptio Paulinae doctrinae, eaque ex repraesenti." — Calvin. 

He began much in his usual form — 

" Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, 2 according to the promise 
of the life which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy my beloved son, grace, mercy, and 

i 2 Tim. iv. 9, 21. 

2 6ia SeAwiaTos. The attempt to deduce some very special and recondite inference from 
the fact that he uses this phrase for the kwt ImTay^v of the First Epistle, seems to me as 
arbitrary as Mack's argument that the use of ayairr)T<Z for yvr\<riy in the next verse is a sign 
that this Epistle shows more affection but less confidence. 



PAUL'S LAST LETTER. 677 

peace, from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve 
from my forefathers in a pure conscience — as the remembrance which I have of thee 
night and day in my supplications is incessant, longing earnestly to see thee — re- 
membering thy tears 1 — that I may be filled with joy. 2 [I thank God, I say] on 
being reminded 3 of the unfeigned faith which is in thee, which dwelt first in thy 
grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice ; yes, and I feel confident that it 
dwells also in thee." 4 

Perhaps the sadness of Timothy's heart — the tears for his absent and im- 
prisoned teacher — had hindered the activity of his work, and plunged him in a 
too indolent despondency ; and so Paul, remembering all the hopes which had 
inaugurated his youthful ministry, continues — 

" For which cause 5 I remind thee to fan aflame the gift of God which is in thee 
by the imposition of my hands ; for God gave us not the spirit of cowardice, but of 
power and of love, and of moral influence. 6 Be not then ashamed of the testimony 
of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but rather share my sufferings for the Gospel 
in accordance with the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, 
not according to our works, but according to His own plans and the grace given us 
in Christ Jesus before eternal times, but now manifested by the appearing of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, who did away with death, and brought life and immortality 
to light by the Gospel, whereunto I was appointed a herald, and an Apostle, and 
teacher of the Gentiles, for which reason also I suffer these things ; but I am not 
ashamed. For I know on whom I have believed, and I feel confident that he is 
able to preserve the trust committed to me till that day." 7 

Then — having ended the double digression on the word Gospel, which 
suggests to him first what that word implies (9, 10), and then recalls to him 
his own mission — he returns to his exhortation — 

"As a pattern of wholesome teachings, 8 take those which thou heardest from 
me, in faith and the love which is in Christ Jesus. That fair trust preserve, 
through the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us." 9 

Then he touches for a moment on the melancholy circumstances of which 
we have already spoken — his abandonment by the Asiatic converts, 10 and the 

1 Tears at parting. Cf . Acts xx. 37. 

2 Does not this involved sentence, with its tesselation of parenthetic thoughts, at 
once indicate the hand of Paul ? 

3 How reminded ? We do not know; but this is the proper meaning of vn-6jotvn«ns - 

orav tis v<$> erepou els ju.vtj/utjj' npoa.x9fj. 

4 i. 1 — 5, 7T€jrei0>i<u Se. To make the Se imply " notwithstanding appearances," as 
Alford does, is too strong ; but the adversative force of Se, though unnoticed by most 
commentators, and missed in many versions, does seem to imply that passing shade of 
hesitation about the fervour of the faith of Timothy — at any rate, as manifested in 
vigorous action — which I have tried to indicate in the " Yes, and I feel confident." 

5 This phrase— Si' fy alrCav for Si6— is peculiar to the Pastoral Epistles. 

6 <rw<f>povi<Tixov. The form of the word seems to imply not only " sobermindedness," 
but the teaching others to be sober-minded. 

7 i. 6—12. 

8 This seems to me the real meaning, though Alford has something to urge for hia 
view that it should be rendered, "Have (in what I have just said to you) a pattern 
of sound words, which, " &c. 

9 i. 13, 14. 

10 The expression <u ev rfj 'Atria Travres, " all those in Asia," is difficult. It seems to imply 
that they had abandoned St. Paul in Rome, and had now returned to Asia, so that they 
would be " in Asia " by the tune this letter arrived. 



878 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 

zealous refreshing kindness of Onesiphorus, for whom he breathes an earnest 
prayer. 1 

" Thou therefore, my child, be strengthened in the grace which is in Christ 
Jesus, and the things whi«,h thou heardest from me in the presence of many witnesses, 
these things extend to faithful men who shall be adequate also to teach others. Share 
my sufferings as a fair soldier of Christ Jesus." 2 

The conditions of this soldiership he illustrates by three similes, drawn 
from the life of the soldier, the athlete, and the labourer, and doubtless meant 
to suggest to Timothy the qualities of which at that depressed period he stood 
most in need. The soldier must abandon all business entanglements, and 
strive to please his captain. The athlete, if he wants the crown, must keep 
the rules. The toiling husbandman has the first claim to a share of the 
harvest. 3 It was a delicate way of suggesting to Timothy the duties of in- 
creased single-heartedness, attention to the conditions of the Christian life, 
and strenuous labour ; and that he might not miss the bearing of these simili- 
tudes he adds, " Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you 4 understanding 
in all things." By the example of his own sufferings he reminds him that 
the cardinal truths of the Gospel are ample to inspire toil and endurance. 

"Bear in mind," he says, "Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, of the seed of 
David, according to my Gospel — in the cause of which I suffer even to chains as a 
malefactor : but the word of God has not been chained. For this reason, for the 
sake of the elect, I am enduring all things, that they too may obtain the salvation 
which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Faithful is the saying — 

If we died with, we shall also live with Him ; 5 
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him ; 
If we deuy, He also will deny us. 
If we are faithless, He abideth faithful, 
For He is not able to deny Himself.' " • 

" These things call to their remembrance ; " and from this verse to the end 
of the chapter he reverts to the false teachers among whom Timothy is labour- 
ing, and against whom he has warned him in the First Epistle, testifying to 
them before the Lord not to fight about " views " — a thing entirely useless — 
to the subversion of the hearers. 7 "Strive to present thyself approved to 
God, a workman unshamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 8 He is to 
shun the vain babblings of men like Hymenseus and Philetus, 9 with their 

i i. 15—18. 

2 The distinction between koAo? and Ayaflbs can only be kept up by the old English 
word " fair," as in Tennyson's 

" So that ye trust to our fair Father, Christ." 

3 ii. 1—6. 4 ii. 7, leg. fiwo-et. 

* Of. 1 Cor. xv. 31 ; 2 Cor. iv. 18 ; Kom. vi. 8. 

6 ii. 7 — 13. The last words are rhythmical, perhaps liturgical. 

7 ii. 14. Logomachy is a sure mark of Sophistic teaching, and there is a resemblance 
of the Gnostics to the Sophists in several particulars. 

8 bpOorofiovvra, "rightly cutting," or "cutting straight." " Nihil praetermittere, nil 
adiicere, nil mutilare, discerpere, torquere " (Beza). But it is not clear whether the 
metaphor is from cutting roads, or victims, or furrows, or bread, or carpentry. It is 
better to regard it as general, "rightly handling," just as Kaivorofielv came to mean merely 
"innovating." In patristic language bp6oTOfiCa became another word for "orthodoxy," 

• Nothing is known of them (1 Tim. i, 20), 



Paul's last letter. 679 

ever-advancing impiety and the spreading cancer of their doctrine, which 
identified the resurrection with spiritual deliverance from the death of sin, 
and denied that there was any other resurrection, 1 to the ruinous nnsettlement 
of some. Fruitlessly, however, for God's firm foundation stands impregnable 
with the double inscription on it, 2 " The Lord knoweth them that are His," 
and " Let every one who nameth the name of Christ stand aloof from un- 
righteousness." 3 Yet there should be no surprise that such errors spring up 
in the visible Church. It is like a great house in which are vessels of wood 
and earth, as well as of gold and silver, and alike for honourable and mean 
purposes. What each one had to do then was to purge himself from polluting 
connexion with the mean and vile vessels, and strive to be "a vessel for 
honour, sanctified, serviceable to the master, prepared for every good pur- 
pose." 4 He is therefore to " fly " from the desires of youth, 5 and in union 
with all who call on the Lord with a pure heart to pursue righteousness, faith, 
love, peace, having nothing to do with those foolish and illiterate questions 
which only breed strifes unworthy of the gentle, enduring meekness of a 
slave of the Lord, whose aim it should be to train opponents with all mildness, 6 
in the hope that God may grant them repentance, so that they may come to 
full knowledge of the truth, and " awake to soberness out of the snare of the 
devil, after having been taken alive by him — to do God's will." 7 

The third chapter continues to speak of these evil teachers and their 
future developments in the hard times to come. A stern sad picture is drawn 
of what men shall then be in their selfishness, greed, conceit, ingratitude, 
lovelessness, treachery, besotted atheism, and reckless love of pleasure. He 
bids Timothy turn away from such teachers with their sham religion, their 
creeping intrigues, their prurient influence, their feminine conquests, 8 
resisting the truth just as the old Egyptian sorcerers Jannes and Jambres 9 

1 Since there is a trace of exactly the same heresy in 1 Cor. xv. 12, it is idle of Bam- 
to assume any allusion to Marcion here. St. Paul's warning against thus making the 
resurrection a mere metaphor was all the more needful, because it was a distortion of his 
own expressions (Rom. vi. 4; CoL ii. 12, &c). 

2 Cf. Eev. xxi. 14. 3 See Numb. xvi. 5, 26. 

4 2 Tim. ii. 21. The general meaning of the passage is clear, though it is indistinctly 
expressed; on eK/caSaprj Melancthon remarks, "Haec mundatio non est desertio congre- 
gations, sed conversio ad Deum." 

5 eTTiflv/xt'as, not exclusively sensual passions. 6 See Matt. xii. 19, 20. 

7 ii. 14 — 26. The devil has taken the mcaptive in a snare while they were drunk ; 
awaking, they use their recovered soberness (dvai^co, crapulam excutio) to break the 
snare, and return to obedience to God's will, avrov probably refers to Satan, eiceCvov to 
God, although this explanation is not absolutely necessary. 

8 Baur (Pastoralbriefe, p. 36) sees an allusion to the Gnostic prophetesses, Prisca, 
Maximilla, Quintilla, &c, and quotes Epiphan. Haer. xxvi. 11. But, on the one hand, 
these certainly did not deserve to be stigmatised as ywo.iKa.pia (see Tert.), and on the 
other it is absurd to suppose that women would be any less susceptible to every phase of 
religious influence in the Apostle's days than they have been in all ages (cf. Jos. Antt. 
xvii. 2, § 4). Such a yvvai.Kdpi.ov was Helena whom Simon Magus took about with him 
(Justin, Apol. i. 26 ; Iren. c. Haer. i. 23). When Jerome speaks with such scorn and 
slander of Nicolas of Antioch {choros duxit femineos), Marcion and his female adherent, 
Apelles and Philumena, Arius and his sister, Donatus and Lucilla, Epidius and Agape, 
Priscillian and Galla, had he forgotten certain ladies called Paulla and Eustochium ? 

9 Jannes and Jambres are mentioned by Origen, and even by Pliny (H. N. xxx. 1), 



680 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

did, and destined to have their emptiness equally exposed. 1 But Timothy — 
who has followed all that Paul has been in the teaching, the purpose, and the 
sufferings of his life, and well knows how the Lord saved him out of many 
trials and persecutions in his first journey 2 — must expect persecution, and be 
brave and faithful, making his life a contrast to that of these deceived 
deceivers, in accordance with that training which from a babe he had received 
in the Holy Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation 
through faith in Jesus Christ : since " every Scripture inspired by God is 
also profitable for teaching, 3 for reproof, for correction, for training in 
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for 
every good work." 4 

The fourth chapter begins with a solemn appeal to him to do his duty as 
a pastor " in season, out of season," 5 because the time would soon come 
when men would turn away from truth to the fantastic doctrines of teachers 
who would answer them according to their own lusts. 

"Do thou then be sober in all things, eridure sufferings. Do the work of an 
evangelist, fulfil thy ministry. For / am being already poured in libation, and the 
time of my departure 6 is close at hand. I have striven the good strife, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me in that day ; and 
not to me only, but also to all who have loved His appearing." 7 

That is practically St. Paul's last word. The remainder of the letter is 
occupied with personal information, given in the natural, loose, accidental 
order of a letter, mingled with earnest entreaty to him that he would come at 

who calls them Jannes and Jotapes, and Numenius (Orig. c. Cels. iv. 199). The names 
belong to the cycle of Jewish Hagadoth. They are mentioned in the Targum of 
Jonathan on Ex. vii. 11, and were said to be sons of Balaam. 

1 This is said to contradict ii. 16 and hi. 13. It only does so to an unintelligent 
literalism. Error will succeed, but its very success will end in its exposure. "Non 
proficient amplius, quamquam ipsi et eorum similes proficiant in ejus" (Bengel) ; or, 

as ChrySOStom remarks, k&v trpoTepov avOrjOj) to. ttjs 7rAavi]? eis Te'Aos ov SLa/xevel. 

2 It has been asked why he refers especially to these. Perhaps because they had 
come most heavily upon him, and affected him most severely as being the first of the 
kind which he had endured. Perhaps because Timothy was a Lycaonian, and Paul's 
memory of those old days is vividly awaked. 

3 This is almost certainly the true translation. It was so understood by Origen, 
Theodoret, by Erasmus and Grotius, by Whitby and Hammond, by Alford and EUicott ; 
is so translated in the Arabic, the Syriac, the Vulgate, Luther, the Dutch, and the 
Rhenish, and in the versions of Wiclif, Tyndale, Coverdale, and Cranmer. For the 
introduction of the predicate by ««<• see Gal. iv. 7, Luke i. 36, Rom. viii. 29, &c. 

4 iii. 1—17. 

5 iv. 2, ev/caipws, a/caipws : "opportune, importune" " (Axig.). The smallest element of 
literary sense is sufficient to save the verse from the fanatical abuse which has perverted 
no many passages of Scripture. If any antidote to its abuse is required, see Matt. vii. 6. 

6 avakvaeox;, "departure," not "dissolution" (Phil. i. 23). ai/aAveiv is "to set sail." 

7 iv. 1 — 8. "There is nothing better," says Chrysostom, "than this strife. There 
is no end to this crown. It is not a crown of price, nor is it assigned by any earthly 
arbiter, nor are men spectators of its bestowal ; the theatre is filled with angel-witnesses. ' 
It is useless to argue with those who see a spirit of boasting here which contradicts 1 
Cor. iv. 3 ; Phil. iii. 12 ; 1 Tim. i. 16. "Distingue tempora et concordabit Scriptura." 
The same man may, at different moments, in different moods, and from different stand- 
pou.ts,. say, "I am the chief of sinners," and " I have striven the good strife," 



PAUL'S LAST LETTER. 681 

once. " Do your best to come to me quickly." Demas, Oescens, Titus, are 
all absent from him ; Erastus did not come with him farther than Corinth ; 
Trophimus was taken ill at Miletus ; Luke only is left. Mark is useful to 
hiin for service — perhaps because he knew Latin — and therefore Timothy is 
to take him up somewhere on the way, and bring him. 1 Tychicus is already 
on the way to Ephesus, 2 so that he can take Timothy's place when he arrives. 
Timothy is to be on his guard against the pronounced hostility of Alexander 
the coppersmith. 3 Then follows the touching allusion to his first trial and 
deliverance, on which we have already dwelt. Greetings are sent to Prisca, 
Aquila, and the house of Onesiphorus. Once more, " Do your best to come 
before winter ; " — if he comes after that time he may be too late. " Eubulus 
greets thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren. The 
Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with you." 4 

I have purposely omitted the one simple, touching message, introduced so 
incidentally, and with such inimitable naturalness. " When you come, bring 
with you the cloke that I left at Troas, at Carpus' house, and the books, 
especially the parchments." 6 The verse has been criticised as trivial, as 

1 Mark had been attached of late to the ministry of Peter. Perhaps — but all is here 
uncertain — St. Peter may have been already martyred. It is, at any rate, deeply 
interesting to observe how completely St. Mark had regained that high estimation in the 
mind of the Apostle which he bad weakened by his early defection (Acts xv. 38). 

2 aneaTeiKa. It is made a difficulty that St. Paul should mention this to Timothy, 
who is supposed to have been at Ephesus. But even if <kire<rTei\.a cannot be an epistolary 
aorist, and so equivalent to "I am sending," Paul could not be sure that Timothy might 
not be visiting some of the neighbouring churches ; and Tychicus may have gone by 
some longer route. Even apart from this, nothing is more common in letters than the 
mention of facts which must be perfectly well known to the person addressed ; and, in 
any case, since Timothy could hardly leave without resigning his charge for a time into 
the hands of Tychicus, he might be glad of a personal assurance from Paul that he had 
Bent him. 

3 The meaning of iroAAd juoi Ka/co. eveSei^ajo is not certain, but is probably nothing more 
than "exhibited very mischievous conduct towards me." The following words, "The 
Lord shall reward him (<"roSw<m, «, A, C, D, E, F, G), according to his works," have been 
rebuked as a malediction. But the m <wt<hs Xoyio-fleirj of verse 16 is sufficient to show that 
this was not the mood of Paul ; and it is no malediction to say of an enemy, " I must 
leave God to deal with him," since God is infinitely more merciful than man. 

4 iv. 9 — 22. Linus may be the traditional first Bishop of Borne (Iren. c. Haer. iii. 
33 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. 4 ) ; but I am surprised that any one should accept the ingenious 
attempt to identify Pudens with the dissolute centurion of Martial's epigrams (iv. 13 ; 
xi. 53) and the Pudens who built a temple at Chichester to Neptune and Minerva ; and 
Claudia with the British Claudia Rufina, whom he married, and with the daughter of 
the British king Cogidubnus or of Caractacus. The grounds of the identification were 
suggested by Archdeacon Williams in a pamphlet on Pudens and Claudia. No doubt the 
Pudens of Martial may be the Pudens of the Chichester inscription, since he married a 
British lady ; and this Claudia may have been a daughter of Cogidubnus, and may have 
been sent to Borne as a hostage, or for education, and may have taken the name 
Rufina, because she may have been entrusted to the charge of Pomponia, the wife of 
Aulus Plautus, who had been a commander in Britain, and in whose family was a branch 
called Rufi. And it is possible that Pomponia may have been secretly a Christian (Tac. 
Ann. xiii. 32), and so this Claudia Rufina may have become a Christian too ; but even 
if we grant the possibility of all these hypotheses, still nothing whatever remains to 
identify the Pudens and Claudia here separated from each other by another name with 
the Pudens and Claudia of whom we have been speaking. Claudia was the commonest 
of names, and the whole theory is an elaborate rope of sand. 

6 That ^eAoMjs, if that be the true reading, means a cloak, seems to be nearly certain. 



682 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

anworthy the dignity of inspiration. But men must take their notions of 
inspiration from facts, and not try to square the facts to their own theories. 
Even on these grounds the verse has its own value for all who would not 
obscure divine inspiration, nor obliterate the true meaning and sacredness of 
Scripture by substituting a dictated infallibility for the free play of human 
emotions in souls deeply stirred by the Holy Spirit of God. But even on 
ether grounds how little could we spare this verse ! What a light does it 
throw on the last sad days of the persecuted Apostle ! The fact that these 
necessary possessions — perhaps the whole that the Apostle could call his own 
in this world — had been left at the house of Carpus, may, as we have seen, 
indicate his sudden arrest, either at Troas or on his way to it. A prisoner 
who is being hurried from place to place by unsympathising keepers is 
little able to look after his property. But now the Apostle is settled 
again, though his home is but a prison, and he feels that it will be his 
home for life. Winter is coming on, and winter in a Roman prison, as 
he knows by experience, may be very cold. He wants to get back his rough 
travelling cloak. It was one of those large sleeveless garments which we 
should call an " overall " or " dreadnought." Perhaps St. Paul had woven 
it himself of the black goat's hair of his native province. And, doubtless 
— for he was a poor man — it was an old companion — wetted many a time in 
the water-torrents of Asia, whitened with the dust of Roman roads, stained 
with the brine of shipwreck when Euroaquilo was driving the Adriatic into 
foam. He may have slept in its warm shelter on the chill Phrygian 
uplands, under the canopy of stars, or it may have covered his bruised 
and trembling limbs in the dungeon of Philippi. It is of little value ; 
but now that the old man sits shivering in some gloomy cell under the 
palace or on the rocky floor of the Tullianum, and the winter nights are 
coming on, he bethinks him of the old cloak in the house of Carpus, and asks 
Timothy to bring it with him. " The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, 
bring with thee." " And the books, but especially the parchments." * The 

It was the opinion of the Greek Fathers, who only mention alternatively the meaning 
y\u><r<r6icoixov, or book-case. But had this been meant it would have been mentioned after 
the books, not before them. We may assume that the word is a transliteration of the 
Latin poenula, and meant a long thick cloak. The form of the transliteration might 
surpris 5 us, but it is another incidental mark of genuineness, for it comes from the form 
which the work took in Syriac, |vbD- Even if |VbD be pallium, we see that in Syriac rj re- 
presents 77. Modern ingenuity sees in it a sacrificial vestment — a chasuble ! 

1 Many will recall the striking and pathetic parallel to this request in the letter 
written by the martyr William Tyndale, from the damp cells of Vilvorde, in the winter 
before his death, asking, for Jesus' sake, for a warmer cap, and something to patch his 
leggings, and a woollen shirt, and, above all, his Hebrew Bible, Grammar, and Dictionary : 
" Quamobrem tuam dominationem rogatum habeo, idque per Dominum Jesum, ut si 
mini per hiemen hie manendum sit, solicites apud dominum commissarium, si forte 
dignari velit, de rebus meis quas habet mittere calidiorem birethum. Frigus enim patior 
in capite nimium . . . calidiorem quoque tunicam, nam haec, quam habeo, admodum 
tenuis est. Item pannum ad caligas deficienrlas. Duplois (sic) detrita est, camiseae 
detritae sunt etiam. Camiseam laneam habet si mittere velit. . . . Maxime autem 
omnium tuam clementiam rogo atque obsecro ut ex animo agere velit apud dominum 
commissarium quatenus dignari mihi velit Bibl. Hebraicam, Grammaticam Hebraicam^ 



PAUL'S LAST LETTER. 683 

biblia — the papyrus books — few we may be sure, but old friends. Perhaps 
he had bought them when he was a student in the school of Gamaliel at 
Jerusalem ; or they may have been given him by his wealthier converts. 1 
The papyrus books, then, let Timothy bring, but especially the parchments — 
the vellum rolls. What were these ? Perhaps among them was the diploma 
of his Roman franchise ; or were they precious rolls of Isaiah and the Psalms, 
and the lesser Prophets, which father or mother had given him as a life-long 
treasure in the far-off happy days when, little dreaming of all that would 
befall him, he played, a happy boy, in the dear old Tarsian home ? Dreary 
and long are the days — the evenings longer and drearier still — in that Roman 
dungeon ; and it will be a deep joy to read once more how David and Isaiah, 
in their deep troubles, learnt, as he had learnt, to suffer and be strong. A 
simple message, then, about an old cloak and some books, but very touching. 
They may add a little comfort, a little relief, to the long-drawn tedium of 
these last dreary days. Perhaps he thinks that he would like to give them, 
as his parting bequest, to Timothy himself, or to the modest and faithful 
Luke, that their true hearts may remember him when the sea of life flows 
smooth once more over the nameless grave. It would be like that sheepskin 
cloak which centuries afterwards the hermit Anthony bequeathed to the 
Archbishop Athanasius — a small gift, but all he had. Poor inventory of a 
saint's possessions ! not worth a hundredth part of what a buffoon would get 
for one jest in Caesar's palace, or an acrobat for a feat in the amphitheatre , 
but would he have exchanged them for the jewels of the adventurer Agrippa, 
or the purple of the unspeakable Nero ? No, he is much more than content. 
His soul is joyful in God. If he has the cloak to keep him warm, and the 
books and parchments to teach and encourage him, and Mark to help him in 
various ways, and if, above all, Timothy will come himself, then life will have 
shed on him its last rays of sunshine ; and in lesser things, as well as in all 
greater, he will wait with thankfulness, even with exultation, the pouring out 
in libation of those last few drops of his heart's blood, of which the rich full 
stream has for these long years been flowing forth upon God's altar in willing 
sacrifice. 2 

But there are no complaints, no murmurs — there is nothing querulous or 
depressed in these last words of St. Paul. If the Pastoral Epistles, and above 
all this one, were not genuine, they must have been written by one who not 
only possessed the most perfect literary skill, but who had also entered with 
consummate insight into the character and heart of Paul ; — of Paul, but not 
of ordinary men, even of ordinary great men. The characteristic of waning 
life is disenchantment, a sense of inexorable weariness, a sense of inevitable 

et Vocabularium Hebraicwm, ut eo studio tempus conteram . . . W. Tindalus " (Life, 
by Demaus, p. 475). 

1 See Ewald, Gesch. iv. 626 ; vi. 391. Paul seems to have been a student all his life, 

as far as Circumstances permitted. Acts XXVi. 24, t<x iroAAa <re ypa.ixiJ.aTa eis \x,aviav TrepiTpeiret,. 

2 Cf. Phil. ii. 17. Seneca, when dying, sprinkled the bystanders with his blood, 
saying, "Libwe se liquorem ilium Jovi Liberatori " (Tac. Ann, xv. 64). So, too, Thrasea, 
" Libemus, inquit, Jovi Liberatori " (Id. xvi. 35), 



684 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTI*. 

disappointment. We trace it in Elijah and John the Baptist ; we trace it ill 
Marcns Aurelius ; we trace it in Francis of Assisi ; we trace it in Eoger 
Bacon ; we trace it in Lnther. All is vain ! We have lived, humanly speaking, 
to little or no purpose. " We are not better than our fathers." " Art thou He 
that should come, or do we look for another ? " "I shall die, and people will 
say, ' We are glad to get rid of this schoolmaster.' " " My order is more 
than I can manage." " Men are not worth the trouble I have taken for them." 
" We must take men as we find them, and cannot change their nature." To 
some such effect have all these great men, and many others, spoken. They 
have been utterly disillusioned ; they have been inclined rather to check the 
zeal, to curb the enthusiasm, to darken with the shadows of experience the 
radiant hopes of their younger followers. If in any man such a sense of 
disappointment — such a conviction that life is too hard for us, and that we 
cannot shake off the crushing weight of its destinies— could have ever been 
excusable, it would have been so in St. Paul. What visible success had he 
achieved? — the founding of a few Churches of which the majority were 
already cold to him ; in which he saw his efforts being slowly undermined by 
heretical teachers ; which were being subjected to the fiery ordeal of terrible 
persecutions. To the faith of Christ he saw that the world was utterly 
hostile. It was arraying against the Cross all its intellect and all its power. 
The Christ returned not ; and what could His doves do among serpents, His 
sheep among wolves ? The very name " Christian " had now come to be 
regarded as synonymous with criminal ; and Jew and Pagan — like " water 
with fire in ruin reconciled," amid some great storm — were united in common 
hostility to the truths he preached. And what had he personally gained ? 
Wealth ? — He is absolutely dependent on the chance gifts of others. Power ? 
— At his worst need there had not been one friend to stand by his side. 
Love ? — He had learnt by bitter experience how few there were who were not 
ashamed even to own him in his misery. And now after all — after all that 
he had suffered, after all that he had done — what was his condition ? He was 
a lonely prisoner, awaiting a malefactor's end. What was the sum-total of 
earthly goods that the long disease, and the long labour of his life, had 
brought him in ? An old cloak and some books. And yet in what spirit does 
he write to Timothy ? Does he complain of his hardships ? Does he regret 
his life ? Does he damp the courage of his younger friend by telling him that 
almost every earthly hope is doomed to failure, and that to struggle against 
human wickedness is a fruitless fight ? Not so. His last letter is far more 
of a paean than a miserere. For himself the battle is over, the race run, the 
treasure safely guarded. The day's work in the Master's vineyard is well- 
nigh over now. When it is quite finished, when he has entered the Master's 
presence, then and there — not here or now — shall he receive the crown of 
righteousness and the unspeakable reward. And so his letter to Timothy is 
all joy and encouragement, even in the midst of natural sadness. It is the 
voung man's heart, not the old man's, that has failed. It is Timotheus, not 
Paul, who is ir danger of yielding to languor and timidity, and forgetting 



THE END. 685 

that the Spirit which God gave was one not of fear, but of power, and of love, 
and of a sound mind. " Bear, then, afflictions with me. Be strong ir the 
grace of Jesus Christ. Fan up the flame in those whitening embers of zeal 
and courage. Be a good soldier, a true athlete, a diligent toiler. Do you 
think of my chains and of my hardships ? They are nothing, not worth a 
word or a thought. Be brave. Be not ashamed. "We are weak, and may be 
defeated; but nevertheless God's foundation-stone stands sure with the 
double legend upon it — one of comfort, one of exhortation. Be thou strong 
and faithful, my son Timothy, even unto death/' So does he hand to the 
dear but timid racer the torch of truth which in his own grasp, through the 
long torch-race of his life, no cowardice had hidden, no carelessness had 
dimmed, no storm had quenched. " Glorious Apostle ! would that every 
leader's voice could burst, as he falls, into such a trumpet- sound, thrilling 
the young hearts that pant in the good fight, and must never despair of final 
victory." 1 Yes, even so : 

" Hopes have precarious life ; 

They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off 

In vigorous youth, and turned to rottenness ; 

But faithfulness can feed on suffering, 

And knows no disappointment." 2 



CHAPTER LYII. 

THE END. 

" Bonum agonem subituri estis, in quo agonothetes Deus vivus est, xystarchea 
Spiritus Sanctus, corona aeternitatis, bravium angelicae substantiae, politia in coelis, 
gloria in saecula saeculorum.'' — Tekt. ad Mart. 3. 

" Qui desiderat dissolvi et esse cum Christo, patienter vivit et delectabiliter 
moritur."— Aug. 

" Lieblich wie der Iris Farbenfeuer 
Auf der Donnerwolke duft'gem Thau 
Schimmert durch der Wehmuth diistern Schleier 
Hier der Euhe heitres Blau." — Schiller. 

Did Paul ever get that cloak, and the papyri and the vellum rolls ? Did 
Timothy ever reach him ? 3 None can tell us. With the last verse of the 
Second Epistle to Timothy we have heard Paul's last word. In some Roman 
basilica, perhaps before Helius, the Emperor's freedman, in the presence of 
some dense, curious, hostile crowd of Jews and Pagans, he must have been 
heard once more, in his second defence, or on the second count of the indict- 
ment against him ; and on this occasion the majority of the assessors must 
have dropped the tablet C — the tablet of condemnation — into the voting urn, 
and the presiding judge must have pronounced sentence of decapitation on 

1 Martineau, Hours of Thought, p. 89. 2 "Spanish Gypsy." 

8 That he did is a reasonable conjecture, and it not improbably led to that imprison 
meat the liberation from which is mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews (xiii. 23) 



686 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL. 

one who, though condemned of holding a dangerous and illegal superstition, 
was still a Roman citizen. Was he alone at his second trial as at his first ? 
Did the Gentiles again hear of Jesus and the Resurrection ? Did he to them, 
as to the Athenians, prove that the God whose Gospel he had been commissioner! 
to proclaim was the same God after whom their fathers had ignorantly groped, 
if haply they might find him, in the permitted ages of ignorance, before yet, 
in the dispensation of the times, the shadow on the dial-plate of eternity had 
marked that the appointed hour had come 1 All such questions are asked in 
vain. Of this alone we may feel convinced — that he heard the sentence pro- 
nounced upon him with a feeling akin to joy— 

" For sure, no gladlier does the stranded wreck 
See, through the grey skirts of a lifting squall, 
The boat that bears the hope of life approach 
To save the life despaired of, than lie saw- 
Death dawning on him, and the end of all." 

But neither respecting his bearing nor his fate do we possess any particulars. 
If any timid, disheartened, secret Christians stood listening in the crowded 
court — if through the ruined areas which marked the sites of what had once 
been shops and palaces before the conflagration had swept like a raging storm 
through the narrow ill-built streets — if from the poorest purlieus of the Tras- 
tevere or the gloomy haunts of the catacomb any converted slave or struggling 
Asiatic who believed in Jesus had ventured among the throng, no one has left 
a record, no one even told the story to his fellows so clearly as to leave behind 
him a floating tradition. We know nothing more. The last word has been 
spoken. The curtain has fallen on one of the noblest of human lives. 

They who will may follow him in imagination to the possible scene of his 
martyrdom, but every detail must be borrowed from imagination alone. It 
may be that the legendary is also the real scene of his death. If so, accom- 
panied by the centurion and the soldiers who were to see him executed, 
he left Rome by the gate now called by his name. Near that gate, 
close beside the English cemetery, stands the pyramid of C. Cestius, and 
under its shadow lie buried the mortal remains of Keats and Shelley, and of 
many who have left behind them beloved or famous names. Tet even amid 
those touching memorials the traveller will turn with deeper interest to the 
old pyramid, because it was one of the last objects on which rested the eyes 
of Paul. For nearly three miles the sad procession walked ; and doubtless 
the dregs of the populace, who always delight in a scene of horror, gathered 
round them. About three miles from Rome, not far from the Ostian road, 
is a green and level spot, with low hills around it, known anciently as Aquae 
Salviae, and now as Tre Fontane. There the word of command to halt was 
given ; the prisoner knelt down ; the sword flashed, and the life of the greatest 
of the Apostles was shorn away. 1 

1 I have not thought it desirable to trouble the reader with Mediaeval legends of St. 
Paul's death, which may be seen, by those who list, in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. iii. 632 ; 
Ordericus Vitalis, ii. 3. 



THE END. 687 

" Dulce sonat sethere vox 
Hiems transiit, occidit nox, 
Imber abiit moestaque crux, 
Lucet io perpetua lux." — Baldb. 

Earthly failure could hardly have seemed more absolute. No blaze of 
glory shone on his last hours. No multitudes of admiring and almost ador- 
ing brethren surrounded his last days with the halo of martyrdom. Near 
the spot where he was martyred it is probable that they laid him in some 
nameless grave — in some spot remembered only by the one or two who knew 
and loved him. How little did they know, how little did even he understand, 
that the apparent earthly failure would in reality be the most infinite success ! 
Who that watched that obscure and miserable end could have dreamed that 
Rome itself would not only adopt the Gospel of that poor outcast, but even 
derive from his martyrdom, and that of his fellow Apostle, her chief sanctity 
and glory in the eyes of a Christian world ; that over his supposed remains 
should rise a church more splendid than any ancient basilica ; and that over 
a greater city than Rome the golden cross should shine on the dome of a 
mighty cathedral dedicated to his name 1 

How little did men recognise his greatness ! Here was one to whom no 
single man that has ever lived, before or since, can furnish a perfect parallel. 
If we look at him only as a writer, how immensely does he surpass, in his 
most casual Epistles, the greatest authors, whether Pagan or Christian, of 
his own and succeeding epochs. The younger Pliny was famous as a letter- 
writer, yet the younger Pliny never produced any letter so exquisite as that 
to Philemon. Seneca, as a moralist, stood almost unrivalled, yet not only is 
clay largely mixed with his gold, but even his finest moral aphorisms are 
inferior in breadth and intensity to the most casual of St. Paul's. Epictetus 
and Marcus Aurelius furnish us with the purest and noblest specimens of 
Stoic loftiness of thought, yet St. Paul's chapter on charity is worth more 
than all they ever wrote. If we look at the Christian world, the very greatest 
worker in each realm of Christian service does but present an inferior aspect 
of one phase only of Paul's many-sided pre-eminence. As a theologian, as 
one who formulated the doctrines of Christianity, we may compare him with 
St. Augustine or St. Thomas of Aquinum ; yet how should we be shocked to 
find in him the fanciful rhetoric and dogmatic bitterness of the one, or the 
scholastic aridity of the other ! If we look at him as a moral reformer, we 
may compare him with Savonarola ; but in his practical control of even the 
most thrilling spiritual impulses — in making the spirit of the prophet subject 
to the prophet — how grand an exemplar might he not have furnished to the 
impassioned Florentine ! If we consider him as a preacher we may compare 
him with St. Bernard ; yet St. Paul would have been incapable of the 
unnatural ascetism and heresy-hunting hardness of the great Abbot of 
Clairvaux. As a reformer who altered the entire course of human history, 
Luther alone resembles him ; yet how incomparably is the Apostle superior 
to Luther in insight, in courtesy, in humility, in dignity, in self- control ! As 



688 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 

a missionary we might compare him to Xavier, as a practical organiser to St 
Gregory, as a fervent lover of souls to Whitefield, and to many other saints 
of God in many other of his endowments ; but no saint of God has ever 
attained the same heights in so many capacities, or received the gifts of the 
Spirit in so rich an outpouring, or borne in his mortal body such evident 
brand-marks of the Lord. In his lifetime he was no whit behind the very 
chiefest of the Apostles, and he towers above the very greatest of all the 
saints who have since striven to follow the example of his devotion to his 
Lord. 

" God buries his workmen, but carries on their work." It is not for any 
earthly rewards that God's heroes have sought — not even for the reward of 
hoping in the posthumous success of the cause to which they have sacrificed 
their lives. All questions of success or failure they have been content to leave 
in the hands of God. Their one desire has been to be utterly true to the best 
that they have known ; their prayers have all been simplified to this alone — 
" Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth Thee, for Thou art my God ; let 
Thy loving Spirit lead me into the land of righteousness." That God has 
seemed to be careless of their individual happiness they would be the last to 
complain ; though He slay them, yet do they trust in Him. Failure was to 
St. Paul a word unknown. He knew that to fail — or seem to fail — in the 
cause of God, was to succeed beyond the dreams of earthly ambition. 

His faith had never wavered amid life's severest trials, nor his hope grown 
dim amid its most bitter disappointments ; and when he passed from the 
dungeon and the martyrdom to his crown of righteousness, he left the life 
which he had sown to be quickened by the power of God in the soil of the 
world's history, where it shall continue to bear fruit until the end of time, 
amid the ever- deepening gratitude of generations yet unborn. One who had 
lived with him, and knew his thoughts and hopes, and had himself preached 
the faith of Christ in days when to be a Christian was to suffer as a Christian, 
has written of God's heroes in words which St. Paul would have endorsed, 
and in which he would have delighted, " These all died in faith, not having 
received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded 
of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and 
pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they 
seek a country ; and truly, if they had been mindful of that country whence 
they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now 
they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly ; wherefore God is not 
ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city." 



APPENDIX. 

EXCURSUS I. (p. 15). 
The Style or St. Paul as Illusteative of his Chabacteb, 

Tee reader may be interested to see collected a very few of the varying estimate* of the 
style of the great Apostle : — 

Longinus [Paul as master of the dogmatic style] — 

Kopcovi; & eo-Tw Aoyov navros Kai <ppon;jU.aTO? 
'EAAtjj/ikou ATjju.os0eV»j? k. t. \. 7rpbs tovtois IlavAos 6 Taperevs 
ovriva koX nplaTov <f»)AU npo'Carafievov fioy/Aaros ammoSeiKTov. 

St. Cheisostom [Paul a champion, and his Epistles a wall of adamant round the 
Church]— 

woTrep yae TeTxos e£ aSauairos KaTa<riteva.o~Oev ovt<o ras 
iravraxov tt?s oiKOV/iteVTjs eKKArjcrias ra. tovtov Teixi^ei ypa/u./u.aTa* tcai 
KaOanep tis apiorevs yewaioraTOS fcrnj/ce k. t. A. (quoting 2 Cor. X. 5). 

De Sacerdotio, 1, iv. 7. 

St. Jeeome [Paul's words thunders]. — " Paulum proferam quem quotiescunque lego, 
video mihi non verba audire sed tonitrua . . . Videntur quidem verba simplicis et 
quasi innocentis hominis et rusticani et qui nee facere nee declinare noverit insidias, 
sed quocunque respexeris fulmina sunt. Haeret in causa ; capit omne quod tetigerit ; 
tergum vertit ut superet ; fugam simulat ut occidat " (Up. ad Pammach. 68, 13). 
Dante — 

" Vidi due vecchi in abito dispari 

Ma pari in atto, ognuno onesto e sodo. 
L'un 1 si monstrava alcun de famigliari 
Di quel sommo Ippocrate, che natura 
Agli animali fe' ch' ella ha piu cari. 

Monstrava 1' altro 2 la contraria cura 
Con una spada lucida ed acuta 8 
Tal che di qua dal rio mi f e' paura. 

Purgatorio, sxiM. 184. 

Andowi poi lo vas d' elezione 4 
Per recarno conforto a quella Fede 
Ch' e principio alia via di salvazione. 

Inferno, ii. 28. 

Lcthee. — "Paulus meras flammas loquitur tamque vehementer ardet ut incipiat 
&*iam quasi Angelis maledicere" (in Gal. i.). 

"In S. Paulo und Johanne ist eine sonderliche furtreffliche Gewissheit und Plero- 
phoria; sie reden da von als sey es schon allbereit vor Augen" {Tischreden, iv. 399; ed. 
Forstemann). 

Bishop Heebeet de Losinoa. — " Certe, fratres, verba Pauli, non verba hominis, sed 
aetheris tonitrua esse videntur " (Life and Sermons, ii. 309). 

Eeasmus [Paul's style like a thunderstorm]. — " Non est cujusvis hominis Paulinuni 
pectus emngere ; tonat, f ulgurat, meras flammas loquitur Paulus " (ad Col. iv. 16). 

* St Luke, "the beloved physician." z St. Paul. » The Epistlea 

* axeSos «Aoy)js (Acts ix. 16). For other allusions see Parad. xviii. 131, rri. 119. 

S S 



690 APPENDIX. 

And again [Paul's rhetorical skill like the course of a stream] — "Sudatur ab 
eruditisaimis viris in explicandis poetarum ac rhetorum consiliis, at in hoc rhetore longs 
plus sudoris est ut deprehendas quid agat, quo tendat, quid velit ; adeo stropharum 
plenus est undique, absit invidia verbis. Tanta vafrities est, non credas eundem 
hominem loqui. Nunc ut turbidus quidam fons sensim ebullit, mox torrentis in morera 
ingenti fragore devolvitur, multa obiter secum rapiens, nunc placide leniterque fluit, 
nunc late velut in lacum diffusus exspatiatur. Rursum alicubi se condit as diverso loco 
subitus emicat; cum visum est miris maeandris nunc has nunc illas lambit ripa% 
aliquoties procul digressus, reciprocato flexu in sese redit " (Id. Paraph. Dedicat.). 

Casauron. — "Hie solus ex omnibus scriptoribus non mihi videtur digitis, calamo, et 
atramento scripsisse, verum ipso corde, ipso aff ectu, et denudatis visceribus " {Adver- 
saria, ap. Wolf., p. 135). 

On the other hand, Calvin, after alluding to his anakolutha, ellipses, &c, adds — 
"Quae sunt quidem orationis vitia sed quibus nihil majestati decedit caelestis sapientiae 
quae nobis per apostolum traditur. Quin potius singulari Dei providentia factum est, ut 
sub contemptibili verborum humilitate altissima haec mysteria nobis traderentur, ut non 
humanae eloquentiae potentia, sed sola spiritus efficacia niteretur nostra fides." 

Hemsterhusius [Character of St. Paul's flowers of speech]. — " Eloquentia ejus non 
in flosculis verborum et rationis calamistratae pigmentis . . . sed indolis excelsae notis 
et pondere rerum. ... In ejus epistolis nullae non exstant oratorum figurae, non illae 
quidem e rhetorum loculis et myrotheciis depromptae . . . Verum affectus animi 
coelesti ardore inflammatus haec scriptionis lumina sponte sub manum praevenientia 
pergignebat." 1 

Reuss. — " Ordinairement il debute par des phrases on ne peut plus embarrassees. . . . 
Mais des qu'il a trouve la bonne veine, combien son style n'est il pas le fidele miroir de 
son individualite ! II est ni correct, ni classique ; il lui manque la cadence sonore. Des 
antitheses paradoxales, des gradations pleines d'effet, des questions pressantes, des 
exclamations passionnees, des ironies qui terrassent l'opposition, une vivacite, enfin, qui 
D* permet aucun repos au lecteur, tout cela alterne avec des epanchements naifs et 
froumants, qui achevent de gagner le cceur" (Thiol. Chret. ii. 11). 

R. H. Hdtton. — "Who that has studied St. Paul at all has not noticed the bold 
■oaring dialectic with which he rises from the forms of our finite and earthly thought to 
the infinite and the spiritual life embodied in them ? What ease and swiftness and 
power of wing in this indignant upward flight from the petty conflicts of the Corinthian 
Church; the upward flight which does not cease till the poor subjects of contention, 
though he himself was one of them, seem lost like grains of sand beneath the bending 
sky ! . . . The all but reckless prodigality of nature which made St. Paul now and then 
use a stratagem, and now and then launch a thunderbolt, in the fervour of his preaching, 
is the spring of all his finest touches, as when he wishes himself accursed from Christ if 
it could save his Jewish brethren " (Essays, 321 — 330). 

The Author of "Saul of Tarsus."— "If he staggers under the greatness of his 
subject, if he is distracted by the infinity of the interests which he treats, if every word 
which rises to his lips suggests a host of profound and large associations, if the care of all 
the Churches, gives all the facts a varied but a real significance. . . . Human speech 
must be blamed for its poverty ; human experience, which has developed speech, for its 
narrowness. His life was ever in his hand, his heart was on his lips. The heart was 
often too great for the speech " (p. 229). 

Martineau. — "What can be more free and buoyant, with all their variety, than his 
writings? Brilliant, broken, impetuous as the mountain torrent freshly filled, never 
imooth and calm but on the eve of some bold leap, never vehement but to fill some 
mtptacle of clearest peace, they present everywhere the image of a vigorous joy. 

1 See next Excursus. 



THE STYLE OF ST. PAUL. 691 

Beneath the forms of their theosophic reasonings, and their hints of deep philosophy, 
there may he heard a secret lyric strain of glorious praise, bursting at times into open 
utterance, and asking others to join the chorus. . . . His life was a battle from which 
in intervals of the good fight, his words arose as the song of victory " {Hours of Thought, 
p. 156). 

Pbof. Jowett speaks of him as teaching his great doctrines " in broken words and 
hesitating form of speech, with no beauty or comeliness of style. " 

Baur, after pointing out how the style is filled to overflowing with the forms and 
elements of thought, and that thoughts not only follow hard on thoughts, but that those 
thoughts succeed each other as determinations and momenta of some one conception that 
is greater than all of them, so that the thought unfolds itself, as it were, out of its own 
depths, and determines itself by taking up its own momenta, adds : — "Hence the peculiar 
stamp of the Apostle's language : it is distinguished on the one hand for precision and 
compression; on the other hand it is marked by a harshness and roughness which 
suggests that the thought is far too weighty for the language, and can scarcely find fit 
form for the superabundant matter it would fairly express " {Paul. ii. 281). 

Hausrath. — "Es est schwer diese Individuality zu charakterisiren in der sich 
Christliche Liebesfulle, rabbinischer Scharfsinn, und antike "Willenskraft so wunderbar 
mischen. Wie wogt, stromt, drangt Alles in Seinen Briefen. "Welch ein "Wechsel 
gluhender Ergusse und spitzer Beweisfuhrungen ! Hier iiberwindet er das Heidenthum 
mit der Liebesfulle Jesu. Dort knebelt er das Judenthum, mit dessen Eigenen Giirtel 
rabbinischer Scriftbeiwise. Am wenigsten hat die Phantasie Antheil an Seiner Innern 
"Welt. Die Sprache ist oft hart und herb weil nur die Gedanke sie geboren hat. Die 
Bilder die er braucht sind meistens farblos. . . . Das est die Schranke seines 
Geisteslebens. Darin blieb er stets ein Babbi " {Der Apostel Paulus, 502). 

Kenan [Paul's style like a conversation]. — "Le style epistolaire de Paul est le plus 
personnel qu'il y ait jamais eu ; la langue y est si j'ose le dire, broyee ; pas une phrase 
suivie. D. est impossible de violer plus audacieusement, je ne dis pas le genie de la 
langue grecque, mais la logique du langage humain ; on dirait une rapide con-, ersation 
stenographiee et reproduite sans corrections. . . . Un mot l'obsede. ... Ce n'est pas 
de la sterilite; c'est de la contention de l'esprit et une complete insouciance de la 
correction du style " {St. Paul, p. 232). 

The less favourable of the above estimates shelter themselves in part under the asser- 
tion that St. Paul recognised the popular and vulgar character of his own style. But 
such passages as 2 Cor. xi. 6 do not bear out these remarks. His language was not 
indeed of a class which would have gained applause from pedantic purists and Atticising 
professors ; it bears about the same relation to the Greek of Plato as the Latin of Milton 
does to that of Cicero. But this fact constitutes its very life. It is a style far too vivid, 
far too swayed and penetrated by personal emotion, to have admitted of being polished 
into conformity with the artificial standards and accuracies of the schools. It more 
closely resembles the style of Thucydides than that of any other great writer of anti- 
quity. * That many defects in it can be pointed out is certain ; but then in one 
important point of view these defects are better than any beauties, because they are due 
to Paul's individuahty. In whole sections of his Epistles his very want of style is his 
style. His style, like that of every great man, has the defects of its qualities. "Le 
style," said Buffon, not (as he is usually quoted) c'est Vhomme, but "c'est de Thornm*."* 

1 See some good remarks of Baur :— " Such passages as 1 Cor. iv. 12, 13 ; vii 29—31 ; 2 Cor. 
vi. 9, 10, have the true ring of Thucydides, not only in expression, but in the style of the thought. 
The genuine dialectic spirit appears in both, in the love of antithesis and contrast, rising not un- 
frequently to paradox. . . . With both these men the ties of national particularism give way before 
the generalising tendency of their thought, and cosmopolitanism takes the place of nationalism" 
(Paul. ii. 281). He refers to Bauer's Philologia Thucydideo-Paulina, 1773, which I have not 6een. 

• D'Alemlert, (Euvres vi. 13. The " de " in Buffbn's phrase occurs in later editions. 



692 APPENDIX. 

He has, as every great writer has, ' le style de sa pensee : " he has the stjde of genius, if 
he has not the genius of style. l 

After quoting such remarkable and varied testimonies, it is needless for me to write 
an essay on the Apostle's style. That he could when he chose wield a style of remark- 
able finish and eloquence without diminishing his natural intensity, is proved by the 
incessant assonances and balances of clauses and expressions (parechesis, parisosis, paro 
moiosis) in such passages as 2 Cor. vi. 3 — 11. And yet such is his noble carelessness of 
outward graces of style, and his complete subordination of mere elegance of expression 
to the purpose of expressing his exact thought, that he never shrinks, even in his grandest 
outbursts of rhythmic eloquence, from the use of a word, however colloquial, which 
expresses his exact shade of meaning. 2 

All that has been written of the peculiarities of St. Paul's 3tyle may, I think, be 
summed up in two words — Intense Individuality. His style is himself. His natural 
temperament, and the circumstances under which that temperament found its daily 
sphere of action ; his training, both Judaic and Hellenistic ; his conversion and sanctifi- 
cation, permeating his whole life and thoughts — these united make up the Paul we know. 
And each of these has exercised a marked influence on his style. 

1. The absorption in the one thought before him, which makes him state without any 
qualification truths which, taken in the whole extent of his words, seem mutually 
irreconcilable ; the dramatic, rapid, overwhelming series of questions, which show that 
in his controversial passages he is always mentally face to face with an objection ; 3 the 
centrifugal force of mental activity, which drives him into incessant digressions and 
goings off at a word, due to his vivid power of realisation ; the centripetal force of 
imagination, which keeps all these digressions under the control of one dominant 
thought; 4 the grand confusions of metaphor; 5 the vehemence which makes him love 
the most emphatic compounds; 6 the irony 7 and sarcasm; 8 the chivalrously delicate 
courtesy; 9 the overflowing sympathy with the Jew, the Pagan, the barbarian — with 
saint and sinner, king and slave, man and woman, young and old ; 10 the passion, which 
now makes his voice ring with indignation 11 and now break with sobs ; 12 the accumula- 
tion and variation of words, from a desire to set forth the truths which he is proclaiming 
in every possible light ; 13 the emotional emphasis and personal references of his style ; 14 
the depressed humility passing into boundless exultation; 15 — all these are due to his 
natural temperament, and the atmosphere of controversy and opposition on the one hand, 
and deep affection on the other, in which he worked. 

2. The rhetorical figures, play of words, assonances, oxymora, antitheses, of his style, 
which are fully examined in the next Excursus ; the constant widening of his horizon ; 16 
the traceable influence of cities, and even of personal companions, upon his vocabulary ; 17 
the references to Hellenic life ; 18 the method of quoting Scripture ; the Kabbinic style of 
exegesis, which have been already examined 19 — these are due to his training at Tarsus and 
Jerusalem, his life at Corinth, Ephesus, and Eome. 

3. The daring faith which never dreads a difficulty ; 20 the unsolved antinomies, which, 
though unsolved, do not trouble him ; 21 " the bold soaring dialectics with which he rises 

1 Grimm, Corresp., 1788. 

2 E.g., i//w/xt<rw and 7rep7repeveTat in 1 Cor. xiii. 3, 4 ; KaTevapKf\aa, 2 Cor. xi. 8 ; A.Troic6\povT<u, 
Gal. v. 12. 3 Rom. x. ; 2 Cor. vi., xi., and passim. 

* 2 Cor. ii. 14—16 ; xii. 1—3, 12—16 ; Eph. iv. 8—11 ; v. 12—15 ; and Paley, Hor. Panlinae, 

vi. 3. 6 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; Col. ii. 6 6 Especially compounds in inep. Supra, p. 344. 

7 1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Cor. xi. 16—20, and passim. 8 Phil. iii. 2 ; Gal. iv. 17 ; v. 12, and passim. 

9 1 Cor. i.— iii. ; Philem. and Phil, passim ; Acts xxvi. 29, &c. 

10 Rom. i., iv., and all the Epistles passim. n Galatians, Corinthians, Phil., 2 Tim., passim. 
u All the Epistles passim. 13 All the Epistles passim. u All the Epistles passim. 
u 2 Cor. ii. 14 ; Rom. vii. 25, &c. 

16 " Eo (ordine Epistolarum chronologico) constituto . . . incremeutum Apostoli spirituale) 
ooguoscitur " (Bengel, ad Bom. L 1). 17 V. supra, p. 273. 

18 See Excursus III. l9 See Excursus IV. *° See Ep. to Romans, passim. 

•* hew Excursus XXI., "The Antinomies of St. Paul" 



RHETORIC OP ST. PAUL. 693 

from the forms of one finite and earthly thought to the infinite and spiritual life em- 
bodied in them ;" the "language of ecstasy," which was to him, as he meant it to be to 
his converts, the language of the work-day world ; that " transcendental-absurd," as it 
seems to the world, which was the very life both of his conscience and intellect, and made 
him what he was ; the way in which, as with one powerful sweep of the wing, he passes 
from the pettiest earthly contentions to the spiritual and the infinite; the "shrinking 
infirmity and self -contempt, hidden in a sort of aureole of revelation, abundant beyond 
measure " 1 — this was due to the fact that his citizenship was in heaven, his life hid with 
Christ in God. 



EXCTJKSUS H. (p. 15). 

Rhetoric op St. Paul. 

M. Eenan, in describing the Greek of St. Paul as Hellenistic Greek charged with Hebra- 
isms and Syriacisms which would be scarcely intelligible to a cultivated reader of that 
period, says that if the Apostle had ever received even elementary lessons m grammar or 
rhetoric at Tarsus, it is inconceivable that he would have written in the bizarre, incorrect, 
and non-Hellenic style of his letters. 

Now, I do not think that St. Paul would have made about his own knowledge of 
Greek the same remarks as Josephus does, who tells us that he had taken great pains to 
master the learning of the Greeks and the elements of the Greek language. St. Paul had 
picked up Greek quite naturally in a Greek city, and I think that I have decisively proved 
that he could not have possessed more than a partial and superficial acquaintance with 
Greek literature. But I have little doubt that he, like Josephus, would have said that 
he had so long accustomed himself to speak Syriac that he could not pronounce Greek 
with sufficient exactness, and that the Jews did not encourage the careful endeavour to 
obtain a polished Greek style, which they looked on as an accomplishment of slaves and 
freedmen. 2 Yet, after reading the subjoined list of specimens from the syntaxis ornata 
of St. Paul, few, I think, will be able to resist the conviction that he had attended, while 
at Tarsus, some elementary class of Greek rhetoric. I will here content myself with brief 
references ; if the reader should feel interested in the subject, I have gone further into it 
in the Expositor for 1879. 

Figures ((ncni^™) are divided by Greek and Latin rhetoricians into Figures of Language 
(figurae verborum, elocutionis, A.e'£ea)s), and Figures of Thought {sententiae, Siai/oio.?). They 
drew this distinction between them — that figures of language disappear, for the most 
part, when the words and their order are changed ; whereas figures of thought still sur- 
vive. 3 The distinction is superficial and unsatisfactory, and it would perhaps be more 
to the point to divide figures into : — 1. Those of colour, dependent on the imagination ; 
as metaphor, simile, allegory, personifications, metonyms, catachresis, &c. 2. Those of 
form, ranging over an immense field, from the natural expression of passions, such as 
irony, aposiopesis, erotesis, &c, down to mere elegancies of verbal ornament, and varia- 
tions of style (such as zeugma, &c.) or of order (such as chiasmos, hysteron-proteron, &c). 
3. Those of sound, dependent on analogies of words, resemblance of sounds, unconscious 
associations of ideas, &c, such as alliteration, parisosis, paromoiosis, parechesis, parono- 
masia, oxymoron, plays on names, &c. 

1. On figures of Colour I have already touched. 4 As specimens of the two other 
classes in St. Paul's Epistles we may take the following — referring to my Brief Chreek 
Syntax, or to other books, for an explanation of the technical terms : — 

* See 2 Cor. x. — xiii. passim, and some excellent remarks in Hutton's Essays, i. 325—330. 
2 Jos. Antt. xx. 11, § 2. 

8 So Aquila, Rutilius, &c, following Cic De Orat. 3. See Voss, Instt. Orat. v, 1 ; Glass, 
PMlologia Sacra, p. 953, &c. * S-wpra, pp. 10— J2, 



*>94 APPENDIX. 

2. Figures of Form. 

Chiasmus — a crosswise arrangement of words or clauses, as in Bom. ii. 6, 10. (This 
figure is much more common in the Epistle to the Hebrews.) A good instance is — 

1 Cor. hi. 17» " Tts T0V vahv tov ©eou <j)GeCpet., cpdepei avrbv 6 ©eos. 



1 Cor. V. 1, 2, £X elv • • s 6 to ipyov tovto tronjff** 

2 Cor. vii. 11, ev tc5 7rpay|u.aTi. 

1 Thess iv. 6, supra, p. 589. 
Litotes, 

Rom. L 28, Troieii/ to. /u,rj KaOrJKOVTa. 

Eph. V. 4, to. ovk avriKOvra. 

1 Cor. xi. 22, en-aii/eVco vjoia? ev tovtw ; ovk enaivS), 

Philem. 18, ei fie rt riSUrja-e <re rj 6<|>eiAet. 

Philem. 11, top wore (rot axpriarop. 

Meiosis. l Eom. hi. 9, ov Travrws (comp. 1 Cor. xvi. 12). 

1 Cor. i. 29, 07rws /u,tj Kavx*l°~ r l Tal i>a.o~a <ra.pt;. 

Rom. hi. 20, e£ epymp vo/aou ov Sneaiwflijo-erai 7rao"a trapf;. 

Antithesis, Parisosis, Paromoiosis, 2 Paradox, Alliteration, Erote?is, Epexergasia — all 
exhibited in such passages of deep emotion as 2 Cor. vi. 3 — 16 ; xi 22 — 28 j 1 Cor iv. 
8-11. 

Epanaphora. 

Phil. iv. 8, oo-a . . . ova. . • . *. t. A. ei tis, k. t, A. 
Phil. ii. 1, ei tis . . . ei Ti . . • k. t. A. 

2 Cor. vii. 11, aAAa . . . aAAA . . . k. t. A. 
Aposiopesis. 

2 Thess. ii., vide supra, p. 334. 
Proparaitesis, Protherapeia, Captatio, Benevolentiae, &c. 

The Thanksgiving at the beginning of every Epistle except the " Galatians 

Rom. ix. 1 — 5. 

Acts xxiv. 10 (before Felix), and xxvi. 2, 3, before Agrippa. 
Paraleipsis (praeterita). 

Philem. 19, tva ju,tj Aeyw o"ot. 

1 TheSS. iv. 9, ov xpeLav e\ere vi*2v ypa^eo-Qai (cf. V. 1 J 2 Cor. ix. 1). 

Intentional Anakoluthon. 

Gal. ii. 6, a-irb Se tup Sokovptu>p etvai Ti . . . 

2 TheSS. ii. 3, oti eav jurj e\0rj r\ anoo'Tao'Ca irpS>TOV . • • 
2 TheSS. U. 7, juovov 6 KaTexav apri . . . 

(The Anakolutha of mere inadvertence, due to the eager rapidity of thought *■« 
incessant in St. Paul, as in Rom. ii. 17—21 ; xvi. 25 — 27, &c., &c.) 
Climax. 

Rom. v. 3—5. 
Rom. viii. 29, 30. 
Rom. x. 14, 15, &o. 
Zeugma. 

1 Cor. ih. 2, yaAa v/xa? eTroViaa KaX ov j3pw//.a. 

1 Tim. iv. 3, ku}\v6vtu>v ya/xelp, anexecrdat. /3pw/xaTa»v. 

Oxymoron. 

2 Cor. vi. 9, 0avaTov>evoi mi iSov ^w/xev (being slain, yet behold we live). 
1 Tim. v. 6, &o~a. TedmiKev (living she is dead). 

Rom. i. 20, Ta aopara avrou . . . Ka.0opa.Tai (His unseen things are clearly seen). 
Rom. xii. 11, tji o-novSfj /xtj oKirjpoi (in haste not sluggish). 

» These images are, however, idiomatic (Wiuer, § 26). • Bee Aiist. Rhet, ttl 9, 9. 



RHETORIC OF ST. PAUL. 695 

1 Thess. iv. 11, <t>i\oTip.el<r9ai riavxd^eiv (be ambitious to be quiet). 
1 Thess. i. 6, e» eKtyei noWfi fiera x a P°* (joyous affliction). 

1 Cor. viii. 10, oiKoooMijflijo-eTai (ruinous edification). 

Rom. i. 22, 9>ao-KOVTes elvai <ro<f>ol e/iu>pav9ri<Ta.v. 

Eph. vi. 15, Gospel of peace part of panoply of war. 

2 Cor. viii. 2, deep poverty abounding to wealth of liberality. 
2 Cor. xii. 10, " When I am weak, then I am strong." 

It will be sufficient to make the meresb reference to Anadiplosis (Rom. Ix. 80; Phil. 
ii. 8); Upanodos (Gal. ii. 16); Epanorthosis (Rom. viii. 34; Gal. ii. 20; iii. 4, &c); 
Asyndeim(l Cor. xv. 43 ; 1 Tim. i. 17 ; 2 Tim. iii. 2—5, 10, 11, &c.) ; Antiptosis (Col. iv. 
17 ; Gal. vi. 1 ; iv. 11) ; Hyperbaton (2 Thess. ii. 5, &c.) ; Alliteration (1 Cor. ii. 13 ; 
2 Cor. viii. 22 ; ix. 8, &c. ) ; Constructio praegnans (2 Thess. ii. 4, &c. ) ; and many minor 
figures. 

3. Coming to figures of the third division — Sound — we find that St. Paul makes 
most remarkable and frequent use of paronomasia. 

E.g. (a) Paronomasia, dependent on the change of one or two letters * :— 
Rom. i. 29, iropveia wovr)pCq. . . . <p66vov, ijiovov. 
Rom. i. 30, aowerovs, a<rvv8eTovs. 
Rom. xi. 17, fives T V V kA.<£6W e£eKAa<r0Tj<rav, 
Cf. Heb. V. 8, e/iaOev a<$> wv eirafiev. 

(/3) Paronomasia, dependent on a play of words of similar sound or derivation. 3 This 
is St. Paul's most frequent rhetorical figure : — 

2 Cor. iiL 2, yivo><TKop.eirq kcu avayivwcricofievri. 3 

Rom. i. 28, ovk eSoKiju-ao-av (they refused) . . . aSoKipov vovv (a refuse mind). 
Phil. iii. 2, 3, koto-to^t) (concision) . . . n-epiToui) (circumcision). 

Rom. ii. 1, Kptveis . . . Karoxpiveis. 

1 Cor. xi. 29, Seq., SiaKpio-i? . . . xpijuia . , . KaraKpip-a. 

Rom. xii. 3, ' ' Not to be high-minded (vn-ep^poveiv) above what we ought to \>p 
minded (<£poveiv), but to be minded so as to be sober-minded" (<r<a<ppoveiv). Cf. 

Thuc. ii. 62, ov <f>povrjp,aTi p-ovov aWa KaX KaTa<f>povrnxaTi. 

1 Cor. vii. 31, XP<»P-evot . . . Karaxpu>fievot. 

2 Cor. vi. 10, exox/Tes . . . Kare'xovres. 

2 Cor. iv. 8, airopov/u.evoi . , . e^airopovjxevoi. 

2 Tim. iii. 4, #iA.i7Sov<n . . . <pi\60eoi. 

2 Thess. iii. 11, not busy (epya^evov?) but busybodies (wept epyafo/xeVot«).4 
1 Tim. v. 13, ov fiovov 8e apyai, aAAa Kal irepiepyoi (female toilers in the school of 
idleness). 
Cornelius a Lapide and others have imagined a latent paronomasia in 1 Cor. i. 23, 
24. If St. Paul thought in Syriac it might be "To the Jews a micsol, and to the Greeks 
a mashcal, but to those that are called — Christ the secel of God." But this is probably a 
mere ingenious fancy. 6 

(y) A third class of paronomasias consists in plays on names, of which we find three in 
St. Paul :— 

Philem. 11, 'Ovrj<np.ov , . , axpi)<rrovfi 
Philem. 20, Nal, ey<6 aov ova.iju.ijy. 

1 See Cic. De Orat. ii. 63 ; Auct. ad Herenn, iv. 24 ; Quint. Instt. Oral ix. 8, 66, Ac. An 
instance in our Prayer Book is—" among all the changes and chances of this mortal life." 

2 A curious instance occurs in our B. V. of James i. 6, " He that wavereth is like a wave of the 
sea," where it does not occur in the original. 

3 Compare Acts viii. 30, and Basil's remark to the Emperor Julian, aveyvu? ovk eyvws, el yip 
(fyiws ovk av KaTe'yvtos. 

* So Domitius Afer, " Non agentes sed satagentes " (Quint, vi. 3, 54). 

* Glass, PMlolog. Sacra, p. 959. 

* P. fnfim, ad loc, where I have noticed tjie possible second paronomasia in axp^mov, mxpww 



696 APPENDIX. 

Phil. iv. 3, Zvfrye yvrjvu, "yoke-fellow by name and yoke-fellow by nature." 1 
St. Jerome imagines another in Gal. i. 6, where he thinks that "ye are being removed 11 
(MeTttTiWfle) is a play on the name Galatae and the Hebrew Galal, " to roll." 

Since, then, we find upwards of fifty specimens of upwards of thirty Greek rhetorical 
figures in St. Paul, and since they are far more abundant in his Epistles than in 
other parts of the New Testament, and some are found in him alone, may we not con- 
clude that as a boy in Tarsus he had attended some elementary class in Greek rhetoric, 
perhaps as a part of his education in the grammatical knowledge of the language ? Pro- 
fessional rhetoricians abounded in Tarsus, and if Paul's father, seeing the brilliant 
capacity of his son, meant him for the school of Gamaliel, he may have thought that an 
elementary initiation into Greek rhetoric might help to pave the way for his future dis- 
tinction among the Hillelites of Jerusalem ; since, as we see from the Talmud, this kind 
of knowledge opened to some Rabbis a career of ambition. If so, the lessons which the 
young Saul learnt were not thrown away, though they were turned to very different 
objects than had been dreamt of by one who intended his boy to be, like himself, a 
Pharisee of Pharisees and a Hebrew of Hebrews. 



EXCURSUS III. (p. 23). 

The CLA3SI0 Quotations and Allusions of St. Paul. 

1. Those who maintain the advanced classic culture of St. Paul, rely on the fact that he 
quotes from aDd alludes to Greek and Roman writers. 

Three quotations are incessantly adduced. One is the hexameter written by the 
Cretan poet Epimenides in such stern and contemptuous depreciation of the character of 
his own countrymen — 

Kpijres ael i/revorai, Kana 6r\pia, yacrrepes apyat. 2 
(" Liars the Cretans aye, ill monsters, gluttonous idlers.") 

Another is the half -hexameter in which he reminds his audience, in the speech on the 
Areopagus, that certain also of their native poets had said — 

Tou yap «al yevos ecr/meV. 3 
(" For we are also his offspring.") 

A third is the moral warning to the Corinthians — 

$6eipov(r(.v tJ0yj xp^CTTa 6ju.iA.mu Kaica. ;* 
(" Evil communications corrupt good manners ; ") 
or it may, perhaps, be more correctly rendered, " Evil associations destroy excellent 
characters." 

Now, if we look a little closer at these quotations, we shall see how very little proof 
they furnish of anything more than the most superficial acquaintance with Greek writers. 
The first of them is just such a current national characterisation 5 as might pass every- 
where from mouth to mouth, and which St. Paul might very well repeat without having 
read a line of the poem of Epimenides on Oracles, or Callimachus's Hymn to Zeus, in 
both of which it occurs. 6 The second is a recognised commonplace of heathen insight, to 
which many parallels might be quoted, but which is found in Cleanthes,? nearly in the 
form in which St. Paul quotes it. The actual quotation is from one of those tedious 

1 V. infra, ad loc. 2 Tit. i 12. 3 Acts xvii. 28. * 1 Cor. xv. 33. 

8 See, as to the Cretans, Leonidas, Anthol iii., p. 369 ; Polyb. vi. 47 ; Diod. Sic xxxi. Fr. ; 
Westst. ad loc. 

6 Callim. Hymn, in Jov. 8. KprJTe? ael xfjevtrrat, ical yap, ra<f>ov w ava (reto Kprjre? eTeicrjjvavTO. 
See Chrysostom and Jerome ad Tit. i. 12. Moreover, the line had originated one of the commonest 
syllogistic puzzles, called "the Liars." "Epimenides said that the Cretans were liars; but 
Epimenides was a Cretan ; therefore Epimenides was a liar ; therefore the Cretans were not liars ; 
therefore Epimenides was not a liar," &c. tyc. (Diog. Laert. ii. 108.) It was invented by EubuMdea; 
tt. (Jic. Div. U. 4. ' mentions." 1 Cleanthes, Hynn. in Jov. 6. 



CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OP ST. PAUL. 697 

poems which were most in vogue at this period, the Phenomena of Aratus. 1 "With tie 
writings of this poet St. Paul may have become acquainted, both because they are 
Autirely harmless — which is more than can be said of almost any other Pagan production 
which was popular at that time — and because Aratus was a Cilician, and very probably a 
Tarsian. 2 The third was one of those common sententious pieces of morality which had 
passed into a proverb, and which in all probability Menander, in his Thais, had 
appropriated from some lost tragedy of Euripides. St. Paul is far more likely to have 
heard it used in common parlance, or to have seen it inscribed on one of the Hermse at 
Tarsus or Athens, than to have read it in Menander, or even— as Socrates 3 and 
Chrysostom seem to think — in one of the Greek tragedians. It is further remarkable 
about these quotations, first, that all three of them were so current, they are found in at 
least two poets each ; and nest, that two of them occur at the very beginning of Hymns 
to Zeus. If any collection of Hymns to Zeus was to be found on any bookstall at Athens, 
it is exactly the kind of book into which St. Paul's human sympathies may have induced 
him to dip in support of his liberal and enlightened view that God had revealed Himself 
even to the heathen, to a degree sufficient for their happiness and their salvation, had 
they chosen to make use of the light they had. 4 A third very remarkable point is that 
in the quotation from Menander or Euripides, whichever it may have been, the great 
majority of the best MSS. read XPWr*, not XPW ' 5 — a reading which may therefore be 
regarded as certainly genuine, since no one would have dreamt of altering the correct 
metre, if it had been given in the original manuscript. Now if such be the case, it seems 
to indicate that the ear of St. Paul was unfamiliar with — or, which comes to the same 
thing, was indifferent to — even so common a rhythm as that of the iambic verse. Our 
conclusion, therefore, is that St. Paul's isolated quotations no more prove a study of 
Greek literature than the quotation of such a national epigram as 

" Inglese italianato, Diavolo incarnate, " 

or of such a line as 

"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate,'* 

would necessarily prove that an English writer was a proficient in the literature of Italy, 
or had read the poems of Dante. St. Paul was a man of remarkable receptivity, and, as 
we have seen, an habitual quoter. Except in Epistles intended for readers to whom Old 
Testament quotations would have been unintelligible, he can hardly write five sentences 
in succession without a Biblical reference. The utter absence of any similar use of even 
the noblest of the classic writers, is a proof either that he had intentionally neglected 
them, or that, at any rate, they had left little or no mark on an intellect so sensitive to 
every cognate influence. For that it was not only the Scriptures of the Jewish canon 
which thus clung to his retentive memory, is apparent from the free use which he makes 
of the Book of Wisdom, and perhaps of other books of the Jewish Apocrypha. 6 It is also 

1 Aratus flourished about B.C. 270. His poems, considering that they only bear a sort of dull 
resemblance to Thomson's Seasons, acquired astonishing popularity. They were translated, among 
others, by Cicero, and by Csesar Germanicus. 

2 Buhle, Aratus, ii. 429. 8 Hist. Ecc. iii. 16. * Acts xiv. 17 ; xvii. 27 ; Rom. i. 20. 
6 n, A, B, D, E, P, G, &c, ta/ij3e«'a> rpayiKiZ. Clem. Alex. Strom. L 14, 59 ; Meineke, Fr. Com., 

p. 75. 

6 See Hausrath, p. 23. He compares 1 Cor. vi. 2 with Wisd. iii. 8, the image of the Christian 
armour with Wisd. v. 17, the metaphor of the potter making one vessel to honour and another to 
dishonour with Wisd. xv. 7. The memorable thrice-repeated saying, "Neither circumcision is any- 
thing, nor un circumcision " (Gal. v. 6 ; vi. 15 ; 1 Cor. vii. 19), is by Photius, Syncellus, and others 
said to be a quotation from " Revelation of Moses." Dr. Lightfoot (on GaL vi. 17) shows that there 
Is some reason to doubt this, and says that " a sentiment which is the very foundation of St. Paul's 
teaching was most unlikely to have been expressed in any earlier Jewish writing ; and if it really 
occurred in the apocryphal work in question, this work must have been either written or inter- 
polated after St. Paul's time (See Liicke, Offenb. d. Johan. i., p. 232)." The same must be said of ths 
Book of Wisdom on the ingenious hypothesis that it was written by Apollos (Plumptre, E&positor, 
1. 422, tq.y 



698 APPENDIX. 

traceable in the extent to which he is constantly haunted by a word, 1 and in the new 
and often rare expressions which are found in every one of the Epistles, 2 and which show 
us a mind keenly susceptible to impressions derived from the circumstances around him, 
and from the intercourse of those among whom he was habitually thrown. 

2. But though the Greek culture of Tarsus had little or no influence on the current of 
the Apostle's thoughts, it would be a mistake to suppose that it produced no influence 
at all on his life or on his style. Besides the direct quotations, there is more than one 
isolated passage which may be the distant echo of classical reminiscences. Such, for 
instance, is the apologue of the self- asserting members in 1 Cor. xii., which reminds us 
at once of the ingenious fable of Menenius Agrippa ; 3 and the fearful metaphor of 
Rom. vii. 24, which has less probably been held to refer to a true story of the family of 
Regulus. 4 And it is far from improbable that it was in some "class of rhetoric" at 
Tarsus that the Apostle acquired the germs, at any rate, of that argumentative habit 
of mind, that gift of ready extempore utterance, and that fondness for chiasmus, 
paronomasia, paraleipsis, oxymoron, litotes, and other rhetorical figures, which charac- 
terise his style. 5 It was there, too, that he may have learnt that ready versatility, that 
social courtesy, that large comprehensiveness, that wide experience and capacity for 
dealing with varied interests and intricate matters of business, which made him, in the 
high and good sense of the word, a true gentleman, a Christian man of the world. He 
was, in heart and feeling, an ideal specimen of what the Greeks call the *<***><; *dya06s — 
"fair and good" — and his intercourse with polished Greeks may have tended to brighten 
that spirit of "entirely genuine Attic urbanity" 6 — a spirit more flexible and more 
charming than natural Semitic dignity — which breathes in every line of the Epistle to 
Philemon. 

3. It is a remarkable proof of this natural liberality that, in spite of the burning 
hatred of idolatry which we have already noticed, he is yet capable of looking with 
Bympathy, and e^en admiration, on some of those nobler and more innocent aspects of 
heathen life which his countrymen indiscriminately condemned. 7 The hallowing of 
heathen symbols, the use of metaphors derived from heathen life for the illustration of 
Christian truths and Christian duties, is a very remarkable feature of the style of St. 
Paul. There were few of the crimes of Herod which the strict Pharisees had regarded 
with more undisguised horror and hatred than his construction of a theatre at Csesarea ; 
yet St. Paul quite freely, and without misgiving, adopting a metaphor which would have 
caused a shudder to any Palestinian Pharisee, compares the transient fashion of the world 
to the passing scene of a theatrical display, and in other places turns the whole Universe 
into a theatre, on the stage of which were displayed the sufferings of the Apostles as a 
spectacle to angels and to men. 8 We recognise, too, the more liberal son of the Disper- 

1 eg. yivonai in 1 Thess. i. ; ra eirovpavta in Eph. i. ; x at P w *nd x*P ts m Phil. ; fvq yeVoiTo in 
Rom. ; <f>vcri6w in 1 Cor. iv. ; Kav\ao-0ai in 2 Cor. xi. ; irapaicakioi in 2 Cor. i. ; Aun-rj in 2 Cor. ii., &c. 

* As, for instance, Ka.Ta.va.pica.oi and ^epa. in 1 Cor. ; irAijpw/na in the Epistles of the Captivity ; 
iytjjs in the Pastoral Epistles, &c. 

3 Liv. ii. 32. There is also a remarkable parallel in Sen. De Ird, ii. 31. 

* The £k is against this supposed reference. On the other hand, the " perikatharmata " and 
peripsema of 1 Cor. iv. 13 may be an allusion to ancient piacular oiferings (v. infra, ad loc). 

5 E.g., Chiasmus, Rom. ii. 7 — 10; Paronomasia, 2 Thess. iii. 11 (infr. ad loc); Paraleipsis, 
1 Thess. iv. 9, v. 1 ; Oxymoron, Rom. i. 20, Philem. 11 ; Litotes, 1 Cor. xi. 22, &c. (See Excursus II., 
" The Rhetoric of St. Paul." 

6 Krenkel, p. 12. See Arist. M. Mor. ii. 9, 2. 

7 The Talmud abounds in passages which utter nothing but unmixed scorn of the Gentiles, 
even of their very virtues. In Babha Bathra, f. 10, 2, there is a notable discussion on Prov. xiv. 34. 
It is rendered, " Righteousness exalteth a nation, and the goodness of nations is sin." R. Eleazar 
explained it to mean, " Righteousness exalts Israel ; but the goodness of other nations is sin, being 
only due to their self-exaltation." Rabban Gamaliel said, "They were only good in order to heap 
reproach on the shortcomings of Israel ; " and Rabbi Nechunya Ben Hakanah punctuated the verse, 
" Righteousness exalteth a nation (Israel) and goodness : but the nations, a sin-oifering." This 
explanation was adopted by Rabban Johanan Ben Zakkai. 

* 1 Cor. vii. 31, na.od.yi t rb trxTj/xa tov K6<rfi.ov. 1 Cor. iv. 9, (fiarpov eyrivrjOrmev. (Cf. Ilcb. x. 38, 

$*O.Tpi£6p<:VOl.) 



CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OP ST. PAUL. 699 

Aon — the man whose thoughts have been enlarged by travel and by intercourse with men 
of other training and other race — in the apparently vivid sympathy with which St. Paul 
draws some of his favourite metaphors from the vigorous contests of the Grecian games. l 
Those games constituted the brightest, the most innocently attractive feature of Hellenic 
life. During his long stay at Ephesus and at Corinth he had doubtless witnessed those 
wrestliug bouts, those highly-skilled encounters of pugilism, those swift races to win the 
fading garlands of laurel or pine, which, for some of his heathen converts, and particularly 
for the younger among them, could not at once have lost their cha^m. We can well 
imagine how some young Ephesian or Corinthian might have pressed St. Paul to come 
with him and see the struggle and the race ; and how, for one whose sympathies were 
bo vividly human, there would have been a thrilling interest in the spectacle of those 
many myriads assembled in the vast stadium —in the straining eyes and eager countenances 
and beating hearts — in the breathless hush with which they listened to the proclamations 
of the herald — in the wild-eyed charioteers bending over their steeds, with the hair blown 
back from their glowing faces— in the resounding acclamations with which they greeted 
the youthful victor as he stepped forward with a blush to receive his prize. Would 
these fair youths do so much, and suffer so much, to win a poor withering chaplet of 
pine and parsley, whose greenness had faded before the sun had set, and would they use 
no effort, make no struggle, to win a crown of amaranth, a crown of righteousness which 
could not fade away ? And that, too, when here the victory of one was the shame and 
disappointment of all the rest, while, in that other contest, each and all might equally 
be victors, and the victory of each be a fresh glory to all who were striving for the same 
high prize. 2 And as such thoughts passed through his mind there was no Judaic na? 
rowness, but a genial sympathy in his soul, and a readiness to admire whatever was 
innocent and beautiful in human customs, when he wrote to his converts of Corinth — 
" Know ye not that they which run in a stadium run all, but one receiveth the prize ? 
So run that ye may grasp. 3 Now every one that striveth is temperate in all things ; 
they, however, that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. 
I, then, so run, not as uncertainly ; so box I, as one who beateth not the air ; but I 
bruise my body with blows and enslave it, lest perchance, after making proclamation to 
others, I myself should prove to be a rejected combatant." 4 

4. But it was not only with Creek customs that St. Paul became familiar during his 
residence at Tarsus. It is clear that he must also have possessed some knowledge of 
Roman law. His thoughts often have a juridical form. He speaks of the "earnest- 
money " of the Spirit ; of the laws of inheritance ; of legal minority ; of the rights of 
wives and daughters. 5 The privileges and the prestige conferred upon him by his rights 
of Givitas would have inevitably turned his thoughts in this direction. The Laws of the 
Twelve Tables had defined the authority which might be exercised by fathers over sons 
even after they have come of age (patria potestas) in a manner which Gaius tells us was 
peculiar to Roman jurisprudence, with the single exception that it also existed among 
the GalatcB. If this means the Galatians it would give peculiar significance to the 
illustration in Gal. iv. 1, which in any case proves St. Paul's familiarity with Roman 
institutions which had no existence among the Jews. So, too, we are told by Sir H. Maine 
that "a true power of testation" was nowhere provided for in the Jewish Code of Laws, 
and that the Romans "invented the will." Yet to the rules of testamentary bequests, 
and their irrevocability in certain cases, St. Paul seems to make an express allusion (Gal 

i 1 Cor. ix. 24 ; Phil. iii. 14 ; 1 Tim. vi. 12 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8 ; ii. 5 ; 1 Thess. ii 19. 

2 See a close parallel in Sen. Ep. Mor. lxxviii. 16. 

3 KaTaXd^rfTe. Cf. Phil. iii. 12 — 14, Kara (tkottov . . . eiri to /SpajSeiov. 

4 1 Cor. ix. 24—27. aS6«ifxo?, vocabuluni agonistimm (Beng. ; Philo, de Cherub. § 22). On the 
temperate training of competitors, see Hor. A. P. 412 ; Epict. Enchir. 35 ; Dissert, iii. 15 ; Tert. ad 
Mart. 3. depot Se'peiv is to light a ovaajxaxia (i.e., make mere feints), (Eustath, ad II. xx. 446 ; Athen 
154, A, &c. ; Virg. Mn. v. 376). Krjpi^as, perhaps "heralding the laws of the contest" (&scK 
Evm. 566). 5 Gal. iii. 17, 18 ; iv. 1, 2 ; Rom. vii. 2, &c. 



700 APPENDIX. 

iii. 15). Again, he gives prominence to the Roman idea of artificial "adoption," even to 
the extent of making an apparent reference to the fact that a son, fully adopted, aban- 
doned the domestic rites {sacra) of his own family, and attached himself to those cf his 
new parent (Gal. iv. 5 ; Eph. l. 5). 1 

5. We may select one more passage — though in this case it involves no admiration or 
sympathy — to show how accurately the customs of the Pagan life had been observed by 
St. Paul in that varied experience which made him, in the best sense, a citizen of the 
world. It is a passage which, from the absence of this knowledge, has often been entirely 
misunderstood. It occurs in 2 Cor. ii. 14—16 : " Now thanks be to God, who always 
leadeth us everywhere in triumph 2 in Christ, and who by us maketh manifest the odour 
of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are to God a sweet odour of Christ 
among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing. To the latter we 
are an odour of death to death, to the former an odour of life to life." 

Here, though the details of the metaphor are intricately involved, the general con- 
ception which was in the thoughts of the Apostle, and swayed his expression, is derived 
from the customs of a Roman triumph. It was one main feature of such "insulting 
vanities " that the chief captives were paraded before the victor's path, and sweet odours 
were burnt in the streets while his car climbed the Capitol. 3 But when he reached the 
foot of the Capitoline hill there was a fatal halt, which, in the utter deadness of all 
sense of pity, might be a moment of fresh exultation to the conqueror, but which was 
death to the captive ; for at that spot the captives ceased to form any part of the pro- 
cession, but were led aside into the rocky vaults of the Tullianum, and strangled by the 
executioner in those black and fetid depths. And thus the sweet odours, which to the 
victor — a Marius or a Julius Csesar — and to the spectators were a symbol of glory and 
success and happiness, were to the wretched victims — a Jugurtha or a Vercingetorix — 
an odour of death. Reminded of this by his use of the words "leadeth us in triumph," 
St. Paul for an instant fancies himself a captive before the chariot of God — a captive in 
connection with Christ ; and then another passing fancy strikes him. The preachers of 
Christ are like that burning incense whose perfume filled the triumphant streets, 4 but 
they were not an odour of life and hope to all. As light is light yet pains the diseased 
eye, as honey is honey yet palls on the sated taste, 5 so the odour retained its natural 
fragrance, although to many — through their own sins and wilfulness — it might only 
breathe of death. The tidings of salvation were glad tidings, but to the guiltily hardened 
and the wilfully impenitent they might prove to be tidings of wrath and doom. 6 

Little, perhaps, did it occur to St. Paul as he wrote those words, that the triumph of 
God, in which he was being led along from place to place as a willing victim, might end 
for him also in the vaults of that very Tullianum 7 — the description of which must have 

1 These instances are pointed out by Dean Merivale, Boyle Lectures, and in St. Paul at Borne, pp. 
172 — 180. The passages of Gaius referred to are Instt. i. 55 (cf. Csesar, B. G. vi. 19) and 189 ; Digests, 
xxvi. 3 ; but I cannot pretend to say that the conclusions formed are indisputable. 

2 The rendering of the E. V., "which always causes us to triumph in Christ," is both philologi- 
cally impossible (cf. Col. ii. 15), and confuses the metaphor to such an extent as to render it entirely 
unintelligible. St. Paul may well have heard of the famous triumph of Claudius over the Britons a 
few years before (A.D. 51), in which Caractacus had walked as a prisoner (0pia|u./3ev0ets), but " had 
passed from the ranks of the ' lost ' to those of the ' saved ' " (Tac. Ann. xiii. 36). (See Dr. 
Flumptre, ad loc.) Cleopatra had proudly said, ov 0pia/m./3ev0»7(ro/tai. 

3 Dio Cass, lxxiv. ; Hor. Od. iv. 2, 50 ; Plut. Mmil. p. 272. 

* St. Paul rises superior to the vulgar prejudice of the Rabbis, who said that "a man is a sinner 
who while walking in a part of a town inhabited by idolaters inhales purposely the odour of 
Incense offered up by them" (Berachdth, f. 53, 1). 

5 See Theophyl. ad loc. 

« Similarly the Rabbis spoke of the law as an " aroma of life " to those who walk on the right, 
an "aroma of death " to those on the left (Shabbath, f. 88, 2). 

7 The Tullianum is, according to old tradition, the scene of the last imprisonment, before 
martyrdom, both of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was the rock-hewn lower dungeon added by Servius 
Tullius to the career of Ancus Martius. Excavations within the last few months prove that it wa» 
much larger than has been hitherto supposed. 



ST. PAUL A HAGADIST. 701 

been mingled in his thoughts with the other details of the Koman pomp— and that if not 
from the Mamertine, yet from some other Roman prison he would only be dragged 
forth to die. 



EXCURSUS IV. (p. 33). 

St. Paul a Hagadist : St. Paul and Philo. 

There are two large divisions of Rabbinic lore, which may be classed under the head9 
of Hagadoth, or unrecorded legends, and Halachoth, or rules and precedents in explana- 
tion of dubious or undefined points of legal observance. 1 It is natural that there should 
be but few traces of the latter in the writings of one whose express object it was to 
deliver the Gentiles from the intolerable burden of legal Judaism. But though there is 
little trace of them in his writings, he himself expressly tells us that he had once been 
enthusiastic in their observance. 2 "I was making," he says to the Galatians, "con- 
tinuous advance in Judaism above many who were my equals in age in my own race, 
being very exceedingly a zealot for the traditions handed down from my fathers." 3 And 
there are in the Epistles abundant signs that with the Hagadoth he was extremely 
familiar, and that he constantly refers to them in thought. Thus in 2 Tim. iii. 8 he 
traditionally names Jannes and Jambres, two of the Egyptian magicians who withstood 
Moses. He adopted the current Jewish chronologies in Acts iii. 20, 21. He alludes to 
the notion that the Adam of Gen. i. is the ideal or spiritual, the Adam of Gen. ii. the 
concrete and sinful Adam. 4 The conception of the last trumpet, 5 of the giving of the 
Law at Sinai by angels, 6 of Satan as the god of this world and the prince of the power 
of the air, 7 and of the celestial and infernal hierarchies, 8 are all recurrent in Talmudic 
writings. When, in 1 Cor. xi. 10, he says that " a woman ought to have a veil 9 on her 
head because of the angels," there can, I think, be no shadow of doubt in the unpre- 
judiced mind of any reader who is familiar with those Jewish views of the subject in 
which St. Paul had been trained, that he is referring to the common Rabbinic interpre- 
tations of Gen. vi. 2 (LXX. Cod. A, "the angels "), where the Targum, and, indeed, all 
Jewish authorities down to the author of the Book of Enoch (quoted in the Epistle of 
Jude), 10 attribute the Fall of the Angels to their guilty love for earthly women. St. 
Paul could not have been unaware of a notion which for many ages seems to have been 
engrained in the Jewish mind n — a notion which is found over and over again in the 

1 I have tried fully to explain the nature of the Halachah and the Hagadah in the Expositor, 
October, 1877. The former dealt mainly with the Pentateuch, the latter with the Hagiographa. 
Dr. Deutsch (Smith's Diet. s. v. " Versions ") says, " If the Halachah used the Scriptural word as a 
last and most awful resort against which there was no further appeal, the Hagadah used it as the 
golden nail on which to hang its gorgeous tapestry. If the former was the iron bulwark round the 
nationality of Israel, the latter was a maze of flowery walks within those fortress walls." 

2 GaL i. 14. 

3 The 7rapa5ocris did not mean the written Law, but the Oral Law, the warpta edq of which 
Joeephus speaks so much ; the germ, in fact, of the Halachdth of the Mishna and Gemara. 

* 1 Cor. xv. 47. This is also found in Philo, De Opif. Mund. i. 32. 

* 1 Cor. xv. 52 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16. 6 Gal. iii. 19. 7 Bph. ii. 2. 
« Eph. i. 21 ; iii. 10 ; vi. 12 ; Col. i. 16 ; ii. 15. 

9 Such, however arrived at, or whatever be the special shade of thought about the use of the 
word— which may be a mere provincialism— is the obvious meaning of igovaia in 1 Cor. xi. 10. St. 
Paul gives three reasons for this rule— (1) our instinctive sense that an uncovered head, like a 
shaven head, is a dishonour to a woman, whose hair is a glory to her ; (2) the fact that woman's 
hair indicates her subordinate position towards man, as man's covered head denotes his subordina- 
tion to God ; (3) " because of the angels." 10 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude 6, 14. 

n The argument that o£ ayye\ot is never used in the New Testament except for good angels it 
quite valueless, for the fallen angels were supposed to have been good angels until they fell, and, if 
they had fallen thus, there was nothing to show the impossibility that others might similarly fall 
This interpretation is given quite unhesitatingly by Tertullian, de Virg. Vel. 7, "propter angelos, 
scilicet quos legimus a Deo et coelo excidisse ob concupiscentiam feminarum. " I have thoroughlj 
examined this point in a paper in the Homiletic Quarterly of 1878, and quoted many Rabbinic iUu»- 
orations. (Tanchurm, f. 51, 4 ; Abhoth of Rabbi Nathan, c. 34) 



702 APPENDIX. 

Talmud, and which is still so prevalent among Oriental Jews, as also among Moham- 
medans, 1 that they never allow their women to be unveiled in public lest the Shedim, or 
evil spirits, should injure them and others. 2 To this very day, for this very reason, 
Jewish women in some Eastern cities wear an inconceivably hideous headdress, called 
the khalebi, so managed as to entirely conceal the hair. It exposes them to derision and 
inconvenience, but is worn as a religious duty, " because of the spirits." 

Again, in Rom. iv. 5, 13, Paul evidently accepts the tradition, also referred to by St. 
Stephen, that Abraham had been an uncircumcised idolater when he first obeyed the call 
of God, and that he then received a promise — unknown to the text of Scripture — "that 
he should be the heir of the world." 3 In Rom. ix. 9 it has been supposed, from the form 
of his quotation, that he is alluding to the Rabbinic notion that Isaac was created in the 
womb by a fiat of God ; in Gal. iv. 29 to the Hagadah that Ishmael not only laughed, 
but jeered, insulted, and mis-treated Isaac ; 4 and in 2 Cor. xi. 14 to the notion that the 
angel who wrestled with Jacob was an evil angel assuming the semblance of an Angel of 
Light. These three latter instances are slight and dubious ; but there is a remarkable 
allusion to the smitten rock in the wilderness, which in 1 Cor. x. 4 is called " a spiritual 
following rock. " The expression can have but one meaning. Among the many marvel- 
lous fancies which have been evolved from the thoughts of Jewish teachers, occupied for 
centuries in the adoring and exclusive study of their sacred books, was one to which they 
repeatedly recur, that the rock, from which the water flowed, was round and like a 
swarm of bees, and rolled itself up and went with them in their journeys. When the 
Tabernacle was pitched, the rock came and settled in its vestibule. Then came the 
princes, and standing near it exclaimed, "Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it," 5 and it 
sprang up. How are we to regard these strange legends? Can we suppose that wise and 
sensible Rabbis like Hillel and Gamaliel took them literally? There is no ground what- 
ever for supposing— indeed, it is essentially impossible — that any one could have accepted, 
au pied de la lettre, all the fables of the Talmud, which are in many instances both 
senseless and contradictory. Many of them were doubtless regarded as mere plays of 
pious fancy— mere ingenious exercises of loving inference. Others were only an Oriental 
way of suggesting mystic truths — were, in fact, intentional allegories. Others, in their 
broad outlines, were national traditions, which may often have corresponded with fact, 
and which, at any rate, had passed into general and unquestioned credence in ages little 
troubled by the spirit of historical criticism. 6 Though St. Paul might quite naturally 
glance at, allude to, or even make use of some of these latter, it would be an utter 
mistake to assume that he necessarily attached to them any objective importance. If he 
alludes to the simplest and most reasonable of them, he does so ornamentally, inci- 
dentally, illustratively, and might in all probability have attributed to them no value 

1 See the very remarkable story of Khadijah, who discovers that it is really Gabriel who haa 
appeared to Mohammed by his flying away directly she takes off her veil, "knowing from Waraka 
that a good angel must fly before the face of an unveiled woman" (Weil, Mohamed, 48). (See Dean 
Stanley's exhaustive note, Cor. p. 187.) 

2 See Berachoth, f. 6, 1 : " Abba Benjamin says that if we had been suffered to see them, no one 
would stand before the hurtful demons. Rav Huna that each of us has 1,000 at his left and 10,000 
at his right hand (Ps. xci. 7),"&c. &c. The reason why Solomon's bed was guarded by sixty valiant 
men with drawn swords was " because of fear in the night " (Cant. iii. 7, 8). " Walk not alone at 
night, because Egrath, daughter of Machlath, walks about— she and 180,000 destroying angels, and 
everyone of them individually has permission to destroy" {Pesachim, 112, 2). They are called 
ruchin, shedim, lilin, tiharim, &c. (Hamburger, s.v. " Gespenster "). The only other view of the 
passage which seems to me even possible (historically) is that of St. Chrysostom, " because good 
angeJ3 present at Christian worship rejoice to see all things done decently and in good order." 

s Rom. iv. 13. Cf. Josh. xxiv. 15. 4 Sanhedr. f. 89, 2. 5 Num. xxi. 17. 

6 The Rabbis themselves draw a distinction between passages which are to be accepted literally 
(^■ccn lt^) and those which are meant to be "hyperbolical," in ordinary Oriental fashion (^in l^b), 
(Reiand, Antt. Hebr., p. 140). It must further be remembered that much of the Talmud consists of 
cryptographs which designedly concealed meanings fyuivavia o-wqtolo-lv from " persecutors " and 
heretics." Space prevents any further treatment of these subjects here, but I may refer those who 
are interested in them to my papers on the Halacha and the Hagada, Talmudic cryptographs, &c, in 
the Expositor for 1877. 



ST. PAUL A HAGADIST. 703 

beyond their connexion with loving reminiscences of the things which he had learnt in 
the lecture-hall of Gamaliel, or in his old paternal home. In this very passage of the 
Corinthians the word "following" (aKokovOovo-qs) is only a graceful allusion to the least 
fantastic element of a legend capable of a spiritual meaning ; and St. Paul, in the instant 
addition of the words "and this rock was Christ," shows how slight and casual is the 
reference to the purely Hagadistic elements which, in the national consciousness, had got 
mingled up with the great story of the wanderings in the wilderness. l Meanwhile — since 
it is the spiritual and not the material rock which is prominent in the thoughts of St. 
Paul — is there any one who holds so slavish and unscriptural a view of inspiration as to 
think that such a transient allusion either demands our literal acceptance of the fact 
alluded to, or, if we reject it, weakens the weight of apostolic authority ? If a modern 
religious writer glanced allusively at some current legend of our own or of ancient history, 
would it be at once assumed that he meant to support its historical certainty ? If he 
quotes Milton's line about Aaron's breastplate "ardent with gems oracular," is he held 
to pledge himself to the Rabbinic theory of the light which moved upon them ? Does any 
one think himself bound to a literal belief in seven heavens, because St. Paul, in direct 
accordance with Jewish notions, tells us that he was caught up into Paradise as far as the 
third? 2 

There is one respect in which these traces of Judaic training are specially interesting. 
They show the masterly good sense of the Apostle, and they show his inspired superiority 
to the influences of his training. That he should sometimes resort to allegory is reason- 
able and interesting; but when we study the use which he makes of the allegorising 
method in the case of Sarah and Hagar, we see at once its immense superiority to the 
fantastic handling of the same facts by the learned Philo. How much more soberly does 
St. Paul deal with the human and historic elements of the story; and how far more 
simple and natural are the conclusions which he derives from it ! Again, when he alludes 
to the legends and traditions of his nation, how rational and how purely incidental is his 
way of treating them ! Compare St. Paul with Philo, with the Talmudists, with any of 
the Fathers in the first three centuries, and we can then more clearly recognise the chasm 
which separates the Apostle from the very greatest writers both of his own nation and of 
the early Christian Church. 

The question as to whether St. Paul had or had not read Philo is not easy to 
answer. Gfrorer's work on Philo might seem a decisive proof that he had done so. 
Undoubtedly many passages may be adduced from the voluminous pamphlets of the 
eloquent Alexandrian which might lead us to repeat the old remark that " either Paul 
Philonises, or Philo is a Christian." Philo, like St. Paul, speaks of the Word of God as 
the antitype of the manna, and the smitten rock, and the pillar of cloud and fire ; and 
as a Mediator, and as begotten before the worlds, and as the Heavenly Man. He speaks 
of the strife between the fleshly and the rational soul ; of the assisting grace of God ; of 
the milk of doctrine ; of seeing God as through a mirror ; of the true riches ; and of the 
faith of Abraham. And, besides agreement in isolated phrases, Philo resembles St. Paul 
in his appeal to overwhelming revelations, 3 in modes of citing and interpreting Scripture, 
tn his use of allegory, in the importance which he attaches to the spiritual over the 
earnal meaning of ordinances, and in many other particulars. But when we look closer 
we see that many of these expressions and points of view were not peculiar to Philo. 
They were, so to speak, in the air. They fall under the same category as the resem- 
blances to Christian sentiments which may be adduced from the writings of Seneca, 

1 Seven such current national traditions are alluded to in St. Stephen's speech. (See supra, 
p. 92.) 

8 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4 ; Eph. iv. 10. Many other passages and expressions of St. Paul find their 
illustration from the Talmud— e.g., 1 Cor. xv. 37, 45, yvfj.vbv kokkov ; Eph. ii. 14 (the CheT) ; 1 Cor. 
'. 2 (ar&tsdth, " other lands ") ; 2 Cor. ii. 16, oct^tj Qo.v6.tov ; 2 Cor. v. 2, enevSvaaa-dat, &c. (Sea 
Meyer on these passages.) 8 De Cherubim, i. 443. 



704 APPENDIX. 

Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and may therefore be explained as having been due 
rather to the prevalent currents of moral and religious sentiment, than to any imitation 
or conscious interchange of thought. And side by side with these resemblances, the 
differences between Paul and Philo are immense. The cardinal conception of Philo is 
that of the Logos, and it is one which, in this sense, is never used by St. Paul. St. Paul 
makes but one or two distant aud slighting allusions to the ancient Greek philosophy, 
which Philo regarded as of transcendent importance. St. Paul makes but the most 
subordinate use of the allegoric method, which with Philo is all in all. To Philo the 
Patriarchs become mere idealised virtues ; to St. Paul they are living men. Philo 
addresses his esoteric eclecticism to the illuminated few ; St. Paul regards all alike as 
the equal children of a God who is no respecter of persons. Philo clings to the Jewish 
ritualisms, though he gives them a mystic significance ; St. Paul regards them as abro- 
gated for Gentiles, and non-essential even for Jews. Philo still holds to the absolute 
superiority of the Jew over the Gentile ; St. Paul teaches that in Christ Jesus there is 
neither Jew nor Gentile. In Philo we see the impotence of Hellenising rationalism ; in 
St. Paul the power of spiritual truth. Philo explains and philosophises in every direc- 
tion ; St. Paul never recoils before a paradox, and leaves antinomies unsolved side by 
side. Philo, like St. Paul, speaks much of faith ; but the "faith" of Philo is something 
far short of a transforming principle, 1 while that of St. Paul is a regeneration of the 
whole nature through mystic union with Christ. The writings of Philo are a collection 
of cold abstractions, those of St. Paid a living spring of spiritual wisdom. "Philo," 
says Professor Jowett, "was a Jew, St. Paid a Christian. Philo an eclectic, St. Paul 
spoke as the Spirit gave him utterance. Philo was an Eastern mystic, St. Paul preached 
the resurrection of the body. Philo was an idealiser, St. Paul a spiritualiser of the 
Old Testament. Philo was a philosopher, St. Paul a preacher ; the one taught a system 
for the Jews, the other a universal religion. The one may have guided a few more 
solitaries to the rocks of the Nile, the other has changed the world. The one is a dead, 
unmeaning literature, lingering amid the progress of mankind ; the other has been a 
principle of life to the intellect as well as to the heart. While the one has ceased to 
exist, the other has survived, without decay, the changes in government and the revolu- 
tions in thought of 1,800 years." 2 

Of the Apocryphal books there was one at least with which St. Paul was almost 
certainly acquainted — namely, the Book of Wisdom. No one, I think, will question this 
who compares his views of idolatry, and the manner in which he expresses them, with the 
chapters in which that eloquent book pursues the worship of heathenism with a concen- 
trated scorn hardly inferior to that of Isaiah ; or who will compare together the passages 
to which I have referred in a former note. If the books for which St. Paul wrote from 
his last imprisonment were any but sacred books, we may feel a tolerable confidence that 
the Book of Wisdom was among their number. 8 



EXCUBSUS V. (p. 64). 

Gamaliel and the School of Tubingen. 

I shall not often turn aside to meet what seem to me to be baseless objections ; but as 
the name of Gamaliel will always be associated with that of St. Paul, it may be worth 
while to do so for a moment in this instance. It seems, then, to me that this accusation 

1 Philo's highest definition of faith is "a bettering in all things of the soul, which has cast 
Itself for support on the Author of all things " (De Abraham, ii. 89). a Humans, i. 416. 

3 Conip. Rom. v. 12 ; xi. 32 ; 1 Cor. vi. 2 ; 2 Cor. v. 4, &c, respectively, with Wisd. ii M| 
«i. 23—26 ; iii. 8 ; ix. 16, &c. But see mvpra, p. 697. 



GAMALIEL AND THE SCHOOL OF TUBINGEN. 705 

of St. Luke is founded on a mass of errors. 1 Gamaliel, like St. Paul, was a Pharisee, the 
ion of Pharisees, and it was doubtless his nobleness and candour of disposition which 
impressed the Apostle with the better elements of Pharisaism. The fiery zeal of a 
youthful Tarsian may have led him for a time to adopt the more violent tone of the 
school of Shammai, and yet might have been very far from obliterating the effects of 
previous teaching. But, in point of fact, even a Hillel and a Gamaliel, in spite of theis 
general mildness, would have described themselves without hesitation as " exceedingly 
zealous for the traditions of the fathers. " Their concessions to expediency were either 
concessions in their conduct to the heathen, or concessions to necessity and the general 
interest. 2 The difference between the two Pharisaic schools was not nearly so wide as 
that between the two great Jewish sects. The Pharisees were beyond all question allied 
to the Zealots in political sympathies, while the Sadducees had natural affinities with 
the Herodians. In what we know of Gamaliel, we trace a spirit, a tone, a point of view, 
which eminently resembles that of his far greater pupil. His decision that soldiers in 
war time, and all people engaged in works of mercy, duty, or necessity, might be 
exempted from the more stringent Sabbatical traditions; his concession of rights of 
gleaning to the poorer brethren; 3 his direction that the "Peace be with you" 
should be addressed even to pagans on their feast days 4 — are all exactly analogous to the 
known sentiments of the Apostle ; while the just, humane, and liberal regulations which 
he laid down to prevent the unfairness of husbands towards divorced wives, and of dis- 
obedient children towards their mothers, are identical in spirit to those which St. Paul 
applies to similar subjects. The story that he bathed in a bath at Ptolemais which was 
adorned with a statue of Aphrodite, and answered the reproaches of a min with the 
remark that the statue had evidently been made for the bath, and not the bath for the 
statue, belongs not to him but to his grandson, with whom he is perpetually con- 
fused. 5 To the latter is also due the wise and kindly rule of burying the dead in 
simple white linen, instead of in costly robes. Yet so close was the unity of 
doctrine which bound together the successive hereditary presidents of the school of 
Hillel, that we may look on any anecdote of the younger Gamaliel as fairly illustrative 
of the views of the elder; and the argument of Gamaliel n., that, if he were to 
be excluded from the enjoyment of every place which had been defiled by the 
rights of idolatry, he would not be able to find any place to live in at all, reminds 
ob of more than one passage in St. Paul's argument about meats offered to idols. 
We may therefore regard it as a significant fact that, in spite of these liberal 
principles, Gamaliel of Jabne sanctioned the use of the "curse against heretics," 8 

1 The precept of Gamaliel, " Get thee a teacher, eschew that which is doubtful, and do not 
multiply uncertain tithes " (Pirke Aboth, 1, 15), might have emanated from Shammai himself. In 
feet, the difference between the two schools existed far more in infinitesimal details than in 
fundamental principles. 

Vn\ST\ pp'n "OSO, « f 0r the g 00 a 0T & eT f the world," Gittin, v. 5. (Derenbourg, Palestine, p. 
189.) It is difficult, however, to account for Gamaliel I. having a figure engraved on his seal if that 
stDiy belongs to him. 

3 See Dr. Ginsburg, s. v., in Kitto's Cycl., and Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden, iii. 274, sq. ; Jost, Gesch. 
i. Judenthums, i. 281 ; Frankel, Hodegetica in Mischnam, 57 ; Derenbourg, Palestine, 239, sq. 

4 In Jer. Berachdth, ix. (Schwab, p. 159), there is a story that meeting a beautiful Pagan woman 
he uttered to her the Shal&m alaikh. " Is it possible ? " is the amazed remark of the Gemara. " Did 
not R. Zeira say, on the authority of R. Jose bar R. Hanina, and R. Ba or R. Hiya, on the authority 
of R. Jochanan, that one ought not to express admiration for Pagans ?" (a rule based on a sort of 
jeu des mots derived from Deut. vii. 3). The answer is that Gamaliel only admired her as he might 
have admired a beautiful horse or camel, exclaiming that Jehovah had made beautiful things in the 
universe. The Talmudist then proceeds to excuse Gamaliel for the enormity of looking at a woman, 
on the ground that it could only have been unexpectedly in a narrow street. 

5 Abhoda Zara, f. 44, 2. Conybeare and Howson, Krenkel, Lewin, and others, confuse the 
anecdotes of this Gamaliel (Ha-zaken, or " the Elder ") and Gamaliel II., as also does Otho, Lex, 
Babb., s. v. (Etheridge, Hebr. Lit., p. 45). 

6 D'yon nD"0, BeracMth, f. 28, 2. Its first sentence is, " Let there be no hope to them that 
apostatize from the true religion ; and let heretics (minim), how many soever they be, all perish as 
in a moment." The actual author of this prayer was Samuel the Little (Ba-katdn). (Gratz, iv. 105, 

T T 



'06 



APPENDIX. 



which is given twelfth in order in the Shemone Ezre. 1 It is probable that his grand 
father, who was equally liberal in many of his sentiments, would yet have been 
perfectly willing to authorise a similar prayer. His sense of expediency was so little 
identical with any indifference to pure Mosaism, that when he died it was said that the 
purity and righteousness of Pharisaism was removed, and the glory of the Law ceased. 2 
Neither, then, in St. Paul's original zeal for the oral and written Law, nor in the liber- 
ality of his subsequent views and decisions about Mosaic observances, do we find any 
reason whatever to doubt the statement of his relation to Gamaliel, but on the contrary 
we find it confirmed by many minute and, at first sight, counter indications. And as far 
as the speech of Gamaliel is concerned, it seems probable that his toleration would have 
had decided limits. As it is by no means clear that he did not afterwards sanction the 
attempt to suppress the Christians, so it is by no means improbable that up to this time 
even Saul of Tarsus, had he been present at the debate, might have coincided with the 
half-tolerant, but also half-contemptuous, views of his great teacher. Although the 
Pharisees, in their deadly opposition to the Sadducees, were always ready to look with 
satisfaction on that one part of Christianity which rested on the belief in the Resurrec- 
tion, the events of the next few months greatly altered the general relations of the 
Church, not only towards them, but also towards the entire body of the Jewish people, 
of whom, up to this time, a great multitude had welcomed its early manifestations with 
astonishment and joy. 



EXCURSUS VI. (p. 93). 

Capital Punishments : The Stoning op St. Stephen. 

Generally speaking the Sanhedrin were not a sanguinary tribunal. They shuddered 
at the necessity of bloodshed, and tried to obviate its necessity by innumerable regula- 
tions. So great was their horror at putting an Israelite to death, that any means of 
avoiding it seemed desirable. Simeon Ben Shatach is the only conspicuous Rabbi who, 
for his oruelty in deciding causes, is said " to have had hot hands." Josephus expressly 
marks it as disgraceful to the Sadducees that, unlike the rest of their nation, they were 
savage in their punishments. We are told that if even once in seven years — Rabbi 
Eleazar Ben Azariah went so far as to say that if once in seventy years — a Sanhedrin 
inflicted capital punishment it deserved the opprobrious title of "sanguinary." 8 The 
migration of the Sanhedrin forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, from their 

434.) The notion that this Samuel the Less (for his name is, perhaps, given to distinguish him from 
the prophet Samuel : cf. 6 ^eyas, as the title of Herod, Life of Christ, i., p. 48, n.) has anything to 
do with Saul (Sha&l being a contraction of Shamuel, and Paulus being supposed to mean the little ; 
Alting, Schilo, iv. 28 ; Basnage, Bk. III. i., pp. 12, 13) is an absurdity hardly worthy of passing 
notice. (Eisenmeng. Entd. Judenth., ii. 107 ; Buxtorf, Lex. Talm., 1,201, 2,662 ; Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., 
L 1,119.) 

1 In point of fact, there is a considerable amount of obscurity about this prayer. The Shemone- 
ure or amida is a prayer recited alter the Shema. It is named from the "eighteen blessingo," or 
sections, of which it is composed, and is recited three times a day, or oftener on feast days. It 
actually contains nineteen sections, the 12th, which is numbered 11 bis, being the celebrated Birkath 
ha-Minim, or prayer against the minim, or heretics. Now, in Jer. Berachdth, ch. iv., § 3, we are 
expressly told that this prayer was added to the Amida at Jabne, and therefore by Gamaliel II. in 
the second century, long after the destruction of Jerusalem (Cahen, Hist, de la Priere, p. 30, sq. ; 
and Megillah, f. 17, 2). How this can be reconciled with the asserted death of Samuel the Little, 
before the destruction of Jerusalem, is only one of the confusions and contradictions which meet us 
in every stage of Talmudic literature. Hallel (quoted by Schwab) says that the prayer is sometimes 
called " the blessing (by euphemism) of the Sadducees," and is intended as a proteut of the Pharisees 
against the mixture of temporising and severity by which the Sadducees ruined their country. 
Chronology shows this to be futile. 

2 Sotah, f. 49, 1. He, or his grandson, are cited with high respect for various minute decisions 
to the BeracMth. (See Schwab's Traiti des Berach6th, pp. 1, 11, 12, &c.) 

• Domain, Maccoth, 17,1; Derenbourg, p. 201. 



POWER OF THE SANHEDRIN. 



707 



"Hall of Squares," which was beside the great Court of the Temple to the Chanujoth or 
"shops" which were under two cedars on the Mount of Olives, is expressly stated to 
have been due to their desire to get to a greater distance from the sacred precincts, in 
order that they might not feel it so sternly incumbent upon them to inflict the strict 
punishments of the Law. 1 But if, after strict and solemn voting, a man was condemned 
to any of the four capital punishments, the utmost care was taken to remove from the 
punishment all semblance of vindictive haste. In the case of a convicted blasphemer 
the death assigned by the Law was stoning, and in Leviticus it is ordained that the 
witnesses should lay their hands upon his head, and all the congregation should stone 
him. 2 In Deuteronomy we read the further regulations that the hand of the witnesses 
was first to be upon him 3 — and this horrible duty was one of the deterrents from false 
or frivolous accusation. But if we may accept the authority of the Mishna, the process 
was an elaborate one. On pronunciation of the sentence the condemned was handed 
over to the Shoterim or Lictors of the Sanhedrin, and led to the place of execution. An 
official stood at the door of the Judgment Hall 4 holding in his hand a handkerchief ; a 
second on horseback was stationed just in sight of the first, and if, even at the last 
moment, any witness could testify to the innocence of the condemned, the first 
shook his handkerchief, and the second galloped at full speed to bring back the 
accused, who was himself allowed to be led back as many as four or five times if 
he could adduce a single solid proof in his own favour. Failing this he was led on 
with a herald preceding him, who proclaimed his name, his crime, and the witnesses on 
whose testimony he had been condemned. At ten paces' distance from the place of 
death he was bidden to confess, because Jewish no less than Roman law valued the 
oertainty derived from the "confitentem reum," and the Jews deduced from the story 
of Achan that his punishment would be, as regards the future world, a sufficiently 
complete expiation of his crime. 5 A bitter draught containing a grain of frankincense 
was then given him to stupefy his senses and take away the edge of terror. At four 
cubits' distance from the fatal spot he was stripped bare of his upper garments, and 
according to the older and simpler plan of procedure was then stoned, the witnesses 
simultaneously hurling the first stones. 6 But the later custom seems to have been more 
elaborate. The place of execution " was twelve feet high, and one of the witnesses flun^ 
the c rimina l down, back foremost, from the top, the other immediately hurling a heavy 
stone upon his chest. If this failed to produce death, all who were present joined in 
stoning him, and his body was subsequently hung by the hands on a tree until the fall of 
evening. 8 

We may be quite sure that none of these elaborate prescriptions were followed in the 
martyrdom of Stephen. He was murdered in one of those sudden outbursts of fury to 
which on more than one occasion the life of our Lord had been nearly sacrificed. 



EXCURSUS Vn. (p. 94). 

The Poweb of the Sanhedbin to Ixelict Death. 

A QUESTION has often been raised how the Sanhedrin at this time had the power of 
inflicting death at all ? The well-known passage of St. John, " It is not lawful for us 

1 The Dini Kenasoth or punitive decisions (Abhoda Zara, f. 8, 2 ; Shdbbath, f. 15, 1). Rashi 
inferred from Dent. xviL 10, that minor Sanliedrins ontside Jerusalem could not pronounce capital 
sentences {Dini NephasMth) unless the greater Sanhedrin was seated on the Temple Mount. 

8 Lev. xxiv. 14. 3 Pent. xvii. 7. 

* All these particulars, except when otherwise stated, I derive from the tract Sanhedrin ct the 
Mishna, cap. vi. (Surenhus. ii., p. 234, seqq.) 

s Twnchuma, f. 39, § 3 ; Sehottg. Hot. Hebr. ad Acts vii. 58. 

6 Tanchuma, ubi aupr. ; Deut. xviL 7. ? Called nVpDn n 1 !- 8 Deut. xxL 22, 23. 

T T 2 



708 APPENDIX. 

fco put any man to death," has been asserted to be in direct contradiction to the narra- 
tive. The explanation of that passage to mean "it is not lawful at the time of the 
feast " is both philologically and historically untenable, and there seems to be little 
doubt that there is truth in the statement of the Talmud that about forty years — a 
well-known vague term in Jewish writers — before the fall of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin 
had relinquished — it would be truer to say, had been deprived of — the power of death. 1 
That deprivation was due to the direct interference of the Romans, who would not 
extend the highest judicial functions to men so likely to abuse them for seditious ends. 
It is, perhaps, only an attempt of the Eabbis to veil their national humiliation, when 
they attribute the diminished glories of their "House of Judgment" to their own 
leniency ; to their reluctance to shed the blood of a descendant of Abraham ; to the 
consequent increase of crimes ; and to the migration from the Hall of Squares to the 
"Shops " of the Beni Hanan. But, on the other hand, we know the astute connivance 
which the Bomans were always ready to extend to acts which were due to religious 
excitement and not to civil rebellion. 2 They rarely interfered with national superstitions. 
Even Pilate, though by no means void of a sense of justice, had been quite willing to 
hand over Jesus to any extreme of ecclesiastical vengeance, provided only that the direct 
responsibility did not fall upon himself. Further than this, there is every reason to 
believe that St. Stephen's martyrdom finds its counterpart in the murder of James, the 
Lord's brother. That was brought about by the younger Hanan during a High Priest- 
hood of only three months' duration, in which he seized his opportunity, and availed 
himself of a brief interregnum which followed on the death of Festus, and preceded the 
arrival of his successor Albums. It was at just such an interregnum that the death of 
Stephen is believed to have taken place. Pontius Pilate had been sent to Rome by his 
official chief, Vitellius, the Praefect of Syria, to answer to the Emperor for the com- 
plaints of cruelty and insult brought against him by the inhabitants of every division 
of his Procuratorship. Before his arrival the Emperor Tiberius died. An event of this 
magnitude relaxed the sternness of government in every province of the Empire, 3 and 
though Vitellius appointed Marcellus as a brief temporary locum tenens until the arrival 
of Marullus, who was appointed Procurator by Gaius, 4 the Sanhedrin may have met 
while there was no Procurator at all, and in any case would have found it easy to 
persuade a substitute like Marcellus, or a new-comer like Marullus, that it would be 
useless to inquire into a mere riot which had ended in the richly deserved punishment 
of a blaspheming Hellenist. In short, we find that the possibility of tumultuous 
outbreaks which might end in a death by stoning is constantly recognised in the New 
Testament j 5 and it would have been easy for the Sanhedrin to represent the stoning of 
St. Stephen in such a light. 



EXCURSUS VHI. (p. 101). 

Damascus under Habeth. 

Habeth was the father-in-law of Herod Antipas, and from the day when the weakneM 
of that miserable prince had beguiled him into his connexion, at once adulterous and 

i Abhodah Zara, f. 8, 2. 

3 The policy of Rome towards her Oriental subjects was a policy of contemptuous tolerance in 
all matters that affected the local cult. 

3 That there was at this very time a special desire to conciliate the Jews, who had been so much 
exasperated by the cruelties of Pilate, is clear from the circumstance that Vitellius, after a magnifi- 
cent reception at Jerusalem, had just restored to the Jews the custody of the pontifical vestments, 
which since the days of Herod the Great had been kept in the Tower of Antonia (Jos. Antt. xv. 11, 
4 ; xviii. 4, 2). The privilege was again forfeited, and again restored to them by Claudius, at the 
request of Agrippa II. (id. xx. 1, 2). The power of inflicting minor punishments seems always to 
have rested with the Jews, as it does with many religious communities of raws, even under the 
tyranny of Turkish misrule (Renan, Lea Apdtres, p. 144). * Jos. Antt. xviii. 6, 10 (cf. 4, 2). 

5 John viii. 69 ; x. 31—33 ; Matt, xxiii. 37 ; Acts v. 26. See Orig. ad African. £ 14, apud 
Wordsworth. 



SAUL IN ARABIA. 709 

incestuous, with Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, Hareth had been the implacable 
foe of the Tetrarch of Galilee. Their quarrel had ended in a battle, in which the 
troops of Hareth won a signal victory. After this defeat, in which the Jews saw a 
retribution for the murder of John the Baptist, 1 Antipas applied to the Emperor 
Tiberius, who sent Vitellius to chastise the audacious Emir who had dared to defeat an 
ally of Eome. But when Vitellius had reached Jerusalem, he heard the news of the 
death of Tiberius. The death of a Roman emperor often involved so immense a change 
of policy, that Vitellius did not venture, without fresh instructions, to renew the war. 
The details of what followed have not been preserved. That Hareth ventured to seize 
Damascus is improbable. Vitellius was too vigorous a legate, and the Arab had too 
wholesome a dread of imperial Rome, to venture on so daring an aot of rebellion. On 
ihe other hand, it is not impossible that the Emperor Gains — who was fond of dis- 
tributing kingdoms among princes whom he favoured, 2 and whose mind was poisoned 
against Antipas by his friend and minion Agrippa I. — should have given back to Hareth 
I town which in old days had belonged to the Nabathaean dynasty. 3 The conjecture 
receives some independent confirmation. Coins of Damascus are found which bear the 
image of Augustus, of Tiberius, and again of Nero, but none which bear that of Gaius 
or of Claudius. This would lead us to infer that during these reigns Damascus was 
subject to a local sway. 4 



EXCURSUS IX. (p. 120). 

Saul in Arabia. 

Few geographical terms are more vaguely used by ancient writers than "Arabia," and 
some have seen the explanation of St. Luke's silence about the retirement of St. Paul, in 
the possibility that he may scarcely have gone beyond the immediate region of Damascus. 
Justin Martyr challenges Trypho to deny that Damascus "belongs and did belong to 
Arabia, though now it has been assigned to what is called Syrophoenicia. " Some 
shadow of probability may be, perhaps, given to the view that St. Paul did not travel far 
from Syria, because the Arabic translator of the Epistle to the Galatians renders the 
clause in GaL i. 17, &c, "Immediately I went to El Belka ; " and in Gal. iv. 25, mis- 
taking the meaning of the word owi-chx" (which means "answers to," "corresponds 
with," "falls under the same row with "), he says that "Mount Sinai or El Belka is 
contiguous to Jerusalem. " 5 But since Sinai is certainly not in the El Belka with which 
alone we have any acquaintance — namely, the region to the north and east of the Dead 
Sea — this curious version does not seem worthy of any further notice. Doubtless, in the 
then disturbed and fluctuating relations between the Roman Empire and the various Eastern 
principalities, St. Paul might have found himself far beyond the range of interruption 
by taking but a short journey from the neighbourhood of Damascus. 

But is it not more probable that when St. Paul speaks of his visit to Arabia, he means 
Arabia in that Hebrew sense in which the word would be understood by the majority of 
his readers ? We cannot, indeed, accept the proof of his familiarity with these regions 
which is derived from the reading of our Received text, " for this Hagar is Mount Sinai 
in Arabia," and from the supposition that Hagar was a local name for the mountain itself. 6 

i Jos. Antt. x> Ji. 5, § 1. 

2 Thus in A.L . 38 he gave Ituraea to Soheym ; Lesser Armenia to Cotys ; part of Thrace to 
Rhaemetalces ; Pontius, &c, to Polemo II. (Dio Cass. hx. 12). Keim thinks that Aretas may have 
had a sort of partial jurisdiction in Damascus. 

s Jos. Antt. xui. 5, § § 2, 3 ; Wieseler, Chron. des Apost. Zeitalt. 174. 

* Wieseler, in his article on Aretas in Herzog*s Encycl., refers to Mionnet, p. 204, as his authority 
for the existence of a coin of Aretas, which hears the date 101 (A.D.). Now, if this date refer to the 
Pompeian era, the coin would belong to A.D. 37—38, about the very time in which Saul's mission to 
Damascus took place, * Ldghtfoot, Galatians, p. 81. 6 Gal. iv. 25. 



710 



APPENDIS. 



For the true reading of that verse seems to be, "for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia ; ' 
and, as Dr. Lightfoot has shown, there is no adequate authority for the assertion — perhaps 
originally a mistake of St. Chrysostom — that Mount Sinai was ever called Hagar. More- 
over, it is doubtful whether, even by way of allegoric paronomasia, St. Paul would have 
identified Hagar, " a wanderer," with chadjar, " a stone ; " especially since Philo, who 
also has an allegory about Hagar and Sarah, had already extracted a moral meaning 
from the correct derivation. But setting this ancient argument aside, nothing can seem 
more natural than that St. Paul, possibly already something of a fugitive, almost certainly 
a sufferer in health and mind, driven by an imperious instinct to seek for solitude, should 
have turned his lonely steps to a region where he would at once be safe, and unburdened, 
and alone with God. 



EXCURSUS X. (p. 125). 

St. Paul's " Stake in the Flesh." 

Theee are two main passages on which our inferences about the "stake in the flesh" 
must be founded, and the impression which they leave is only strengthened by more 
isolated allusions. These two passages, to give them in their chronological order, are : 
2 Cor. xii. 1 — 10 * and Gal. iv. ; 2 and I translate them in all their ruggedness, and the 
interchanges of thought which render it almost impossible to explain the rapid transition 
of their causal connexions. 

i. The first of them runs as follows : — After showing that, however weak and 
unworthy he may be, he has yet laboured and suffered more than "the super-pre-eminent 
Apostles, " — a boastfulness the very semblance of which he loathes, but which, again and 
again, he says has been forced upon him by the intrigues and slanders of interested 
opponents — he mentions his perilous escape from Damascus, which had made a deep 
impression on his memory, and then continues : " Boasting, evidently, is not expedient 
for me ; for I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. 3 I know a man in Christ 
fourteen years ago — (whether in the body I know not, or whether out of the body I know 
not : God knoweth) — caught up, such a one as far as the third heaven. And I know 
such a man — (whether in the body, or apart 4 from the body, I know not : God knoweth) 
— that he was caught up into Paradise and heard unutterable things which it is not 
lawful for man to speak. About such a one I will boast ; but about myself I will not 
boast except in mine infirmities. For if I should wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for 
I shall speak the truth ; but I forbear, that no one may reckon about me more than what 
he seeth me or heareth anything from me. And, that I may not be puffed up by this 
abundance of revelations, there was given me a stake in the flesh an angel of Satan 5 that 
it may buffet me that I may not be puffed up. For this, thrice did I entreat the Lord 
that it might depart from me. And He hath said to me : My grace sufficeth for thee ; 
for power is being perfected in weakness. 6 Most gladly, then, rather will I boast in my 
infii mities, that the power of Christ may spread its tent over me. Therefore, I am 
content in infirmities, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's 
sak<3, for when I am weak then I am powerful. " 7 

ii. The other passage is Gal. iv. 12 — 16. St. Paul h&s been vehemently urging the 
Galatians not to sink to the low level of their previous bondage from the freedom of the 
Gospel, and in the midst of his reasonings and exhortations he inserts this tender 
appeal : — 

1 Written not earlier than the autumn of A.D. 57. 

2 Written perhaps in the spring of A.D. 58. 

» The reading of this verse is extremely doubtful ; v. infra, ad he. 

* vcopi;, B, D, E, which is more likely to have been altered into the «ctos of the previous vera 
(*, F, G). s cf. 1 Cor. v. 5. 6 Omit pov (n, A, B, D, F, G). » % Cor. xii. 1- ~Jft 



ST. PAUL'S "STAKE IN THE FLESH." 711 

" Become as I am, for I too have become as you, brethren, I beseech you. In no 
respect did ye wrong me. Yea, ye know that because of infirmity of the flesh I preached 
to you the first time, and your temptation in my flesh - ye despised not nor loathed, but 
as an angel of God ye received me, as Christ Jesus. What, then, was your self -congratu- 
lation ? For I bear you witness that, if possible, ye dug out your eyes 2 and gave them 
me. So, have I become your enemy by telhng you the truth?" 

iii. The most prominent allusions to the same bodily affliction are — Gill, vi. 17 : 
"Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I carry in my body the brands of Jesus;" 3 
2 Cor. iv. 10: "Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of the Lord 
Tesus;" and perhaps indirectly, Col. i. 24 : "Now I rejoice 4 in my sufferings for you, 
and I supplement in Christ's stead the deficiences of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh 
for His body which is the Church." When, too, we remember that the word for "stake'' 
is only a more contemptuous form of the word for " cross, " 5 there may be a further 
allusion to this special trial in the words, "I have been crucified with Christ." 6 

a. Now, from the first of these passages we see that St. Paul so far from boasting of 
exceptional revelations, will only mention them because they are connected with infirm- 
ities so painful as to render it ridiculous as well as sinful for him to boast at all, unless 
he might boast that his very weakness was but a more signal proof of that strength of 
Christ which had enabled him to do and to suffer more than the very chiefest Apostles. 

i3. We gather that his trial was something agonising, or it would not be called a stake 
in the flesh ; 7 mysterious in its nature, or it would not be described as an angel of Satan ; 
intermittent, as is implied in the word "buffet, "and as is also apparent from various 
special paroxysms to which St. Paul alludes ; and a direct consequence of, or at any rate 
intimately connected with, his most exalted moments of revelation and ecstasy. 

y. From the second passage, we have the additional particulars, that it was in con- 
sequence of some sharp attack of his malady that he had been detained in Galatia ; that 
this malady was of such a nature as to form an actual trial to the Galatians, and 
naturally dispose them to look on him with contempt, if not with positive loathing ; but 
that they had so completely triumphed over this feeling as to receive him with almost 
divine respect, and that they had so congratulated themselves on his visit as to have been 
ready, had it been possible, to dig out their very eyes and give them to their suffering 
teacher. 

&■ The other references confirm these conclusions. In one of them we learn that 
St. Paul looked on his physical infirmities as sacred stigmata by which Jesus had marked 
him out as His slave, that he might be secured from molestation ; s and in the others 
that he regarded his living death as a sort of continuation of his Lord's crucifixion, and a 
supplement to those sufferings for the sake of His Church, in which Christ allowed His 
servants to participate by taking up their cross and following after Him for the service 
of mankind. 9 

Now these passages at once exclude nine-tenths of the conjectures which have been so 
fr.-ely hazarded, and which could not have been hazarded at all by those who had care- 
fully considered the conditions of the question. Many of these conjectures would not 
have even deserved a passing mention if they had not, on the one hand, possessed a 
certain archaeological interest as belonging to the history of exegesis, and on the other 

1 The true reading is rbv 7reipao>i.6v vp.u)v ev rfj crapK.1 fxov. 

2 The omission of the av (cf. John xix. 11 ; Matt, xxvi. 23) gives far more vividness to the ex* 
pi jssion. (See my Brief Greek Syntax, § 137.) 3 Leg. tov 'Irjo-oO (all but Uncials). 

4 Leg. Nwi> xaipw (A, B, C). 5 Lipsius, De Cruce, i. 4. Hence <rico\onig<a = <Travp6<o (cf. stipes). 

6 Gal. ii. 20, Xpiarw <rvveo-Ta.vpmfj.ai.. This epistle is full of the "cross," and was written with 
vivid reminiscence (at least) of the "stake." The allusion of 1 Thess. ii. 18, "but Satan hindered 
as," is too vague to be referred with any special probability to this affliction. 

7 "Ajcavflcu koX <r*6A.07res oSvvas <rr)fj.aivovo-L oia to bgv (Artemid. iii. 33, Meyer) ; (cf. Num. xxxiii. 
55 ; Josh, xxiii. 13 ; Ezek. xxviii. 24 ; ctk6\q\\i imcpias, Hos. ii. 6 ; LXX.). Hence perha ps the 
rendering " thorn." 8 Gal. vi. 17. 9 2 Cor. iv. 10 ; CoL i. 24 ; Phil. iii. 10 ; Gal ii. 20 



712 APPENDIX. 

brought to light some fragments of old tradition, or pointed to certain features in the 
character of the Apostle. 

1. It is, for instance, abundantly clear that the stake in the flesh was nothing of a 
spiritual nature. If we find such men as Jean Gerson, l and Luther, and Calvin more or 
less confidently deciding that the expression alludes to high spiritual temptations, such aa 
shrinking from his duties as an Apostle, tormenting doubts, and stings of conscience for 
the past, the decision is only interesting as a proof that these great and holy men could 
bo well sympathise with these painful hindrances. Yet such an explanation is wholly 
impossible. It is excluded at once by the references to the infirmity as being of a 
physical description. It is excluded also by St. Paul's character, and by the circumstances 
of his life. There is much in his Epistles about weariness and sorrow, about fightings 
without and fears within, but there is not the faintest trace that the fire of zeal burnt 
low, even at his moments of deepest discouragement, on the altar of his heart. Nor 
could tormenting doubts have had much reality in the soul of one who had seen the risen 
Christ, and to whom were constantly vouchsafed the vivid revelations which not only 
solved the problems, but even guided the movements of his life. 2 

2. And while we reject this view of some great Keformers, we must reject quite as 
decidedly the fixed opinion of the most eminent Boman Catholics. Vague expressions 
in St. Jerome, St: Augustine, and Gregory the Great seem to have led to an opinion that 
the stake in the flesh was some form of carnal temptation, 3 This view, repeated by the 
Venerable Bede, has been continued through Aquinas, Bellarmine, Cornelius a Lapide, 
and other Boman Catholic writers down to Van Est in the sixteenth century, till it has 
become almost a stereotyped part of the exegesis of the Boman Catholic Church. It is 
due to the ambiguous rendering of " stake in the flesh," by stimulus carnis in the Vulgate 
translation. Now, in this case also — though we may observe with sorrowful interest 
that the struggles of ascetics to subdue by unwise methods their carnal passions made 
them glad to believe that even in the case of St. Paul such an infirmity was never wholly 
removed — we are nevertheless obliged on every ground to reject the explanation. It in 
no way satisfies the general tenor of St. Paul's expressions. It is not an infirmity of 
which by any possibility he could boast. "We cannot conceive so revolting a stain on the 
character of the Apostle as that which would be involved in the supposition that such 
tendencies, if he had been cursed with them, should have so manifested themselves as to 
be a hindrance to his ministry, and a source of loathing to those who heard him. It is 
still more outrageous to imagine that such criminal concupiscence would have been 
implanted or strengthened in him as a counterpoise to the spiritual pride which might 
otherwise have resulted from special revelations. But besides all this, it fixes on the 
memory of the Apostle a weakness from which we may well believe that he was most 
exceptionally free. It is true that in the Epistle to the Romans he describes, in language 
of intense emotion, the struggle in the soul between the good and the evil impulse — the 
Yetser ha-ttbh and Yetser ha-rd of which he had heard so much in the Beth Midrash of 
his education. But it is idle to imagine that a strife so multiform must be referred to 
one only of its manifestations. And we judge that St. Paul had very early subdued 
every motion of rebellious sensuality, not only because no man who ever lived has 
uttered words of loftier purity ; not only because upon his principles more than upon 
those of any human moralist have been founded the very bases of Christian abstinence ; 
not only because, to an extent unparalleled in literature, he has the high gift of being able 
to brand the shamelessness of impurity without wounding the delicacy of Christian 
thought ; 4 but more than this, because he is able to appeal to others that they should 
learn by his example how possible it was to live by the rule of a holy continence. Ad- 

1 Perhaps the author, or part author, of the Imitatio Ch/risti. (See Companions of ilu Devout 
Ufe, p. 8, sq.) 2 See Acts xvi. 7 ; xxi. 4 ; xxii. 17 ; Gal. ii. 2, &c, 

• Greg. Moral, x. 8, 815. See the authorities in TUlemout, i. 222 (ed. 1698). 

* Bom. L , Eph, v., Ac 



ST. pattl's "stake in the flesh." 713 

tnitting as he does to the Corinthians that it is better once for all to marry than to be 
consumed by the slow inward fires of concupiscence, 1 he yet says to the unmarried, "it 
is good for them to abide even as I," and that "he would that all men were even as he 
himself." 2 There would be hypocrisy, and something worse than hypocrisy, in such 
language if the "stake in the flesh," which was still unremoved when he wrote the 
Second Epistle, were that which this long succession of commentators have supposed 
it to be. 3 

3. It may, then, be regarded as certain that the stake in the flesh was some physical 
malady ; for the fancy first mentioned by Chrysostom and adopted by the Greek fathers, 
as well as by Hilary and Augustine, that it means the opposition and persecution with 
which St. Paul met at the hands of Judaists, and perhaps especially of one leader among 
them who was "a thorn in his side," 4 is too entirely at variance with the conditions of 
the question to deserve further notice. But when, in our anxiety to understand and 
sympathise as far as possible with the Apostle's personality, we still ask what was this 
malady, we are left in uncertainty. To omit the more futile conjectures, neither attacks of 
headache nor earache mentioned traditionally by Tertullian and Jerome, nor the stone 
which is the conjecture of Aquinas, present those features of external repulsiveness to 
which the Apostle evidently alludes as the concomitants of his trial. The only con- 
jectures which have much intrinsic probability are those which suppose him to have 
suffered from epilepsy or from ophthalmia. 

4. There is something to be said in favour of the view that it was Epilepsy. It is 
painful ; it is recurrent ; it opposes an immense difficulty to all exertion ; it may at any 
time cause a temporary suspension of work ; it is intensely humiliating to the person 
who suffers from it ; it exercises a repellent effect on those who witness its distressing 
manifestations. Moreover, it was regarded in ancient days as supernatural in its charac- 
ter, was surrounded with superstitious fancies, and was directly connected by the Jews 
with demoniacal possession. 5 Further, St. Paul himself connects his infirmity with his 
trances and visions, and the soul of man is so constituted that any direct intercourse 
with the unseen world — even, in a lower order, any deep absorption in religious thought, 
w paroxysms of religious feeling — does tend to a violent disturbance of the nervous 
organism. 6 It would be specially certain to act in this way in the case of one whose 
temperament was so emotional as was that of St. Paul. It is not impossible that the 
prostration which followed his conversion may have been induced by the shock which 
his system received from his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus ; and that 
the recurrence of this shock, involving a chronic liability to its attacks, accompanied 
that second trance in the Temple, which determined his future career as the Apostle of 
the Gentiles. His third ecstasy happened fourteen years 1 before he wrote the Second 

1 1 Cor. vii. 9, Kpeitnrov yafirj(rai rj rrvpovaOai.. s 1 Cor. vii. 7, 8. 

3 It is difficult to believe that 2 Cor. vii. 2 ; xi. 8 ; and 1 Thess. ii. 3 are intended to refute 
charges which had been even brought against Paul himself. They may be intended to contrast his 
own conduct with that of other teachers, and indeed the first two passages do not necessarily refei 
to unchastity at all. The anaOapo-Ca of 1 Thess. ii. 3 is explained, even by Chrysostom, of vile and 
fuggli Jj arts ; and Olshausen, Liinemann, Alford, Ellicott, and others all suppose it K refer pri- 
marily to aio-xpoicepSeia and similar impure motives. 

4 A special person may be indicated in 2 Cor. x. 7, 10, 11, 18 ; xi. 4, 20 ; and in Gal. i. 9 ; iii. 1 ; 
vi. 7, 12. 

5 Morbus Comitialis, Dio Cass. xlvi. 33 ; Gell. xix. 2. In Welsh it is called gwialen Christi, "the 
rod of Christ," and eledyt bendigaid, " blessed disease." A curious Celtic tradition to this effect is 
preserved in the old Irish name for epilepsy, in galar Poll (Stokes, Old Irish Glossary, p. 120 ; Anc. 
Laws of Ireland, iii. 506). Krenkel, in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. xvi. (ii.) 233 — 244, notices the curious 
fact that the evil omen of epilepsy was averted by spitting. Hence Plautus calls it the " morbus 
qui sputatur " (Captiv. iii. 4, 15 ; cf. Plin. H. N. x. 23, 33 ; xxviii. 4, 7). He connects this with 
e£e7m;o-aTe (as though it meant " neither did ye spit ") of Gal. iv. 14. 

• The trances of Sokrates, the fits of Mohammed, accompanied by foaming at the mouth, and 
followed by the sleep of exhaustion, the faintings and ecstasies of St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St 
Catherine of Siena, have been adduced as parallels (Hausrath, pp. 52—56). We may add the cases oj 
George Fox, of Jacob Boehme, of Swedenborg, &c. ? The " about " in the E. "V. is inteipolated. 



714 APPENDIX. 

Epistle to the Corinthians, and therefore at some period during his second residence tn 
Tarsus. If we take the words, "thrice I besought the Lord," literally, we may then 
further believe that it was at each of these recurrences of anguish upon the renewals of 
special revelations that he had made his most earnest entreaty to be delivered from the 
buffets of this angel of Satan ; and that it was only during, or after, his third and most 
memorable vision that his Lord pointed out to him the meaning of the trial and told 
him that, though it could not be removed, he should be strengthened with grace sufficient 
to enable him to bear it. 1 

5. But even if this was the actual " stake in the flesh," there is the strongest reason 
to believe that St. Paul suffered further from acute Ophthalmia, which also fulfils in every 
particular the conditions of the problem. This, too, would have the advantage of following 
the analogy of God's dealings, by being a trial not arbitrarily inflicted, but one which 
might have resulted naturally — or, to use the more exact term, let us say, providentially 
— from the circumstances through which Paul had passed. We know that he was 
physically blinded by the glare of light which surrounded him when he saw the risen 
Lord. The whole circumstances of that event — the noonday journey under the fierce 
Syrian sun, the blaze of light which outshone even that noonday brightness, and the 
blindness which followed it — would have been most likely to leave his eyes inflamed and 
weak. His stay in the desert and in Damascus — regions notorious for the prevalence of 
this disease — would have tended to develop the mischief when it had once been set up ; 
and though we are never told in so many words that the Apostle suffered from defective 
sight, there are yet so many undesigned coincidences of allusion all pointing in this direc- 
tion, that we may regard it as an ascertained fact. Apart from the initial probability 
that eyes which had once been so seriously affected would be liable to subsequent attacks 
of disease, we have the following indications : — (i.) When speaking of his infirmity to 
the Galatians, St. Paul implies that it might well have rendered him an object of loathing ; 
and this is pre-eminently the case with acute ophthalmia. The most distressing objects, 
next to the lepers, which the traveller will ever see in the East — those who will most 
make him inclined to turn away his face with a shudder of pity and almost involuntary 
disgust — are precisely those who are the victims of this disease. 2 (ii.) And this would 
give a deeper pathos and meaning to the Apostle's testimony that the Galatians in the 
first flush of their Gospel joy, when they looked on the preacher of those good tidings as 
an angel of God, would, had it been possible, have dug out their eyes in order to 
place them at the sufferer's service, (hi.) The term, "a stake in the flesh," would be 
most appropriate to such a malady, because all who have been attacked with it know 
that the image which it recalls most naturally is that of a sharp splinter run into the 
eye. 3 (iv.) Moreover, it would be extremely likely to cause epileptic or other symptoms, 
since in severe attacks it is often accompanied by cerebral disturbance, (v. ) In spite of 
the doubt which has been recently thrown on the commonly accepted meaning of the 
expression which St. Paul uses to the Galatians, "Ye see in what large letters I write 
to you with my own hand," it must at any rate be admitted that it suits well with the 
hypothesis of a condition which rendered it painful and difficult to write at all. That 
this was St. Paul's normal condition seems to result from his almost invariable practice 
of employing an amanuensis, and only adding in autograph the few last words of greet- 
ing or blessing, which were necessary for the identification of his letters in an age in 
which religious forgeries were by no means unknown, (vi.) It is obvious, too, that an 
ocular deformity, caused as this had been, might well be compared to the brand fixed by 

1 Compare the interesting parallels of Alfred and of St. Bernard. 

2 When Dr. Lightfoot, who rejects this theory, says that " St. Paul's language implies some 
more striking complaint," he is probably thinking of the milder forms of ophthalmia with which alone 
we are familiar in England, and not of those virulent attacks which are but too common in Syria, 
and which make such terrible havoc of the human countenance. 

* Alford'B remark that ophthalmic disorders are not usually painful is singularly mistaken. 



ON JEWISH SCOURGINGS. 715 

a master on his slave, (vii.) Lastly, there is no other reasonable explanation of the 
circumstance that, when St. Paul had uttered an indignant answer to the High 
Priest, and had been rebuked for it, he at once frankly offered his apology by 
saying that "he had not recognised the speaker to have been the High Priest." Now, 
considering the position of the High Priest as Nasi of the Sanhedrin, seated at the end 
of the hall, with the Ab Beth Din on one side of him, and the Chacham on the other, 1 
it is almost inconceivable that Paul should not have been aware of his rank if he had 
not suffered from defective sight. All that his blurred vision took in was a white figure, 
nor did he see this figure with sufficient clearness to be able to distinguish that the 
overbearing tyrant was no less a person than the High Priest himself. 2 

But if these conjectures are correct — and to me they seem to be almost certain — how im- 
mensely do they add to our conception of Paul's heroism ; how much do they heighten 
the astonishment and admiration which we feel at all that he endured and all that he 
accomplished ! This man, who almost single-handed carried the Gospel of Christ from 
Damascus to Rome, was so great a sufferer from inflammation of the eyes that he was often 
pitiable to look upon ; was unable to write except with pain, and in large letters ; was 
liable to attacks of severe agony, accompanied at times with loss of consciousness. He 
was so weak and ailing that under circumstances of danger he was personally helpless ; 
that be had to be passively conducted from place to place ; that it was almost impossible 
for him, I will not say only to preach, but even to get through the ordinary routine of 
life without companions to guide, and protect, and lead him by the hand. 3 We can then 
see how indispensable it was that St. Paul should have some " that ministered unto him ;" 
how strongly he would feel the necessity of being always accompanied upon his missions 
by faithful friends ; 4 how much anguish might lie in his remark that in his strong affec- 
tion for the Thessalonians he was even ready for their sakes to part with his beloved 
Timotheus, and to be left at Athens alone.' How close, then, and how tender would be 
the bond of mutual gratitude and affection which would inevitably grow up under such 
circumstances between himself and the little band of disciples by whom he was usually 
accompanied ! "With what deepened bitterness would he feel the cruelty of neglect an4 
ingratitude when, at his first answer, no man stood with him, but all forsook him ! 6 



EXCURSUS XI. (p. 127). 
On Jewish Scourgings. 
Evbn a single Jewish scourging might wall entitle any man to be regarded as a martyr. 
Thif ty-nine blows were inflicted, unless, indeed, it was found that the strength of the 
patient was too much exhausted to admit of his receiving the full number. Both of his 
hands were tied to what is sometimes called a column, but which was in reality a stake a 

i Acts xxiii. 5. It is possible that the presence of Roman officials disturbed this order. 

2 The expression " fixing an earnest gaze " (aTei/tcra?) has often been adduced as yet another sign 
that St. Paul's eyesight was weak, and therefore that he had acquired the intent stare so common 
in short-sighted people. This argument is, however, untenable, since the word is a favourite one 
with St. Luke (Acts xiii. 9 ; xxiii. 1) and is applied not only to St. Paul, but also to St. Peter, St. 
Stephen, and even to whole bodies of men (Luke iv. 20 ; xxii. 56 ; Acts i. 10 ; iii. 2 — 4 ; vL 15 ; 
vii. 55). 

3 Acts xvii. 14, rbv IlavAov e£<nre<rTei\a.v ot aSe\(f>ol; 15, oi Se naBia-ravovTes (jcafliaTcivTes, E, G, H) 
tw IlauAov riyayov ecos 'A07]iw. These phrases seem more specific than those in Gen. xviii. 16 ; 
Bom. XV. 24 (Trponeix<f>6rjva.L). 

* Mr. Lewin (St. Paul, i. 189, third edition) was, I believe, the earliest to point out that these 
passages bear on the question. They are not in themselves conclusive ; but when we find the 
same words used in Acts ix. 30 (to which Mr. Lewin does not refer), when we may well suppose that 
a fresh attack had followed a fresh revelation, they not improbably point to some such state of 
things as that which I have inferred. 6 1 Thess. iii. L 6 2 Tim. iv. 16, 



716 



APPENDIX. 



cubit and a half high. 1 The public officer then tore down his robe until his breast wan 
laid bare. The executioner stood on a stone behind the criminal. The scourge consisted 
of two thongs, one of which was composed of four strands of calf -skin, and one of two 
strands of ass's-skin, which passed through a hole in a handle. The executioner, who 
was ordinarily the Chazzan of the synagogue, could thus shorten or lengthen them at will, 
so as not to strike too low. 2 The prisoner bent to receive the blows, which were inflicted 
with one hand, but with all the force of the striker, thirteen on the breast, thirteen on 
the right, and thirteen on the left shoulder. While the punishment was going on, the 
chief judge read aloud Deut. xxviii. 58, 59, " If thou wilt not observe to do all the words 
of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful 
name, the Lord thy God; then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the 
plagues of thy seed." He then read Deut. xxix. 9, " Keep therefore the words of this 
covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all ye do ; " and lastly, Pa. Ixxviii. 38, 39, 
" But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not : yea, 
many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath." If the 
punishment was not over by the time that these three passages were read, they were again 
repeated, and so timed as to end exactly with the punishment itself. Meanwhile a second 
judge numbered the blows, and a third before each blow exclaimed " Hakkehu" (strike 
him). All these particulars I take from the Treatise on Punishments (niDa, Makkdth) in 
the Mishna. 3 The severity of the pain may best be estimated by the brief addition : " If 
the criminal die under the infliction, the executioner is not accounted guilty unless he gives 
by mistake a single blow too many, in which case he is banished." 

These facts have an interest far deeper than archaeological. They not only show how 
awful were the trials which St. Paul had to endure, if such as these were hardly counted 
worthy of narration amongst them, but also they illustrate to a singular degree the 
minute scrupulosity which reigned through all Jewish observances. If, for instance, 
only thirty-nine blows were inflicted instead of forty, it was not only, as is usually stated, 
to avoid the possibility of error in the counting, but also (such at least is the reason as- 
signed by Maimonides 4 ) because the Law says, "in number, forty," 5 not "forty in 
number;" whence they concluded that they might assign a smaller but not a larger 
number; and, perhaps, also because the word "thy brother" (vna) stands by Gematria 
for thirty-nine. 6 Another assigned reason is that the passage of the Psalm (Ixxviii. 38, 39) 
which was recited on the occasion ends at verse 39. The scourge was made partly of ox- 
hide, partly of ass's-hide, for the astounding reasons that immediately after the passage 
in Deuteronomy which orders the infliction of scourging follows the verse, " Thou shalt 
not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn ; " 7 and that in Isa. i. 3 we find, " The 
ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib ; but Israel doth not know, my people 
doth not consider." And thus it was thought right that those who do know should punish 
him who does not know ! 8 The criminal was to receive only thirteen blows on his breast, 
but twenty-six on his shoulders, because it was inferred from Deut. xxv. 2 thut it was 
only on the back that he was to be beaten, 9 " according to his fault," so that the back 

1 Marble " columns," traditionally assigned to this purpose, are shown among the relics of 
Human Catholic churches ; e.g., the column of the flagellation in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ; 
that of the scourging of St. Paul in S. Paolo fuori de' Muri at Rome, &c. 

2 Th\s was not strictly in accordance with Deut. xxv. 2 ; but it is strange to see how traditional 
laxity w* a mingled by the Jews with unintelligent literalism. 

8 Seo Surenhusius, Mishna, vol. iv., p. 286, seqq. 

* Maimon. Sanhedr. 17. 6 D^3~\N "tDDDl- 

6 Gematria (Geomatria) was one of the Kabbalistie methods of drawing interpretations from the 
numerical value of letters. I have given many instances in Rabbinic Exegesis (Expositor, May, 1877). 
Thus because both Mashiach and nachash, " serpent," numerically represent 358, they inferred that 
It was the Messiah who would bruise the serpent's head, &c. 

? Deut. xxv. 4. 8 So Maimonides and R. Ob. de Bartenora, ap. Surenhus. I. c. 

9 Buxtorf, Synag., p. 623. See also Praef. Libr. de Abbreviaturis. This was one of the numerous 
instances in which the Jews were more legal than the Law itself. Similarly they extended the 
Sabbath into a Little Sabbath, an hour before and an hour after the true Sabbath. They were for* 



APOTHEOSIS OF ROMAN EMPERORS. 717 

received a double number of blows. The duty of reading aloud while the scourging 
continued was also a minute inference from the words of Scripture. 1 

A person was liable to this penalty if he wilfully violated any of the negative 
precejts of the Law, and inadvertently any of those which, if deliberately transgressed, 
involved the threat of excision from among the people, 2 or "death by the visitation 
of God." 3 Under which of the numerous offences for which this punishment was 
assigned Paul five times suffered, is by no means easy to say. Looking through them 
all as enumerated in the treatise Makkoth, 4 and as expanded by Maimonides, 6 I cannot 
find any of which the Apostle could possibly have been guilty. Where, however, the 
will to punish him existed, the pretext would not long be wanting. His flagellation 
must have been that minor but still terrible punishment which was called " the legal 
scourging" or the "scourging of forty," 6 because the yet deadlier flagellation with rods, 
which was called the Kabbinic, or the flagellation of contumacy, 7 was never inflicted 
within the limits of the Holy Land, and is expressly stated to have been a beating to 
death. 

When once an offender had been scourged this punishment was considered to remove 
the danger of "cutting off," 8 and not only so, but it was regarded as leaving no igno- 
miny behind it. The humane expression of Moses that forty stripes were not to be 
exceeded "lest thy brother seem vile unto thee," was interpreted to mean that when 
the punishment was over the sufferer was "restored to his integrity." So completely 
was this the case that even the High Priest himself might be thus scourged, and 
afterwards be "restored to his majesty." But although it was assumed that he would 
suffer no ulterior injury, but rather be sure to win an inheritance in the future, yet, of 
course, if he again offended he was again scourged. 9 It was even possible that for one 
offence, if it involved the disobedience to several negative precepts, he mi^ht incur 
several consecutive scourgings, care being only taken that he had sufficiently recovered 
from the first before the next was inflicted. It is, therefore, by no means impossible, 
or even improbable, that during those "many days" which Paul spent in Damascus in 
trying to convince these passionate disputants, he may have incurred this torture 
several times. 

To have refused to undergo it by sheltering himself under the privilege of his 
Roman citizenship would have been to incur excommunication, and finally to have out 
himself off from admission into the synagogues. 



EXCURSUS XII. (p. 141). 

Apotheosis of Roman Emperors. 

The early Emperors rather discouraged than stimulated this tendency to flatter them by 
a premature apotheosis. If temples had been built to them in their lifetime, they had 
always been to their " genius," or had at least been associated — as at Athens — with the 
divinity of Rome. 10 Augustus, with these restrictions, had yielded to the earnest 

bidder to have leaven in their houses during the Passover, and they abstained from even using the 
word. Being forbidden swine's flesh, they avoid the word pig altogether, and call the pig vjn "Ql, 
dabhar acheer, "the other thing," &c. (Godwyn, Moses and Aaron, viii. 12.) These are specimens 
of the " hedge of the Law." 

1 Deut. xxv. 4, rrnn mp3> "hinc colligimus plagas infigi debere inter legendum" (R. Ob. de 
Bartenora, ap. Surenhus. Mishna, iv. 290). a rrO- 3 D'DID 'Ti rtfVQ. 

* III., 1, 2, 3, 4. 5 Hilkofh SanJiedr. xviii., xix. 6 Malkooth, ^n'llNl. or b>j£-|N. 

7 nVYTO. See Carpzov. App. Crit., p. 589. The Greek TvunavuTnos. 8 2 Mace. iii. 35. 

9 They quoted Lev. xviii. 29 ; 2 Maec. iii. 15. 

10 Dion, li. 20 ; Suet. Aug. 52. Though he knew that even Proconsuls had in the provinces been 
honoured with temples., yet in " nulla provineia, nisi cornmuni suo Romaeque nomine recepit." See 
the excellent chapter on "L'Apotheose Imperiale," in Boissier, La Religion Romaine, i. 123 — 205. 



718 APPENDIX. 

entreaties of the people of Pergamos and Nicomedia, but had expressly forbidden the 
Romans to take any part in this new cult. The base example spread rapidly in th« 
provinces, and though it is probable that in secret Augustus was not displeased at so 
astonishing a proof of his own power, he affected to smile at it as a man of the world. 1 
In the frenzy of flattery, which is the disease of despotisms, it was but too likely that 
this deification of a living man would creep from the provinces into Italy, and, in spite 
of the assertion of Dion Oassius, that in Italy no one ventured to worship Augustus, it is 
certain from the Corpus Inscriptionum that at his death there had sprung up, either by 
his permission or without his interference, priests of Augustus at Pompeii, flamen> at 
Prseneste, an Augusteum at Pisa, and a Caesareum at Puteoli ; and this — though it was 
due far more to the religious degradation of the age than to the phrenetic pride of the 
autocrat — was made a source of bitter blame against him when he was dead. Even at 
Rome, 2 though no temple rose to him till he was dead, yet we need go no further than 
the poetry of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, 3 to show that he was commonly addressed as a 
deity (numen) and a god, and that sacrifices were offered either to him or in his name ; 
and, as appears from inscriptions, even at Rome, if they did not worship him directly, 
they did so indirectly, by rearing altars to his virtues and his laws, and by inserting his 
name among those of ancient deities in the songs of the Arval brothers. After his death 
the worship was extended without limit. He was known universally as the Divine 
Augustus, a phrase which became as common as/ew le roi. 4 

Tiberius, for political reasons, patronised, and even to a certain extent enforced, this 
new worship, but he also discouraged the extravagance which endeavoured to extend 
divine honours to his living self, and by doing so he at once gratified his undisguised 
cynicism and showed his strong good sense. But the tendency to apotheosis was in his 
time firmly established. He was, as a matter of course, deified after his death, and his 
panegyrist, Velleius Paterculus, tells us a story that when he was in the midst of a 
campaign among the Chauci, a barbarian chief obtained permission to see him, and after 
crossing the river in order to do so, gazed at him for a long time in silence, and 
exclaiming that be had now seen the gods, 5 asked to touch his hand, and then pushed 
off his boat towards the opposite shore, gazing to the last on the living deity. So rapidly 
did the disease of adulation grow that, according to Suetonius, Domitian actually used 
to begin his letters with the words "Dominus et Deus noster sic fiexi jubet" — "Thus 
orders our Lord and God, Domitian 1 " 6 



EXCURSUS XIII. (p. 185). 

Burdens laid on Proselytes. 

We are told in the Talmud that if a Gentile wished to become a proselyte he was asked 
his reasons for the wish, and informed that Israel is now afflicted, persecuted, and cast 
down with all kinds of sufferings. If he replies that he knows it, and is not worthy to 
share in their sufferings, he is admitted, but is told enough of the "light" and the 

1 Quintil. Instt. Oral. vL 3, 77. 

2 Tac. Ann. i. 10, " Nihil deorum honorihus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum per 
flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet ; " AureL Vict, de Ccesar. 1, " Huicque, uti Deo, Roniae provin- 
ciisque omnibus, per urbes celeberrimas vivo mortuoque templa sacerdotes et collegia sacravere." 
This seems, however, to be a positive mistake, though Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. 19, mentions a temple 
which Livia erected to him after his death (Divo) on the Palatine. Suetonius, a very high authority 
on such a subject, says that he most obstinately refused this honour at Rome when it was pressed 
upon him (Aug. 52, " In urbe quidem pertinacissime abstinuit lioc honore "). 

» See Bentley's note on Hor. Epp. II. i. 16 ; Virg. Eccl. i. 7 ; Georg. i. 42 ; Hor. Od. i. 2, 41 ; iii 
6, 1 ; iv. 5, 16 ; Ov. Trist. ii. 8, 9 ; iv. 9, 111. (Boissier, i. 153.) 

* Tac. Ann. 1, 73, "Caelum decretum." 

* Veil. Paterc. ii. 107, " Quos ante audiebain hodie vidi deos." 6 Suet. Domit. 18. 



HATRED OF THE JEWS. 719 

"heavy" precepts to "warn him to desist in time if he is not sincere, since, as Rabl? 
Chelbo said, "proselytes are as injurious to Israel as a scab." He is told about the rulea 
respecting gleaning, and tithes, and the penalties attached to any transgression of the 
Law, and is informed that henceforth if he desecrates the Sabbath he is liable to death 
by stoning. If he submits he is circumcised, and even circumcised a second time, if 
there were any neglect or carelessness in the first performance of the rite. After his 
recovery he is immersed without delay by way of baptism, and two " disciples of the 
wise" stand by him, repeating some of the "light" and "heavy" precepts. 1 In fact, a 
Gentile could only become a proselyte by submitting himself to the whole yoke of 
Rabbinism, the tyranny of archaic, puerile, and wearisome halachoth which year by year 
was laid more heavily on Jewish shoulders by the pedantry of their theologic schools. It 
was the fault of the Jews that the Gentiles usually concentrated their attention on mere 
transient Jewish rites, and not on the eternal principles which God had revealed to them. 
Can we be surprised at this when we find R. Eleazar Ben Chasmah saying that the rules 
about birds' nests (kinim), and the " uncleanliness " of women (niddah) are essentials of 
the Law? 2 



EXCURSUS XIV. (p. 186). 
Hatred op the Jews in Classical Antiquity. 

It is at once curious and painful to perceive how strange was the mixture of curiosity, 
disgust, and contempt, with which the Jews were regarded in pagan antiquity. From 
Manetho the Egyptian priest, with whom seems to have originated the calumny that 
they were a nation of lepers, 3 down to Annaaus Florus, who brands them as an impious 
race, 4 the references to them in secular literature are a tissue of absurd calumnies or 
biting sarcasms. Chaeremon alludes to them as unclean and polluted; 5 Lysimachus, as 
diseased and unsocial; 6 Diodorus Siculus, as addicted to strange rites, and hostile to 
strangers; 7 Apollonius Molon, a Greek rhetorician of the time of Cicero, as "godless 
and misanthropical ; " 8 Cicero heaps scorn and indignation upon them in his Oration for 
the extortionate and tyrannous Flaccus, 9 and in that on the consular provinces call? 
them "a race born for slavery;" 10 Horace sneers at their proselytism, and their 
circumcision, and their Sabbaths; 11 Seneca calls them "a most abandoned race;" 12 
Martial, besides odious allusions to their national rite, pours his contempt on their 
poverty, their mendicancy, their religion, and their low trade of selling sulphur matches 
and buying broken glass, and he seems to be the first to originate the slander repeated 
by Sir Thomas Browne in his "Popular Errors;" 13 Quintilian, gentle as he was, yet 
admits a very bitter remark against the Jews and Moses; 14 Lucan alludes to their 
" uncertain Deity ; " 15 Petronius Arbiter seems to think, as did many of the ancients, 
that the Jews did not abhor, but actually worshipped the pig ; 16 Tacitus, in his History, 

i Yebhamoth, f. 47, 1. 

2 Pirke Abhoth, iii. 28. In partial defence of the Jews it may be said that some were inclined to 
become proselytes to avoid military service (Tac. Ann. ii. 35 ; Suet. Tib. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5), 
others were ShecJiemite proselytes — i.e., to marry rich Jewesses (id. xvi. 7, 5 ; xx. 7, 2, 3), others 
were " Zww-proselytes " — i.e., out of fear (2 Kings xvii. 26; Jos. B.J. ii. 17, 10). Herzog. Real. 
Enc., s. v. 3 j_ p j os> c . ^p. i, 26. 

* Speaking of Pompey, Florus says, " Et vidit illudgrande impiae gentis arcanum. 

5 Jos. c. Ap. i. 32. 6 Id. i. 34. 7 Diod. Sic. xl. 8 Jos. c. Ap. ii. 14. 

9 Cic. pro. Flacco, xxviii. 10 Be Prov. Cons. v. n Hor. Sat. i. iv. 143 ; v. 100 ; ix. 69. 

12 Ap. Aug. Be Civ. Bei. vii. 36, " Usque eo sceleratissimae gentis consuetudo convaluit [the 
Sabbath] ut," &c. 

13 Mart. Ep. L 42 ; xii. 30, 35, 57 ; iv. 4 ; vii. 82 ; xi. 94, i. 4. Cf. Stat. Silv. i. 6. The relation of 
the Herods to the Csesars had attracted a large share of attention to the Jews in the Imperial epoch. 
Pers. v. 179—184 ; Juv. vi. 157. i* Be Insit. Orat. iii. 7. 

15 Pharsal. ii. 593, " incerti Judaea Dei." 

16 Satiric. Buchler, p. 221, " Judaeus licet et porcinum numen, adoret," &c. (Cf. Plut Synop, 
tf. 6.) 



720 APPENDIX. 

reproacl es them with gross sensuality, low cunning, and strong hatred of all nations but 
their own, and gives at full length, and with all gravity, the preposterous story about 
their veneration for the ass. 1 In his Annals he speaks with equal horror and equal 
ignorance of Jews and Christians, and considers that if the thousands of Jews who were 
deported to Sardinia died it would be a cheap loss ; 2 Juvenal flings scornful allusion at 
their squalor, beggary, turbulence, superstition, cheatery, and idleness ; 3 Celsus abused 
them as jugglers and vagabonds ; 4 Ammianus Marcellinus as " disgusting and noisy ; " 5 
Rutilius Numatianus closes the long line of angry slanderers by a burst of abuse, in 
which he characterises Judaea as a "lying slave-cage." 6 Jeremiah had bidden the Jewi 
to seek the peace of, and to pray for, the city of their captivity, " for in the peace 
thereof shall ye have peace." 7 Better had it been for the ancient Jews if they had lived 
in the spirit of that large advice. But the Gentiles were well aware that in the Jewish 
synagogues there was an exception to the dead uniformity of the Romish Empire, and 
that they and their customs were there treated with open and bitter scorn, which they 
repaid tenfold. 8 



EXCURSUS XV. (p. 186). 
Judgments op Early Pagan "Writers on Christianity. 
Suetonius (died circ. A.D. 110). 
"Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit" (Glaud. 25). 9 
"Afflicti suppliciis Christiani genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae M 
(Nero, 16). 

" Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis, ut eo tempore. 
Judaea profecti rerum potirentur " {Vesp. 4). 

Tacitus (Consul suffectus, A.D. 97). 

" Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per 
flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor ejus nominis Christus Tiberio 
imperitante per procuratorem Pont. Pilatum supplicio affectus est ; repressaque in 
praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat non modo per Judaeam originem ejus 
mali, sed per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebran- 
turque. Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens, 
haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio generis humani convicti sunt. Et pereunti- 
bus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus 
affixi aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur . . . 
unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur 
tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur " {Ann. xv. 44). 

Gentiles in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons complain, £evt)v two. koX 
*aivr\v rinxv hadyovai Opr)<TKeCav (op. Euseb. H. E. V. 1). 

1 Tac. Hist. v. 2 — 5 ; Diod. Sic. i. 28 ; Plut. Synop. iv. 6. On this story see Geiger, Juden uni 
Jvdenthum, Illustr. Monatsch d. Judenth, Oct., 1865. 

2 Ann. xv. 44 ; ii. 85, " si ob gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum." (Cf. Suet. Tib. 36 ; Jos. 
Antt. xviii. 3, 5 ; Philo, Leg. 24.) 

8 Sat. vi. 542—547, 156—160 ; xiv. 96—107. See, for other allusions, id. iii. 13, 296. 
* Ap. Orig. c. Uels. i. 33, yo-qriov. 

5 Ammiau. Marc. xxii. 5, " fetentes Judaei." (See "Gentiles " in Kitto.) 

6 Itinerar. i. 3, 89. In the above quotations and references I have made free use (with certain 
additions) of Dr. Gill's Notices of the Jews by Classic Authors (see also Meier's Judaica, and the article 
of Geiger, above quoted). 7 Jer. xxix. 7. 

8 Ps. Heraclit. Ep. vii. ; Hausrath, N. T. Gesch. ii. 79. Specimens of this scorn may be seen in 
Jos. c. Ap. ii. 34, 35. 

9 According to Sulpic. Sever s (Hist. Sacr. ii. 30), Titus decided that the Temple should be 
destroyed that Christianity and Judaism might be eradicated together. "Quippe has religiones, 
licet contrarias sibi, iisdem tamen auctoribus profectas ; Christianos ex Judaeis exstitisse ; radico 
aublata, stirpem facile perituram." This is believed by Bernays to be a quotation from Tacitus. 



PROCONSULATE OF SERGIUS PAULTXS. 721 

Pliny the Younger (died circ. A.D. 117). 

His tamous letter to Trajan is too long for insertion. He asks whether he is to punish 
persons for simply being Christians, or for crimes involved in the charge of being so {nomen 
ipsum, siflagitiis careat, anflagitia cohaerentia nomini). He says that he has punished those 
who, after threat of punishment, still declared themselves Christians, because he con- 
siders that in any case their " inflexible obstinacy " should be punished. Otbers equally 
infatuated {similis amentiae) he determined to send to Rome, being Eoman citizens. 
Having received an anonymous accusation which inculpated many, he tested them, if 
they denied the charge of being Christians, by making them call on the gods, and offer 
incense and wine to the Emperor's image, and curse Christ. If they did this he dismissed 
them, because he was told that no true Christian would ever do it. Some said that they 
had long abjured Christianity, but declared that the head and front of their " fault " or 
" error " had simply been the custom of meeting before dawn, and singing antiphons to 
Christ as a God, and binding themselves with an oath 1 not to steal, rob, commit 
adultery, break their word, or deny the trust committed to them; after which they 
separated, meeting again for a harmless meal — a custom which they had dropped after 
Pliny's edict forbidding guilds. Scarcely crediting this strange account of their innocent 
life, he had put two deaconesses (ex duabus ancillis quae ministrae dicebantur) to the 
torture, but discovered nothing beyond perverted and immoderate superstition (pravam, 
immodicam). He therefore consults Trajan, because of the multitude of the accused, 
who were of every age, rank, and sex, both in the city and in the country. So widely 
had " the contagion of that wretched superstition " spread that the temples were almost 
deserted, and there was scarcely any one to buy the victims (Ep. x. 97). 

To this letter Trajan briefly replies that the Christians are to be punished if con- 
victed, but not to be sought out ; to be pardoned if they sacrifice, and not to be tried on 
anonymous accusations. 

Epiotetus (died A.D. 117). 

" Then through madness it is possible for a man to be so disposed towards these 
things" {i.e., to be indifferent to the world), "and the Galilaeans through habit" 
{Dissert, iv. 7). 

M. Aurelius Antoninus (died A.D. 180). 

Speaking of readiness to die, he says that it is noble, " so that it comes from a man's 
own judgment, not from mere obstinacy (SiA ^t\rjv irapaTagiv), as with the Christians, but 
considerately, and with dignity " {Eucheir. xi. 3). 

Luctan (died circ. A.D. 200). 
His sneers and parodies of what he calls the 0avfxa<rrn <ro$L* of the Christians are to be 
found in the Vex. Historia, I. 12, 30 ; II. 4, 11 — 12 (Alexcmd. (Pseudomantis) xxv. 38), 
The PhUopatris is not by Lucian, but a hundred years later. 

Galen, the great writer on Physic (died A.D. 200). 
In his book, De different, pulsuum, he alludes twice to the obstinacy of Christians. 



EXCURSUS XVI. (p. 197). 
The Proconsulate op Sergius Paulus. 
The title of " Proconsul " 2 given to this insular governor is one of those minute touches 
of accuracy which occur on every page of the Acts of the Apostles. 

It might have been a serious difficulty that the name of Sergius Paulus does not occur 
in the Fasti of the Consuls till long after this period, 3 but the difficulty vanishes when 

1 Interesting as the earliest Christian application of the word " Sacrament" (Waterland, On (fa 
Eucharist, i.). a E. V. " Deputy." 

3 Serg. Paulus, consul suffectus, A.D. 21, and another, Consul, A.D. 168. 

TJ TJ 



722 APPENDIX. 

we find that the title of Proconsul was given to the Governor of a senatorial province, 
whatever may have been his previous rank. 1 But another and more serious difficulty 
was once urged. There were two kinds of provinces, the imperial and the senatorial, 
both of which were called Eparchies (eirapxCat,). The imperial were those to which the 
governors were sent by the Emperor, because their circumstances involved the necessity 
of military command. Augustus, under pretence of relieving the Senate from the burden 
of the more disturbed provinces, had astutely reserved for his personal administration 
those regions of the empire where the presence of an army was required. As the title 
Praetor (in Greek, ^.rparnyb?, or general) still retained some shadow of its old military 
significance, the Governors of these provinces were called Propraetors, or 'AvTt<rrpaT>rycH» 
for which, in the New Testament, the more general term 'Hye/mwv is often used. Thii 
Greek word for " Governor" serves as an equivalent both for " Procurator " and also for 
Praeses or Legatus, which was, for instance, the ordinary designation of the Governor of 
Syria. These Praesides, Legati, or Propraetors held their commands at the Emperor's 
pleasure, and, especially in the reign of Tiberius, were often left for years undisturbed 
in their tenure of office. The Proconsuls, or 'KvOviraroi, on the other hand, who were 
appointed by the Senate, only held their posts for a single year. Now it appears from 
Strabo that when, in B.C. 27, Augustus divided the provinces between himself and the 
Senate, Cyprus was reserved as one of the imperial districts {<rrpa.rr\yiKri eirapxla), and with 
this Dion Cassius agrees. 2 Consequently even eminent writers like Grotius thought that 
St. Luke had here fallen into an error ; and Baronius supposes that Cyprus must at this 
time have been an honorary adjunct to the Proconsulship of Cilicia, while Grotius suggests 
that Greek flattery might have often given to a Propraetor the more distinguished title 
of Proconsul, and that St. Luke might have used it in accordance with the common 
parlance. But a little more research has resulted in the discovery that though Cyprus 
originally was an imperial province, and ultimately reverted to the same condition, yet 
Augustus restored both it and Gallia Narbonensis to the Senate in exchange for Dalmatia, 
because he found that they did not need the presence of many soldiers. 3 And to set the 
matter finally at rest, copper coins and inscriptions of this very epoch have been found 
at Curium and Citium in which the title of Proconsul is given to Cominius Proclus 
Julius Cordus, and L. Aunus Bassus, who must have been immediate predecessors or 
successors of Sergius Paulus. 4 

The name Sergius Paulus is itself interesting. Of this particular Proconsul, indeed, 
we know nothing beyond the eulogy of the sacred historian that he was a man of sense, 6 
and that he was deeply impressed by the teaching of St. Paul. But Pliny the Elder, in 
his Natural History, three times refers to a Sergius Paulus as a person interested in 
intelligent researches ; and it is not impossible that this Sergius Paulus may be none 
other than our Cyprian Proconsul. 6 If so, the character given him in one passing word 
by St. Luke will be confirmed, and we feel additional pleasure in tracing similar 
chayWTistics in others of the same name who may well have been hia descendants ; for 
instance, Li fckre Sergius Paulus who, more than a hundred years afterwards, receives 
the encomium of the phyaisian Galen for his eminence both as a theoretic and a practical 
Philosopher. 7 

1 Dio Cass, liii. 13, »cal avSvirdrovs Ka\et<r$ai juij on rows Svo tovs virarevKoras (ex-Consuls) akXk 
mu tows aAAovs tw eoTpa.TrjyrjKoTwi' (ex-Praetors), k. t. A. 
» Dio Cass. liii. 12 ; Strabo, xiv. 685 ; Suet. Aug. 47 ; 

• Dio Cass. liii. 13, ttjv Kv7rpoi' . . . tu Srjixw aireSwicev f liv. 4, nai otro) avOviraTOi xat e* 
f«"wa to. e6vq irepiireaOat. rjp£avTO. 

* Eckhel, iii. 84 ; Akerman, Numitm. Ilhistr., pp. 39, 42 ; Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. 2631, 2632. 

8 Acts xiii. 7, avSpi crvverw. The name of a Proconsul Paulus has been found on an inscription 
at Soli (Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 495). 

6 Plin. H. N. i. Pliny is writing only twenty years after this period. 

7 Renan, St. Paul, p. 15, who refers to Orelli,_2414, 4938. Galen, De Anatom. 1 (apud Wetstein), 
avfipbs to. iravra. npoiTcvovros epyoi? Te «ai A.6yois toi? iv <£iA.ocro</>i^, 



BT. JOHN AND ST. PAUL. 723 



KXCUKSUS XYII. (p. 249). 

St. John and St. Paul. 

Of the three "seeming pillars," John apprxrs to have taken no part in the synod ai 
Jerusalem, or if he did it was not sufficiently decisive to be recorded. He belonged, it 
is clear, at this time to the Church of the Circumcision, and, so far as we know, this was 
the only occasion on which he was thrown into the society of St. Paul. But we have St. 
Paul's express testimony — in the only passage in which he is mentioned in the Epistles— 
that he recognised his apostolate ; and the Apocalypse, his earliest writing, so far from 
showing that irreconcilable hatred to the doctrines of St. Paul which has been assumed 
on grounds inconceivably frivolous, and repeated subsequently with extraordinary reck- 
lessness, offers a close parallelism to St. Paul's Epistles in thoughts and principles, which 
is all the more striking from the marked differences of tone aud expression. We are 
calmly assured, without even the condescension of an attempted proof, that the " false 
Jew," the "false Apostle," the "false prophet," the "Balaam," the "JezebeL" the 
"Nicolas," the " chief of the synagogue of Satan," alluded to in the Apocalypse, 1 are as 
indubitably intended for St. Paul as are the savage allusions covertly made to him under 
the name of Simon the Magician in the Pseudo- Clementines. Now, on what basis is this 
conclusion founded ? Simply on the resemblance in tone of a spurious Ebionite romance 
(the Clementines) to the phrases, "those which say they are Apostles and are not," 
" those which say they are Jews and are not," and the allusions to some who held the 
doctrine of Balaam, and of "that woman Jezebel," who taught people " to commit forni- 
cation, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. " It is true that there were Judaisers who 
attacked St. Paul's claim to be an Apostle ; but to assert that St. John was one of them 
is to give the direct lie to St. Paul, while to class St. Paul with them " that say they are 
Jews and are not " is to falsify the most notorious facts concerning one who was a 
Pharisee of Pharisees, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Again, to assert boldly that St. 
Paul ever taught people to eat things offered to idols, or anything which could be so 
described without the grossest calumny, is a distinct contradiction of his own words, since 
he expressly warned his converts not to do this, and assigns for his warning the very 
reason that to do so would be "to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel." 2 
In fact, though St. Paul would have denied that to eat them was wrong in itself, his 
concessions on this point went very little beyond those which are sanctioned in the 
Talmud itself. 3 Once more, what conceivable excuse could there be for saying that St. 
Paul ever taught men " to commit fornication " ? — a sin against which, whether literally 
or metaphorically understood, he has urged considerations more deeply seated, more 
likely to touch the heart, more likely to bind the conscience, than all the other writers in 
the New Testament put together. That even in earliest days there did spring up anti- 
noraian sects which were guilty of such accursed teaching, we know from Church history, 
and find traces even in the sacred writers ; and it is therefore probable that the allusions 
of the Apocalypse are as literal as the Old Testament analogies to which St. John no less 
than St. Paul refers. 4 That "the fornication" of the Apocalypse means "mixed 
marriages " there is not even a shadow of reason to believe, nor if it did would there be 

1 Kev. ii. 2, 6, 9, 14, 15, 20, 34 ; ill. 9. (See Renan, St. P., 302—305, who quietly asserts this as 
tf it were indisputable.) Yet St. Paul himself was the first to use this very comparison with Balaam 
fl Cor. x. 7, 8), and to denounce the extreme wickedness of putting a stumbling-block before others 
(Rom. xiv. 21 ; 2 Cor. xi. 29). 2 1 Cor. viii. 13 (cf. x. 32). 

» Ketubhdth, f. 15, 1, which, almost in the very language of St. Paul, lays down the rule that if 
% man has bought meat, and is doubtful whether it is legally clean, he must not eat it ; but if he 
lights upon it accidentally, he may eat it without further inquiry. Meat declared to be legally 
clean (tdhor) is stamped with a leaden seal, on which is the word kashar (" lawful," KaOapbv). (I 
Disraeli, Genius of Judaism, p. 154.) 

* 1 Cor. x. 7, 8. (See some excellent remarks in Lightfoot's Gal., pp. 290, 335.) 
D u 2 



724 APPENDIX. 

any ground for saying that St. Paul encouraged them. Though he used, on that as >n 
all such topics, the language of wisdom and of charity, the whole tendency of his teaching 
is to discourage them. 1 Moreover, if Paul had been aimed at, and if St. John, the 
Apostle of Love, really had been the slanderous and rabid Judaiser which these allusions 
would then imply, it is inconceivable that no word should be said about the points 
respecting which, to a Judaiser, he must have seemed infinitely more assailable — namely, 
St. Paul's very low estimate of circumcision, and his declared conviction that by the 
works of the Law no man can be justified in God's sight. Now, in the Apocalypse neither 
circumcision, nor the Law, nor Moses, nor oral tradition are once so much as mentioned 
or alluded to, while redemption by the blood of the Lamb, and the universality of that 
redemption as extending to " every kindred and tongue and people and nation," 2 are 
asserted as absolutely and unconditionally as they could have been by Paul himself. 
Further, it needs but a casual study of St. John and St. Paul to see that " Jesus Christ " 
is in both of them the divine secret and the fundamental conception of all Christianity. 
St. John at this time was the more contemplative, the less prominently active, St. John 
of the Gospels. " The hidden fires of his nature " had not yet " burst out into a flame." 
Two incidents preserved for us in the Gospels had indeed shown that those fires were 
there ; 3 but it was not till James the Lord's brother, and Peter, and Paul himself had 
passed away that he became the bold and uncompromising leader whose counsels were as 
oracles to the Asian Church. Nevertheless, we may be sure that St. John was not found 
among the opponents of St. Paul. That opposition is always connected with the 
adherents and the influence of James. During the lifetime of Jesus James had not fully 
accepted His mission, and seems only to have been converted by the Eesurrection. He 
had not therefore lived, as the other Apostles had lived, in daily contact with the mind 
and influence of Jesus, and was in consequence more deeply imbued with the beliefs of 
his early Jewish training, and less entirely permeated in intellect by the breath of the 
new life. But Peter and John, more than any living men, must have known what was 
the mind of Christ. We know that they were one in heart, and we may be sure that 
they who had gone together to visit and confirm the detested Samaritans and witness 
their participation in the gifts of the Holy Ghost, would be little likely to look with 
rabid jealousy on the equal freedom of a yet wider extension of the Kingdom of God. 



EXCURSUS XVIII. (p. 253). 

The Attacks on St. Paul in the Clementines. 

That Paul, in consequence of the death-blow which he gave to Jewish Pharia 
pursued by a particular section of the Judseo-Christian Church with unrelenting opposi- 
tion, is a matter of history. It needs no further proof than the large sections in hia 
Epistles which are occupied with arguments against Pharisaic or Gnostic Judaism, such 
as had invaded the Churches of Corinth, Galatia, Colossse, and Crete. But true though 
it is that he was obliged to contend in lifelong struggle with a povrty, it is not true that 
he remained long unrecognised by the Church at large. The supposition that he was, 
lias merely originated from the exceptional literary activity of a single section of 
Christian Ebionites. Dr. Lightfoot, in his essay on "St. Paul and the Three," has 
shown, by patient and entirely candid investigation, that even the Church of Judaea was 
not exclusively anti-Pauline, and that the anti-Pauline faction within it, so far from 
representing the tendencies of the whole Christian Church, did not even represent the 
Christians of Palestine. The Christian Jews of the Holy Land naturally continued, as a 

» ttee especially 2 Cor. vL 14. * lie v. v. 9 ; vii. 9. * Luke ix. 54 ; Matt. xx. U 



ST. PAUL IN THE CLEMENTINES. 725 

body, to observe the Mosaic Law — as was done by St. Paul himself so far as he could do 
bo without compromising the emancipation of the G-entiles — until the fall of Jerusalem 
rendered all such observance a mere mockery and sham. l If the Passover, the very central 
ordinance of Mosaism, was rendered simply impossible, God had Himself demonstrated 
that the aeon of the Law was closed. The withdrawal of the Church to Pella, caused by 
a recollection of the warnings of Jesus, would look to the Jews like an unpatriotic 
desertion of their cause ; and the frantic denunciations of the Mins, which date from 
this epoch, were but signs of the gathering detestation of Jew for Christian which 
culminated in the savage massacres by Bar-cochba of those Christians who refused to 
apostatise and blaspheme. When the name of Jerusalem had given way to that of 
iElia Capitolina, and Christians were allowed to live where no Jew might set his foot, 
the Church of the new city became predominantly Gentile, and was for the first time 
governed by a Gentile bishop. 2 It is not till after this period that we hear of two sects, 
distinct from each other, but often confused. These were the Nazarenes and the 
Ebionites. The NAZAPvENES were not in any way hostile to the work and memory of 
Paul, and they differed from other Christians only in holding that the Law was still 
binding on Jewish converts. " The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs " — a book 
which, whether written by a Nazarene or not, expresses their general tenets so far as we 
can gather them — not only does not oppose the doctrines of St. Paul, but, though 
written from the Judaeo-Christian standpoint, puts into the mouth of Benjamin a 
splendid eulogy of Paul, as one who is to arise from that tribe "beloved of the Lord, 
listening to His voice, enlightening all the Gentiles with new knowledge." The 
EBIONITES, on the other hand — a powerful and zealous sect — breathed the exact 
spirit of Paul's Judaising enemies, and the views of many of them became deeply tinged 
with the Gnostic tendencies of the more advanced Essenes. To this section of the 
Ebionites we owe the forgeries known as the Clementine Homilies, the Clementine 
Recognitions, extant in a Latin paraphrase of Rufinus, 3 and a spurious letter of Peter to 
James. In the Homilies St. Paul is surreptitiously attacked in the guise of Simon 
Magus. 4 The allusion to his reproof of St. Peter at Antioch is too plain to be overlooked, 
and discredit is thrown on his doctrine, his revelations, and his independent attitude 
towards James. In the letter of St. Peter he is still more severely, though still covertly 
slandered, as "the enemy" whose teaching was antinomian and absurd, and who 
calumniously asserted that St. Peter held one view and sanctioned another. In the 
Recognitions these attacks do not appear, but "the enemy " sent by Caiaphas to arrest 
St. Peter at Antioch, and who throws St. James down the Temple steps, is evidently 
meant for St. Paul, and this notable story is believed to have been borrowed from a 
prating fiction called the "Ascents of James," which is also the source of the venomous 
calumny that Paul was a Gentile who had accepted circumcision in hopes of marrying 
the High Priest's daughter, and had only apostatised from Mosaism when his hopes 
were disappointed. 5 

It is on trash of this kind, at once feeble and virulent, at once baseless and malignant, 
that some have based the belief that there was deadly opposition between Paul and the 
Twelve, and that his work was not fully recognised till the close of the second century. 
The fact, however, is that these Ebionite slanders and forgeries are representative of none 
but an isolated sect. Justin lived in Samaria in the earlier half of the second century, 
and shows no trace of these views. Hegesippus was a Jewish Christian who travelled to 
Rome in the middle of the second century, visiting many Christian Churches ; and 

1 Qratz, Gesch. d. Juden, iv. 112. 2 Marcus, B.C. 132. Just. Mart. Apol. i. 31, p. 72. 

3 And partly in Syriac. 

* The English reader may see these passages translated in Baur's First Three Centuries, i. pp. 
99—98. 

s Epiphan. Saeres, xxx. 16. Renan also refers to Massechta, Gerim, 1, ed, Kirchheim. 



726 APPENDIX. 

Eusebius, who knew his writings, vouches for his perfect orthodoxy. 1 Such being the 
case, it is hardly even necessary to prove that the other churches of the second century 
were in no sense anti-Pauline. It may be true that for a short time there were two 
sections — a Jewish and a Gentile — in the Church of Rome, and even that each section 
had its own bishop, the possible successors respectively of the Apostles of the circumcision 
and of the uncircumcision. 2 But if so, these two sections were, at the close of the first 
century, united under the gentle and orthodox Clement; and even on the doubtful 
hypothesis that the Clementines had a Roman origin, their indirectness — the cautious, 
■ubterranean, timid sort of way in which they attack the great Apostle — is alone a 
decisive proof that the forger could by no means rely on the general sympathy of tfie 
readers into whose hands his writings fell. And yet on this very attenuated apex is built 
the huge inverted pyramid of inference, which finally declares the Epistle of St. Jude to 
be a specimen of one of the letters, breathing sanguinary hatred and atrocious falsehood, 
which are supposed to have been despatched from Jerusalem in the name of the Apostles, 
and in the composition of which, "since James and Jude probably could not speak Greek," 
they probably employed Greek secretaries ! 3 Let any one read the Epistle of St. Jude, 
and consider, verse by verse, how it could be possibly applied to St. Paul, and how abso- 
lutely such a theory contradicts every really authentic fact of his relation to the Apostles, 
as well as the character and bearing of the Apostles themselves, and he will be able to 
estimate the validity of the criticism which calmly represents as reasonable history this 
darkening fume of inferences from the narrow aperture of a worthless forgery. 



EXCURSUS XIX. (p. 345). 

The Man of Sin; or, "The Lawless.*' 

" Ego prorsus quid dixerit fateor me ignorare."— S. Auo. 

The various conjectures as to the " Man of Sin," and " that which withholdeth," may be 
classed under three heads — (i. ) the nearly contemporary, (ii. ) the distantly prophetic, and 
(iii.) the subjectively general. And in each of these classes the suggested antitypes are 
either (a) general and impersonal, or (£) individual and special. 

(i.) The opinion adopted will, of course, depend greatly on the extent to which the 
destruction of Judaism in the overthrow of Jerusalem can be regarded as "a coming of 
the Lord." Those who, in accordance with most of the definite temporal prophecies of 
Scripture, think that St. Paul must have been alluding to something nearly contemporary 
— something which already loomed on the horizon, and therefore to something which 
would alone have a direct bearing on the lives of contemporary Christians, explain the 
Apostasy and the Man of Sin to represent, (a) generally, the Pharisees, or Gnosticism, or 

1 It is no disproof of this that he borrows the Ebionite account of St. James ; and his supposed 
condemnation of St. Paul for using the expression " Eye hath not seen," &c, seems to rest on an 
entire misapprehension (Lightfoot, Gal., p. 311). 

2 Some such fact may lie behind the remark of Tertullian that Clement was ordained bishop by 
St. Peter, whereas Irenseus places Linus and Anencletus before him. 

3 Renan, St. Paul, p. 300. " En quittant Antioche les agents du parti hierosolomyte jurerent 
de bouleverser les fondations de Paul, de detruire les Eglises, de renverser ce qu'il avait edifa'e avec 
tan.t de labeurs. II semble qu'a cette occasion de nouvelles lettres furent expediees de Jerusalem, 
au noin des ap&tres. II se peut meme qu'un exemplaire de ces lettres haineuses nous ait ete conserve 
dans l'Epitre de Jude, frere de Jacques, et comme lui ' frere du Seigneur,' qui fait partie du canon," 
&c. The apparent array of authorities quoted in support of such inferences has no real bearing on 
them, and upon examination dwindles into the narrow limits indicated below. Nor does M. Renan 
adduce a single proof, or anything remotely resembling a proof, that bynopveia the Apocalypse and 
the Epistle of Jude imply the doctrine of St. Paul (id. p. 300), or that the relative moderation of 
Michael (Jude 9) is contrasted with the impertinence of St. Paul (!), or, in fact, any other of the 
utterly wild conclusions into which he has exaggorated.the j?erverted ingenuity of Tubingen theorist*. 
See further the Excursus on St. John and St. Paul. 



THE MAN OP SIH. 727 

fche growth of heresy ; or (£) individually, Nero, or some Roman Emperor, Simon Magus, 
or Simon the son of Gioras ; and they see " the check " generally in the Roman Emperor, 
or the Jewish Law, or spiritual gifts, 1 or the time appointed by God ; 2 or individually in 
some Emperor ( e.g., Claudius=qui claudit=6 icarex"), 3 or James the Just, 4 or — in St. 
Paul himself ! 

(ii.) Those who have taken the distantly prophetical view of the passage explain the 
Apostasy of the Man of Sin to be, (a) generally, the Papacy, or the Reformation, or 
Rationalism, or something as yet undeveloped ; or (/3) individually, Mahomet, or Luther, 
or Napoleon, or some future personal Antichrist ; while they see " the check" either, as 
above, in the Roman Empire, or in the German Empire, or, more generally still, in the 
fabric of human polity. 

(iii.) Finally, those who take an entirely broad and subjective view of the passage, see 
in it only a vague forecast of that which finds its fulfilment in all Christian, and, indeed, 
in all secular, history, of the counter working of two opposing forces, good and evil, 
Christ and Antichrist, the Jetser tdbh and the Jetser-ha-rd, a lawless violence and a 
restraining power. 

Now, of all these interpretations one alone can be regarded as reasonably certain — 
namely, that which views "the check" as the Roman Empire, 5 and "the checker" as 
the Roman Emperor. This may be regarded as fairly established, and has received the 
widest acceptance, first, because it fulfils the conditions of being something present and 
intelligible ; secondly, because we see an obvious reason why it should have been only 
hinted at, since to express it would have been a positive danger both to the writer and 
the community; 6 and, thirdly, because, as Bishop Wordsworth has pointed out, the 
Epistle was from the first publicly read, and the Thessalonians must have attached a 
meaning to it, and that meaning has been handed down to us traditionally from the 
earliest times. 7 Whatever may have been the wild vagaries of theological rancour, 
expressing itself in the form of Biblical commentary, the early Fathers, at least, were 
almost unanimous in regarding "the restraining power" as being the Roman Empire, 8 
and the "restrainer" as being some Roman Emperor. 9 And it seems obvious that one 
main feature in the blasphemous self-exaltation and opposition to God which is to be a 
mark of the Man of Sin is suggested by the insane and sacrilegious enormities of Caligula 
(A.D. 40) thirteen years earlier, as well as by the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. 
Other traits may have been suggested by the pretensions and sorceries of Simon Magus 



1 Chrysostom. * Theodoret (6 rov ®eou opos). 

8 Hitzig— very precariously. * Wieseler, Chron. 268—273. 

8 " Quis nisi Romanus status?" (Tert. De Resurr. Cam. 24). "Clausulam saeculi acerbitates 
horrendas comminentem Romani imperii commeatu scimus ratardari " (id. Apol. 32). This was all 
the more natural, because the Roman Empire was regarded as the Fourth Kingdom of DanieL Prof. 
Jowett objects (1) that he could not have expected it to be so soon swept away ; and (2) that it is 
not in pari materid. But for (1) see 1 Thess. i. 10 ; v. 4 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 22, &c. ; and (2) St. Paul daily saw 
the bearing of the Empire on the spread and position of Christianity. 

• St. Paul had already found this by experience, even though his conversation with the Thessalo- 
nians had been comparatively private. But when the Church grew, and heathens dropped not un- 
frequontly into its meetings, it would have been most compromising to them to speak of the 
destruction of the Roman Empire contemplated as a near event. 

7 The Rabbis held a similar view. One of them said, " The Messiah will not come till the world 
has become all white with leprosy (Lev. xiii. 13) by the Roman Empire embracing Christianity." 
Sanhedrin, f. 97, 1 ; Soteh, f. 49, 2 ; (Amsterd. ed). 

8 So Tert. De Resurr. Carnis, 24; Iren. v. 25, 26 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei. xx. 19 ; Jer. Qu. xi. ad Algas; 
Lact. vii. 15, &c. 

9 Claudius was Emperor when the Epistle was written, early in A.D. 54. Whether there is any 
allusion to his name in the word Kare'xw I am not prepared to say. Kern believes that Nero is 
intended by "the Lawless." and therefore (seeing that the first five years of Nero were that "golden 
quinquennium," which Roman writers so highly praise) concludes that the Epistle is spurious. 
Rev. xvii. 10, 11, refers to a later time, and possibly to the strangely prevalent notion that Nero was 
not really dead, but would in due time re-appear. The expressions used are evidently coloured by 
the picture of Antiochus Epiphanes in Dan. xi He is called " a man of sin " (dvijp c^mproAos) in 



728 



APPENDIX. 



Mid similar widely-accredited impostors. Nero became to the Christian Church some 
years afterwards the very impersonation of their ideal Antichrist. 

But to form any conception as to St. Paul's meaning, besides being guided by his 
belief of the probable nearness of the Advent, and by the necessity that what he said 
should have some meaning and value to his hearers, we must consider (a) the views of the 
& S e > (0) the symbols he uses ; and (y) his own subsequent language when he alludes to 
any similar topic. 

Turning, then, to these, we find that (a) St. Paul was fully aware that, in the then 
present dispensation, the triumph of Christ was not to be final or complete. He may 
well have heard of Christ's solemn question, "Nevertheless, when the Son of Man 
cometh, shall he find faith on the earth ? " 1 Even thus early in his career his prescient 
eye may have observed the traces of that Judaic and Antichristian faction which was 
to undo so much of his work, and embitter so many years of his life, and to whom he 
applies the sternest language. Already he may have noticed the germs of the various 
forms of Gnosticism, of which, in his Epistle to Timothy, he describes the " devilish 
doctrines " in language which recalls some of his expressions in this place. 2 And the 
views of the early Christians, as expressed by other Apostles, were all founded on warn- 
ings which Christ had uttered, and all pointed in the same direction. 3 That St. Paul 
should have thrown his forebodings into the concrete was natural to one so familiar with 
Old Testament prophecy, 4 so given to personification, and so trained to the expectation 
of a Messiah who should be the personal victor over all iniquity in the person of the 
Arch-foe, the Mashd, the Antichrist. That this personification should also in part have 
taken its colour from the monstrous wickedness and blasphemous follies of emperors like 
Tiberius and Caligula, was exactly what we should have expected ; and, indeed, the 
hopes and fears of the Jews had acted on the world of heathendom, which in its turn 
reacted upon them. It is a most interesting confirmation of this fact that the Jews gave 
to Antichrist the name of Armillus (oibo-i^)' Thus, in the Targum of Jonathan on Isa. 
xi. 4, we find, " With the breath of His lips shall He destroy the wicked Armillus ; " and 
in the Jerusalem Targum on Numb. xi. 26, and Deut. xxxiv. 2, we are told of Armalgus 
the Impious. This seems to be an allusion to the bracelets (armilke) which, with utter 
defiance of all public dignity, were worn in public by Caligula. 5 We see, then, what 
St. Paul's anticipations at this moment were. He thought that ere long the Roman 
Empire, so far at any rate as it was represented by the reigning Emperor, would be swept 
away; that thereupon the existing tendencies of iniquity and apostasy, whether in 
Judaism or in the Church itself, would be concentrated in the person of one terrible 
opponent, and that the destruction of this opponent would be caused by the personal 
Advent of the Lord. At this time portents and presages of the most direful character 
were in the air. The hideous secrets of the Imperial Court were darkly whispered among 
the people. There were rumours of monstrous births, of rains of blood, of unnatural 
omens. 6 Though Claudius had been the last to learn the infamous orgies of his wife 
Messalina, and perhaps the last to suspect the murderous designs of his wife and niece 
Agrippina, yet by this time even he was not unaware that his life hung on a thread. Little 
was as yet known of Nero in the provinces, but it might have been anticipated, before 
the illusive promise of the early part of his reign, that the son of such a father and such a 
mother could only turn out to be the monster which his father expected, and which he 
did ultimately turn out to be. If St. Paul anticipated that the present condition of the 

1 Luke xviii. 8. 

■ 1 Tim. iv. 1—3 (cf. 2 Tim. i. 15 ; iii. 1—9 ; Col. ii. 8, 16—19 ; Acts xx. 29). 

» Luke xviii. 8 ; 1 John iv. 3 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, 2 ; iii. 3 ; Rev. xiii. and passim; and the Epistle of 
Jude. 4 Ezek. xxxviii. 16, 17. 

5 Suet. Calig. 52, " Armillatus in publicum processit" (Hitzig., Gesch. Is. 583). The anniversary 
of his death was observed as a festival (Derenbourg, Palest. 208). Others, however, connect 
Armillus with eprj/xeAaos, or *' Romulus " (Hamburger, Talm. Worterb. s. v.). 

o Tac. Atvu. xii. 64 ; Suet. Claud. 43 ; Dion Cass. lx. 34, 35, 



THE MAN OF SIW. 



729 



government would perish with Claudius, the reigning Emperor, and that his successor 
would be the Man of Sin, his anticipation was fulfilled. If he further anticipated that 
this representative of lawless and already working opposition to God and His Christ would 
be destroyed by the second Advent, he was then absolutely right so far as its Judaic 
elements were concerned, and so far as the second Advent was foreshadowed by the 
destruction of Jerusalem ; and his anticipations were only mistaken on a point respecting 
which all knowledge was confessedly withheld — only in that ante-dating of the personal 
second Advent which was common to him with all Christians in the first century of 
Christianity. Nor need it be surprising to any one that he should mingle Jewish and 
heathen elements in the colours with which he painted the coming Antichrist. In doing 
this he was in full accord with that which must be the case, and with the dim expecta- 
tions of paganism no less than with Rabbinic notions respecting the rival of the Messiah. 1 
— Further than this we cannot go ; and since we cannot — since all attempts at nearer 
indication have failed — since by God's express and declared Providence we are as far as 
the Thessalonians could have been from any accurate conception as to the times and 
seasons of the coming of Christ — it is clear that we lose no vital truth of the Gospel by 
our inability to find the exact interpretation of an enigma which has been hitherto 
insoluble, and of which, had it been necessary for us, the exact explanation would not 
have been withheld. 2 

1 It was but a few years after this time that Balbillus, the Ephesian Jew, who professed a know- 
ledge of astrology, used the prophecies of the Old Testament to assure Nero that he should be King 
•t Jerusalem. 

* The Thessalonians, says St. Augustine, knew what St. Paul meant, we do not. " Nos qaJ 
nMcimus qnod illi sciebant perveuiie labors ad id quod sensit Apostolus cupimus, nee valemus." 



730 



APPENDIX. 



EXCURSUS XX— Chief Uncial Manuscmpm 



>}, Sinaiticus, at Peters- 
burg (Imp. Library) 

A, Alexandrinus, 
British Museum 

B, Vaticanus, at Rome ") 
(Vatican Library) ..,) 



at | 



Century. 



C, Ephraemi, at Paris") 
(Imperial Library), a > 
Palimpsest MS. ...) 



Pi, Bezae.at Cambridge ) 
(Univ. Library) ... J 



D 2 , Claromontanus, ") 
Paris (Imp. Lib.) ...) 

Es, Laud^anus, Oxford") 
(Bodleian) J 

E3, Sangermanensis,~\ 
Petersburg (Imperial f 
Lib.). A transcript f 
of D 2 , mutilated ...) 

F 2 , Augiensis, Trinity) 
College, Cambridge... ) 

P., Coislinianus, Paris 

Gj, Angelicus, Rome ") . 
(August. Monks) ... > 

G3, Boemerianus, Dres- ") 
den (Royal Library) ) 

H 2 , Mutinensis, Mo-") 
dena (Grand Ducal £ 
Library) ) 

H 3 , Coislinianus (twelve ~) 
leaves at Paris, two > 
leaves at Petersburg) J 

I, Fragmenta, Palimp-^v 
sestaTischendorfiana, I 
They are seven frag- f V, 
ments, at Petersburg ) 

K 2 , Mosquensis, at \ 
Moscow j 

L 2 , Angelicus, Rome.") 
Same as G 2 ) 

M 2 , Ruber. Fragments 
at Hamburg and at 
British Museum 

P, Porphyrianus. Pub-") 
lished by Tischen- 
dorf. Monumenta V 
sacra inedita. (See 
Alford, voL 2.) ...J 



IV. 



IV. 



V. 



Acts of the 
Apostles. 



AIL 



All. 



All. 



1 

VI. 

vi.{ 



IX. 
VII. 
IX. 

IX. 
IX. 

VI. 

—VII. 

IX. 

IX. 
X. 

IX. 



(i. 2 to iv. 3) 

(v. 35— x. 43) 

(xiii. 1— xvi. 37) 

(xx. 10— xxi. 31) 

(xxii. 21— xxiii. 18) 

(xxiv. 15— xxvi. 19~> 

(xxvii. 17-xxviii. 6 

(i. 1— viii. 29) 
(x. 14— xxi. 2) 
(xxi. 10—16) 
(xxi. 18— xxii. 10) 
(xxii. 20—29) 



Romans. 



All. 



All. 



All. 



(L 1— xxvi. 29) 
(xxviii. 26— end) 



(viii. 10— end) 

Same as L 2 . Se 

below. 



(i. 1-ii. 5) 

, (hi. 21— ix. 6) 

r (x. 15— xi. 31) 

(xiii. 10— end) 



(i. 7— end) 



(Hi. 19- 



-toendK 



All. 



All. 



All. 



2 Cor. 



(i. 1— vii. 18) "| 

(ix.7— xiii. 8) Wi. 2— x. 8) 

(xv. 40— end) J 



AU. 



(i. 1— hi. 8) 
-vi. 7) 
(vi. 16- 



(i. ltoiv.13)) 
(xii.7toend)J 



AIL 



(iii. 16-vi. 7) ) 
d)|j 



(v. 28— ix. 39) 
(x. 19— xiii. 36) 
(xiv. 3— xxvii. 4) 



(ii. 6—17) 
(xxvi. 7—18) 
(xxviii. 8—17) 



Some fragments of the Epistles found in 

The Epistles of St. Paul in this MS. are 
known as L 2 . 



(L 1— onward) 



(viii. 10 — end) 
See G 2 above. 



(iL 14— end) 



(i. 1-x. 18) { 



This is a sister MS. to F> 



f (x.23— 29) 
I (xL 9—17) 



(xv. 53— xvi. 9) 

(i. 13— viii. 7) 
(viii. 12— end) 



(xv.52 — end)- 



(i. 1-xii. 23) 
(xiii.6— xiv. 23] 
(xiv. 89— end) 



] All. 

AIL 

(Ll-15) } 
(x.13— xii.6)J 



All . 



This Table has kindly been drawn up for 
£The general reader should notice (i.) that D and E mean differ^t MSS. for the Acts and for the 

(iii.) that F (Augiensis) is in most instance! 



THE UNCIALS. 

Of the Acts, and Epistles of St. Paul. 



731 



All. 

All. 



L Jl-e nd) (ii. 18-iv. 17) (i. 22-iiL 5) 



All. 



AIL 
All. 



Philip. 



All. 



All 



AIL 



AIL 



All. 



(i. 2— end) (i. 2— iL 9) 



A n C|(i.l-ii.l) 
*"• I (U. 8-end) 



AIL 
All. 



AIL 



} AIL 



All. 
All. 
AIL 



All. 



AIL 



AIL 



All. 
AIL 



(iiL 9-v. 20) (i. 3— end) 



All. 



AIL 



All. 



AIL 



AIL 
AIL 



(i. 4— end) 



AIL 



AIL 



AIL 



nwginal notes to the great Septuagint Octateuch known as Cod. Coislinianus I. 



(3toen<| 



AIL 



a-2D 



wpplying the commencement of Romans, not other deficiencies. It is considerably mutilated. 



...... 






•M... 


•MM. 


...... 




...... 


...... 




( (i. 4-10) 
t (ti.fr- 14) 


} 





~~. 


— 







(iii. 7—14) 


-{ 


CD 

(i. 15— ii. 5) 
(iii. 13 to end) 


mm 










— 











...... 


(L 1-13) 


AIL 




AIL 


AIL 


AIL 


AIL 


All. 


AIL 


All, 


All. 


%a 




AIL 


AIL 


AIL 


AIL 


AIL 


All, 


AIL 


AIL 






















...... 


AIL 




AIL 


AIL { 


(i.l— iii.16) 
(iv.8— end) 


(1 1— 11L 5) 

(iv. 17— end) 


}ail 


AIL 


AIL 


All. 



AIL 
All 



AIL 



ne by the Rev. J. 8. Northcote. 

^.istles ; (ii.) that B (Sangermanensis) is a copy of the third corrector of D (Claromontanurt ; 

Jmost id» ntical with G (Boernerianus).] 



732 APPENDIX. 



EXCURSUS XXI. (p. 39$. 
Theology and Antinomies op St. Paul. 
I have treated so fully of the main outlines of St. Paul's theology in the sketch of the 
Epistle to the Romans that I need not here enter upon it, but it may be convenient to 
the reader to see at one glance two of his own most pregnant summaries of it. These 
are Rom. hi. 21 — 26 ; Tit. iii. 3 — 7, for further explanation of which I must refer to 
pp. , seq. 

Rom. iii. 21—26 : "But now apart from Law, God's righteousness has been maui- 
fested, being witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets— even God's righteousness (I say) 
by means of faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all believers ; for there is no 
difference. For all sinned and are falling short of the glory of God, being made righteous 
freely by His grace, by the means of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God 
set forth as " a propitiary " by means of faith in His blood for the manifestation of His 
righteousness, because of the praetermission of past sins by the long-suffering of God — 
with a view (I say) to the manifestation of His righteousness in the present season, so 
that He may be righteous and the giver of righteousness to him who is of faith in 
Jesus." 

Tit. iii. 3 — 7 : " For we were once ourselves also foolish, disobedient, wandering 
slaves to various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one 
another. But when the kindness and the love to man of our Saviour God appeared, not 
by works of righteousness which we did, but according to His mercy He saved us by 
means of the laver of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Ghost, which He poured 
forth upon us richly by means of Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His 
grace we should become heirs of eternal lif e according to hope. " 

By "antinomies" I mean the apparent contradictoriness to human reason of divine 
facts. Such antinomies must arise when Reason seeks to know something of the absolute, 
stepping beyond the limits of experience. 

Among the apparent antinomies left without any attempt — because there is no 
possibility — of their reconciliation to our finite reason in the writings of St. Paul, are — 
L Predestination Rom. ix. (as explaining the rejection of Israel 

(Absolute dependence). from the objective and theological point 

of view). 
Free "Will Rom. ix. 30 — x. 21 (as explaining the rejection 

(Moral self-determination). of Israel from the moral and anthropolo- 

gical point of view). 
9. Sin through Adam's fall ; Rom. v. 12—21. 

Sin as inherent in the flesh ; 1 Cor. xv. 50, seq. 
8. Christ judging all Christians at His Advent ; Rom. ii. 16 ; xiv. 10 ; 1 Cor. iii. 
13 ; 2 Cor. v. 10. 
God finally judging all men through Christ ; 1 Cor. iv. 5 (xv. 24, 25). 

4. Recompense for all according to works ; Rom. ii. 6 — 10 ; 2 Cor. v. 10. 
Free forgiveness of the redeemed ; Rom. iv. 4 ; ix. 11 ; xi. 6. 

5. Universal Restoration and Blessedness ; Rom. viii. 19—23 ; xi. 30 — 36. 
A twofold end ; Rom. ii. 5 — 12. "The perishing ;" 2 Cor. ii. 15, &c. 

6. Necessity of human effort ; 1 Cor. ix. 24. " So run that ye may obtain." 
Ineffectualness of human effort ; Rom. ix. 16, " It is not of him that willeth, 

nor of him that runneth. 
The two are brought together in Phil. ii. 12, 13, " Work out your own salvation 
. . . For it is God which worketh in you." 
To these others might perhaps be added, but none of them causes, or need cause, atiy 



DISTINCTIVE WORDS. ETC., OP THE EPISTLES. 733 

trouble to the Christian. On the one hand, we know that omnia exeimt in mysterium, 
and that we cannot think for five minutes on any subject connected with the spiritual 
life without reaching a point at which the wings of the soul beat in vain as against a wall 
of adamant. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that Paul almost created the 
language of Christian theology ; that he often enshrines in a single word a whole world 
of ideas ; and that he always refuses to pursue the great saving truths of religion into 
mere speculative extremes. If we cannot live as yet in the realms of perfect and 
universal light, we have at any rate a lamp which throws a circle of radiance around our 
daily steps. 

" Lead thou me on. I do not ask to see 
The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 



EXCURSUS XXII. (p. 590). 

Distinctive Words, Key-notes, and Characteristics op the Epistles. 

It may perhaps serve to call attention to the individuality of the Epistles if I endeavour 
to point out how some of them may be roughly characterised by leading words or 
conceptions. 

J. — The Eschatological Group. 

1 Thessalonians. — This Epistle is marked by the extreme sweetness of its tone. 
Its key-note is Hope. Its leading words, napova-Ca, 0A.mJus. Its main theme is Consolation 
from the near hope of the Second Advent, iv. 17, 18, ^ets o£ ^wre? apn-ayijo-ojaefla, «. t. a. 

jrapaKaAeiTe aAAijAous ev tois Xoyois toutois. 1 

2 Thessalonians. — The key-note is ii. 1, 2, ^ Ta X ews a-aAevfl^vou . . . Ac frn iviarqicev 9 
()ju.epa tow Kvpiov. Peculiar doctrinal section on the Man of Sin, 

II. — The Anti-Judaic Group. 

1 Corinthians. — Love and unity amid divergent opinions. Little details decided by 
great principles. Life in the world but not of it. 

2 Corinthians. — The Apostle's Apologia pro vita sud. The leading words of i. — vi. 
" tribulation " and "consolation." In viii. — end, the leading conception "boasting not 
on merits but in infirmities." 

Galatians. — The Apostle's independent authority. Christian liberty from the yoke 
of the Law. Circumcision nothing, and uncircumcision nothing, but 

Romans. — The Universality of sin, and the Universality of grace (ttSs a leading word). 
Justification by faith. This Epistle is the sum of St. Paul's theology, and Rom. i. 16, 17 
is the sum of the Epistle. 

III. — The Christological or Anti-Gnostic Group. 
Philippians. — Joy in sorrow. "Summa Epistolse, gaudeo, gaudete " (Bengel). 
Colossians. — Christ all in all. The Pleroma. Leading conception, ii. 6, Iv «vry 
T«p(.7raTeiTe. "Hie epistolae scopus est" (Bengel). 

Philemon. — Can a Christian master treat a brother as a slave? Leading conception, 

12, 7rpoo"A.a/3ou ovtov. 

Ephesians. — Christ in His Church. The Epistle of the Ascension. The leading 

words are vapis, ra eirovpavia, iv Xpiorw. 

1 "Habet haec epistola meram quandam dulcedinem, quae lectori dulcibus aflfectitus non 
assueto minus sapit quam ceterae severitate quadam palatum stringentes " (Bengel). " Im Gaazer 
iat es ein Trostbrief " (Hausrath, p. 299). 



734 APPENDIX. 

IV.— The Pastoral Group. 

1 T™ ( Manuals of the Christian pastor's dealing with the faithful and with 
T s false teachers. Leading conceptions, sobriety of conduct, soundness of 

( faith. 

2 Timothy. — Last words. Be brave and faithful, as I have tried to be. Come 
quickly, come before winter; come before I die. iv. 6, ey« yap t»Sjj oTrevSo/uwu. 



EXCURSUS XXIII. (p. 628). 
Letter of Pliny to Sabinianus on behalf of an offending Freedmah. 

" C. Plinius Sabiniano suo S. 

"Libertus tuus, cui succensere te dixeras, venit ad me advolutusque pedibus mell 
tanquam tuis haesit. Flevit multum, multum rogavit, multum etiam tacuit, in summa 
fecit mihi fidem paenitentiae. Vere credo emendatum, quia deliquisse se sentit. 
Irasceris, scio, et irasceris merito, id quoque scio : sed tunc praecipua mansuetudinus 
laus, cum irae caussa iustissima est. Amasti hominem et, spero, amabis : interim sufficit 
ut exorari te sinas. Licebit rursus irasci, si meruerit, quod exoratus excusatius facies. 
Eemitte aliquid adulescentiae ipsius, remitte lacrimis, remitte indulgentiae tuae : ne 
torseris ilium, ne torseris etiam te. Torqueris enim, cum tarn lenis irasceris. Vereor ne 
videar non rogare, sed cogere, si precibus eius meas iunxero. Jungam tamen tanto 
plenius et effusius, quanto ipsum acrius severiusque corripui, districte minatus numquam " 
me postea rogaturum. Hoc illi, quern terreri oportebat ; tibi non idem. Nam fortasse 
iterum rogabo, impetrabo iterum : sit modo tale ut rogare me, ut praestare te deceat. 
Vale ! " 

Translation. 

"0. Plinius to his Sabinianus, greeting : — 

"Your freedman, with whom, as you had told me, you were vexed, came to me, and, 
flinging himself at my feet, clung to them as though they had been yours. He wept 
much, entreated much, yet at the same time left much unsaid, and, in short, convinced 
me that he was sincerely sorry. I believe that he is really reformed, because he is 
conscious of his delinquency. You are angry, I know ; justly angry, that too I know ; 
but gentleness is most praiseworthy exactly where anger is most justifiable. You loved 
the poor fellow, and I hope will love him again ; meanwhile, it is enough to yield to 
intercession. Should he ever deserve it you may be angry again, and all the more 
excusably by yielding now. Make some allowance for his youth, for his tears, for your 
own kindly disposition. Do not torture him, lest you torture yourself as well, for it is a 
torture to you when one of your kindly nature is angry. I fear you will think that I am 
not asking but forcing you if I join my prayers to his ; I will, however, do so, and all the 
more fully and unreservedly in proportion to the sharpness and severity with which I 
took him to task, sternly threatening that I would never say a word for him again. 
That I said to him because he needed to be well frightened ; but I do not say it to you, 
for perhaps I shall say a word for him again, and again gain my point ; provided only 
my request be such as it becomes me to ask and you to grant. Farewell ! " 



EXCURSUS XXIV. (pp. 174, 556). 

The Herods in the Acts. 

Ip there be sufficient ground for the plausible conjecture which identifies Agrippa I. and 
Cyproa with the king and queen who figure in the two following anecdotes of the Talmud* 



THE HEEODS IN THE ACTS. 735 

we shall see that the part he had to play was not always an easy one, and even led to 
serious complications. 

L The Talmud relates that on one occasion, at a festival, a lizard was found in the 
royal kitchen. It appeared to be dead, and if so the whole banquet would have become 
ceremonially unclean. The king referred the question to the queen, and the queen to 
Kabban Gamaliel. He asked whether it had been found in a warm or a cold place. " In a 
warm place," they said. "Then pour cold water over it." They did so. The lizard 
revived, and the banquet was pronounced clean. So that, the writer complacently add*, 
the fortune of the entire festival depended ultimately on Rabban Gamaliel. 1 

ii. The other story is more serious. It appears that at a certain Passover the king 
and queen were informed by their attendants that two kinds of victims — a lamb and a 
kid — either of which was legal— had been killed for them, and they were in doubt as to 
which of the two was to be regarded as preferable. The king, who considered that the 
kid was preferable, and was less devoted to the Pharisees than his wife, sent to ask the 
high priest Issachar of Kephar-Barchai', thinking that since he daily sacrificed victims, 
he would be sure to know. Issachar, who was of the same haughty, violent, luxurious 
temperament as all the numerous Sadducean high priests of the day, made a most con- 
temptuous gesture in the king's face, and said that, if the kid was preferable, the lamb 
would not have been ordained for use in the daily sacrifice. Indignant at his rudeness, 
the king ordered his right hand to be cut off. Issachar, however, bribed the executioner 
and got him to cut off the left hand. The king, on discovering the fraud, had the right 
hand cut off also. 2 It is thus that the story runs in the Pesachim, and further on it is 
said that when the doubt arose the king sent to the queen, and the queen to the Rabban 
Gamaliel, who gave the perfectly sensible answer that as either victim was legal, and as 
the king and queen had been perfectly indifferent in giving the order for the Paschal 
victims to be slain, they could eat of the one which had been first killed. 3 

As this story was not very creditable to Agrippa I. , we find a sufficient reason for the 
silence of Josephus in passing over the name of Issachar in his notices of the High 
Priests. 4 His was not a name which could have sounded very agreeable in the ears of 
Agrippa H. The elder Agrippa seems to have been tempted in this instance into a 
violence which was not unnatural in one who had lived in the court of Tiberius, but 
which was a rude interruption of his plan of pleasing the priestly party, while Cypros 
took the Pharisees under her special patronage. Issachar seems to have come between 
Theophilus, son of Hanan, and Simon, son of Kanthera the Boethusian. 5 Whatever may 
have been the tendencies of Cypros, and his own proclivities, it was important to 
Agrippa that he should retain the support of the sacerdotal aristocrats ; and they were 
well pleased to enjoy, in rapid succession, and as the appanage of half-a-dozen families, 
the burdensome dignity of Aaron's successor. 

The Pharisees, on the other hand, recounted with pleasure the fact that no sooner 
had Agrippa arrived at Jerusalem than he caused to be suspended on the columns of the 
oulam, or Temple portico, the chain of massive gold which he had received from Gaius as 
an indemnification for his captivity ; 6 that he was most munificent in his presents to 
the nation ; that he was a daily attendant at the Temple sacrifice ; that he had called 
the attention of the Legate Petronius to the decrees of Claudius in favour of Jewish 
privileges, and had thereby procured the reprimand and punishment of the inhabitants 

- Pesachim, f. 88, 2. 

2 Pesachim, f. 57, 1. In Keritdth, f. 28, 2, it is told with some variations, and the king is called 
Jannseus. It is, however, a fashion of the Talmud to give this name to Asmonaean kings (Deren- 
bourg, p. 211). May this wild story have been suggested by the indignation of the Jews against the 
first High Priest who wore gloves to prevent his hands from being soiled ? 

3 Id. 88 6. When I was present at the Samaritan passover on the summit of Mount Gerizira, 
ilx lambs and one kid were sacrificed. * Antt. xx. 10, 5. 

5 Herod the Great had married a daughter of Boethus. 

6 Midddth, iii. 7. Josephus (Antt. xix. 6, § 1) says that it was hung " over the treasury." 



736 APPENDIX. 

of Dor, l who had insulted the Jews by erecting in their synagogue a statue of the 
emperor. They had also told with applause that he carried his basket of first-fruit? to 
the Temple like any ordinary Israelite ; 2 and that although every one had to give way in 
the streets to the king and his suite, yet Agrippa always yielded the right of road to a 
marriage or funeral procession. 3 There were two stories on which they dwelt with 
peculiar pleasure. One was that on a single day— perhaps that of his arrival at 
Jerusalem — he offered a thousand holocausts, and that when they had been offered, a 
poor man came with two pigeons. The priest refused this sacrifice, on the pretext that 
on that day he had been bidden to offer none but royal victims ; but he yielded to the 
poor man's earnest solicitation on being told that the pigeons were brought in fulfilment 
of a vow that he would daily offer half the produce of his day's work ; and Agrippa 
warmly approved of this disobedience of his orders. 4 On another occasion, at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, he received from the hands of the High Priest the roll of the Law, and 
without seating himself, read the Lesson for the day, which was Deuteronomy xvii. 
14 — 20. When he came to the words, " Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee which 
is not thy brother," the thought of his own Idumsean origin flashed across his mind, and 
he burst into tears. But the cry arose on all sides, " Fear not, Agrippa ; thou art our 
brother, thou art our brother. " 5 

There were other tendencies which would win for Agrippa the approval of the people 
no less than that of the Pharisees. Such, for instance, were his early abolition of a 
house-tax in Jerusalem, which had been felt to be particularly burdensome ; and his 
construction of a new quarter of the Holy City, which was called Bezetha. 6 The Babbis, 
indeed, refused to accord to the new district the sanctity of the old, because it had not 
been inaugurated by the presence of a king, a prophet, the Urim and Thummim, a 
Sanhedrin of seventy-one, two processions, and a choir. 7 It is far from improbable that 
this addition to Jerusalem was mainly intended to strengthen its natural defences, and 
that Agrippa had formed the secret intention of making himself independent of Borne. 
If so, his plans were thwarted by the watchful jealousy of Vibius Marsus, 8 who had 
succeeded Petronius as Praefect of Syria. He wrote and informed the Emperor of the 
suspicious proceedings of Agrippa, and an Imperial rescript commanded the suspension 
of these building operations. Petronius had been on terms of intimacy with Agrippa, 
but Marsus distrusted and bitterly offended him. y After the completion of the magni- 
ficent theatre, and other buildings which he had presented to Berytus, he was visited by 
a number of neighbouring princes — Antiochus, King of Oommagene, Sampsigeramus of 
Emesa, Cotys of Lesser Armenia, Polemo of Pontus, and his brother Herod, King of 
Chalcis. It is probable that these royal visits were not of a purely complimentary 
character, but may have been the nucleus of a plot against the Boman power. If so, 
their machinations were scattered to the winds by the contemptuous energy of the 
Praefect, who felt a truly Boman indifference for the gilded impotence of these 
Oriental vassals. As the gathering took place at Tiberias, he went thither, and Agrippa, 

1 Jos. Antt. xix. 6, § 3. 2 Bikkurim, iii. 4 ; Derenbourg, p. 217. 

a Bab. Kethubhdth, f. 17, 1 ; Munk, Palest, p. 571. 4 Vayyikra-rabba, iii. 

5 Sota, f. 41, 1, 2. But, as Derenbourg points out, there were not wanting some stern Rabbis 
who unhesitatingly condemned this "flattery of the king." (See, too, Jost, Gesch. d. Judenthums, 
420. It is not certain that the anecdote may not refer to Agrippa II.) In continuation of the story 
ibout Babha Ben Buta's advice to Herod the Great to rebuild the Temple, the Talmud adds that the 
Romans were by no means willing, but that the task was half done before the return of the 
messenger, who had teen purposely told to spend three years in his mission. Among other things 
the Romans said, " If thou hast succeeded by violence at home, we have the genealogy here. Thou 
art neither a king, nor the son of a king, but a liberated slave " {Babha Bathra, f. 3, 2). 

c Josephus (B. J. v. 4, § 2) says that this word means " New City " ; but elsewhere (Antt. xii. 
10, § 2 ; xi. 1) he writ3s it Bith-ZStho, or " House of Olive-trees." In the Syriac version of Acts i. 
12, eAcutbi/, olive-yard, is rendered Beth-Zetho ; and in B. J. ii. 19, § 4, Josephus seems to draw a 
distinction between Bezetha and the New City (Munk, Paled., p. 45). Derenbourg, however, holda 
that Bezetha is a transliteration of the Chaldaic Beth Hadta, and that Josephus is right (Palest., 
p. 218). 7 Jer. Sanhedr. i. 3 ; Jos. B. J. v. 4, § 2 

* J oh. B. J. ii. 11, | & 9 Jos. Antt. xix. 6. § 2. 



THE HERODS IN THE ACTS. 737 

In whose character, as in that of all his family, there was a large vein of ostentation, 1 
went seven furlongs out of the city to meet him, with the five other kings in his chariot. 
Marsus did not like the look of this combination, and sent his servants to the kings with 
the cool order that they were all to make the best of their way at once to their respective 
homes. It was in consequence of this deliberate insult that, after the death of Agrippa, 
Claudius, in respect to his memory, and in consequence of a request which he had 
received from him, displaced Marsus, and sent C. Cassius Longinus in his place. 2 

Agrippa and Berenice. 

Not a spark of true patriotism seems ever to have been kindled in the breast of 
Agrippa II. He was as complete a renegade as his friend Josephus, 3 but without his 
versatility and genius. He had passed all his early years in the poisoned atmosphere of 
such courts as those of Gaius and Claudius, and was now on excellent terms with Nero. 
The mere fact that he should have been a favourite with the Messallinas, and Agrip- 
pinas, and Poppaeas, of a palace rife with the basest intrigues, is sufficient to condemn 
him. His appointments to the High-priesthood were as bad as those of his predecessors, 
and he incurred the displeasure of the Jews by the arbitrary rapidity of the constant 
changes which he made. Almost the only specific event which marked his period of 
royalty was a dispute about a view from a window. In a thoroughly unpatriotic and 
irreverent spirit he had built a banquet-hall in Herod's palace at Jerusalem, which 
overlooked the Temple courts. It was designed to serve the double purpose of gratifying 
the indolent curiosity of his guests as they lay at table, by giving them the spectacle of 
the Temple worship in its most sacred details, and also of maintaining a certain 
espionage over the movements of the worshippers, which would at any moment enable 
him to give notice to the Roman soldiers if he wished them to interfere. Indignant at 
this instance of contemptible curiosity and contemptible treachery, the Jews built up a 
counter wall to exclude his view. Agrippa, powerless to do anything himself, invoked 
the aid of the Procurator. The wall of the Jews excluded not only the view of Agrippa, 
but also that of the commandant in the tower of Antonia, and Festus ordered them to 
pull it down. The Jews resisted this demand with their usual determined fury, and 
Festus so far gave way that he allowed them to send an embassy to Rome to await the 
decision of the Csesar. The Jews sent Ishmael Ben Phabi the high priest, Helkias the 
treasurer, and other distinguished ambassadors, and astutely gaining the ear of Poppaea 
— who is believed to have been a proselyte, but if so, was a proselyte of whom the Jews 
ought to have been heartily ashamed — obtained a decision in their favour. Women like 
Poppaea, pantomimists like Aliturus- -such were in these days the defenders of the Temple 
for the Jews against their hybrid kings ! We hear little more of Agrippa II. till the 
breaking out of the war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. As might have 
been expected, he, like Josephus, like Tiberius Alexander, and other eminent renegades, 
was found in the ranks of the Roman invaders, waging war on the Holy City. He 
probably saw the Temple sink amid its consuming fires. Like Josephus he may have 
watched from a Roman window the gorgeous procession in which the victor paraded tho 
sacred spoils of the Temple, while the wretched captives of his countrymen — 

" Swelled, slow-pacing, by the car's tall side, 
The Stoic tyrant's philosophic pride." 

After that he fell into merited obscurity, and ended a frivolous life by a dishonoured 
old age. 

i Thus on a coin, engraved by Akerman, Numism. Illustr., he is called 0a<riAevs fxe'yas. 

* Jos. Antt. xix. 8, § 1. 

» For instance, he changed the name of Caasarea Philippi to Neronias ; stripped Judaea to 
ornament Berytus ; and even stooped to take the surname Marcus, which is found on one of bu 
ooins (Jos. Antt. xx. 9, § 4 ; Eckhel, Doct. Num. Vet. iii. 493). 
V V 



738 APPENDIX. 

Such was the prince who came to salute Festus, and he was accompanied by bis sister, 
who whs unhappily notorious even among the too notorious ladies of rank in that evil 
time. Berenice was the Lucrezia Borgia of the Herodian family. She was beautiful, 
like all the princesses of her house. Before the age of sixteen she had been married to 
her unele Herod of Chalcis, and being left a widow before she was twenty, went to live 
in Kome with her equally youthful brother. Her beauty, her rank, the splendour of her 
jewels, the interest and curiosity attaching to her race and her house, made her a promi- 
nent figure in the society of the capital ; and a diamond, however lustrous and valuable, 
was enhanced in price if it was known that it had once sparkled on the finger of Berenice* 
and had been a present to her from her brother. 1 The relations between the two gave 
rise to the darkest rumours, which gained credence, because there was nothing to 
contradict them in the bearing or character of the defamed persons. So rife indeed did 
these stories become, that Berenice looked out for a new marriage. She contracted an 
alliance with Polemo II., King of Cilicia, insisting, however, that he should save her from 
any violation of the Jewish law by submitting to the rite of circumcision. 2 Circumcision, 
not conversion, was all that she required. So true is the charge brought alike by St. 
Paul in his Epistles, and by the writers of the Talmud, that the reason why the Jews 
insisted upon circumcision was only that they might have whereof to glory in the flesh. 3 
The lowering of the Gentile fasces in token of external respect was all that they cared 
for, and when that was done, the Ger might go his own vile way — not improbably to 
Gehenna. 4 Circumcision to them was greater than all affirmative precepts, and was 
therefore exalted above love to God or love to our neighbour. 5 No doubt it cost Polemo 
something to accept concision, in order to satisfy the orthodox scrupulosity of an 
abandoned Jewess ; but her wealth was an inducement too powerful to resist. It was 
hardly likely that such a marriage could last. It was broken off very rapidly by the 
elopement of Berenice, after which Polemo immediately repudiated every shadow and 
semblance of allegiance to the Jewish religion, and Berenice returned to the house of her 
brother, until her well-preserved but elderly beauty, added to the munificence of her 
presents, first won the old Vespasian, and then his son Titus. 6 The conqueror of Judaea 
was so infatuated by his love for its dishonoured princess that he took her with him to 
Rome, and seriously contemplated making her a partner of his imperial throne. 7 But 
this was more than the Romans could stand, far gone as they were in servitude and 
adulation. The murmurs which the rumoured match stirred up were so wrathful in their 
indignation, that Titus saw how unsafe it would be to wed a Jewess whose name had 
been dragged through the worst infamy. He dismissed her— mvitus invitam— and we 
hear of her no more. Thus in the fifth generation did the sun of the Herodian house set 
in obscure darkness, as it had dawned in blood ; and with it set also the older and purer 
splendour of the Asmonaaan princes. They had mingled the honourable blood of Judas 
the Maccabee with that of Idutnaean adventurers, and the inheritors of the grandest 
traditions of Jewish patriotism were involved in a common extinction with the repre- 
sentatives of the basest intrigues of Jewish degradation. 

1 "Adamas nottissimus, et Berenices 

In digito faetus pretiosior ; nunc dedit olira 
Barbarua incestae, dedit hunc Agrippa sorori." 

Juv. Sat. vi. 156 ; Jos. Antt. xx. 6, 8. 

* Jos. Antt. xx. 7, 3. 

» Gal. vi. 13. It was, of course, a Judaic triumph to make a king not only a Ger Thoshabh, or a 
proselyte of the gate (Ex. xx. 14), but even a Ger hatsedek, " a proselyte of righteousness," or " of the 
Covenant." These latter were despised alike by Jews and Gentiles (Suet. Claud. 25; Domit. 12; 
Yebhamoth, xlvii. 4 ; see Wetstein on Matt, xxiii. 15). 

* See McCaul, Old Paths, pp. 63 seqq. 

* Nedarim, f. 32, c. 2. 
« Jos. Antt. xx. 7, 3. 

i «uet. Tit. 7 ; Tac. H. ii 81. 



PHRASEOLOGY OP THE EPHESIANS. 739 



EXCURSUS XXV. (p. 637). 
Phraseology and Doctrines of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
It is admitted that there are some new and rare expressions in this Epistle ; l but they 
are sufficiently accounted for by the idiosyncrasy of the writer, and the peculiarity of the 
subjects with which he had to deal. It is monstrous to assume that, in the case of one so 
fresh and eager as St. Paul, the vocabulary would not widely vary in writings extending 
over nearly twenty years, and written under every possible variety of circumstances, to 
very different communities, and in consequence of very different controversies. The 
wide range of dissimilarity in thought and expression between Epistles of admitted 
authenticity ought sufficiently to demonstrate the futility of overlooking broad probabili- 
ties and almost universal testimony, because of peculiarities of which many are only 
discoverable by a minute analysis. It must be remembered that at this period the 
phraseology of Christianity was still in a plastic, it might almost be said in a fluid, 
condition. No Apostle, no writer of any kind, . contributed one tithe so much to its 
ultimate cohesion and rigidity as St. Paul. Are we then to reject this Epistle, and that 
to the Colossians, on grounds so flimsy as the fact that in them for the first time he 
speaks of the remission (a^eo-is, Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14) instead of the pretermission (rapeo-is, 
Pom. iii. 25) of sins; or that, writing to a Church predominantly Gentile, he says 
"Greeks and Jews" (Col. iii. 11) instead of "Jews and Greeks" (Rom. i. 16, &c. ); or 
that he uses the word " Church" in a more abstract and generic sense than in his former 
writings ; or that he uses the rhetorical expression that the Gospel has been preached in 
all the world (Col. i. 6, 23) ? By a similar mode of reasoning it would be possible to 
prove in the case of almost every voluminous author in the world that half the works 
attributed to him have been written by some one else. Such arguments only encumber 
with useless debris the field of criticism. There is indeed one very unusual expression, 
the peculiarity of which has been freely admitted by all fair controversialists. It is the 
remark that the mystery of Christ is now revealed " to the holy Apostles and Prophets" 
(iii. 5). The Prophets (as in ii. 20 ; iv. 11) are doubtless those of the New Testament — 
those who had received from the Spirit His special gifts of illumination ; but the epithet 
is unexpected. It can only be accounted for by the general dignity and fulness (the 
<reju.v6nj?) of the style in which the Epistle is written ; and the epithet, if genuine, is, it 
need hardly be said, official and impersonal. 

It would be much more to the purpose if the adverse critics could produce even one 
decided instance of un-Pauline theology. The demonology of the Epistle is identical 
with that of Paul's Rabbinic training. 2 The doctrine of original sin, even if it were by any 
means necessarily deducible from Eph. ii. 3 — which is not the case, since the word <f>v<rei is 
not identical with " by birth " — is quite as clearly involved in the Epistles to the Romans 
and Galatians. The descent of Christ into Hades is not necessarily implied in iv. 8; and 
even if it were, the fact that St. Paul has not elsewhere alluded to it furnishes no shadow 
of a proof that he did not hold it. The method of quoting Scripture is that of all Jewish 
writers in the age of Paul, and the reminiscences of the Old Testament in iv. 8 and v. 14 
(if the latter be a reminiscence) are scarcely more purely verbal than others which occur 
in the Epistles of which no doubt has ever been entertained. On the other hand, it is 
frankly admitted that in all essential particulars the views of the Epistle are distinctly 
Pauline. The relations of Christianity to Judaism ; the universality of human corrup- 
tion through sin ; the merging of heathenism and Judaism in the higher unity of 
Christianity ; the prominence given to faith and love ; the unconditional freedom of 

1 Such ana$ Aeydjuteva, or unusual expressions, as to. iwovpavta, KOcr/Ao/cpaTopes irokviroCKiXM ■ 
irepuroiYjcris, a<f>9a.p<rCa, Sia|3oAo?. 

* Tliacksiphis—a,n association of demons, and Isbalganith (see BeracMth, f. 51, 1). 

v v 2 



740 APPENDIX. 

grace ; tha unserviceableness and yet the moral necessity of good works ; are in absolute 
accordance with the most fundamental conceptions of St. Paul's acknowledged writings. 
If some of these great truths of theology here receive a richer, more mature, and more 
original development, this is only what we should expect from the power of a mind which 
never ceased to grow in grace and wisdom, and which regarded growth in grace and wisdom 
as the natural privilege of a Christian soul. On the other hand, we might well be amazed 
if the first hundred years after the death of Christ produced a totally unknown writer 
who, assuming the name of Paul, treats the mystery which it was given him to reveal 
with a masterly power which the Apostle himself rarely equalled, and most certainly 
never surpassed. Let any one study the remains of the Apostolic Fathers, and he may 
well be surprised at the facility with which writers of the Tubingen school, and their 
successors, assume the existence of Pauls who lived unheard of and died unknown, 
though they were intellectually and spiritually the equals, if not the superiors, of St. 
Paul himself! In no single Epistle is the point of view so clear, *o supieme, so final — 
in no other Epistle of the Homologoumena is the doctrine so obviously the outcome and 
issue of truths which before had been less fully and profoundly enunciated — so undeniably 
the full consummate flower from germs of which we have, as it were, witnessed the 
planting. At supreme epochs of human enlightenment whole centuries of thought seem 
to separate the writings of a few years. The questions which occupy the Apostle in the 
Thessalonians and Galatians seem to lie indefinitely far behind the goal which his thoughts 
have now attained. In earlier Epistles he was occupied in maintaining the freedom of 
the Gentiles from the tyrannous narrowness of Jewish sacerdotalism ; here, on the other 
hand, he is dwelling on the predestined grandeur of the equal and universal Church. 
In the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians he has founded the claims of Christianity 
on " a philosophy of the history of religion," by showing that Christ is the Second Adam, 
and the promised seed of Abraham ; here he contemplates a scheme predestined before 
the ages of earth began, and running through them as an increasing purpose, so that aeon 
after aeon revealed new forms and hues of the richly -varied wisdom, and the Gentiles 
(koX v/aeis, i. 13) as well as the Jews are included in the predestined election (eKArjpw0rj|uei>, 
npoopia-eevTes, i. 11) to the purchased possession (7rept7ro/rj«ris, 14). And not to exhaust, 
which would be indeed impossible, the manifold aspects of this so-called "colourless" 
Epistle, the manner in which it expresses the conception of the quickening of spiritual 
death by union with the Risen Christ (ii. 1 — 6) ; the present realisation, the immanent 
consciousness of communion with God ; the all-pervading supremacy of God in Christ ; 
the importance of pure spiritual knowledge ; the dignity given to the Church as the 
house (ii. 20—22), the body (iv. 12—16) and the bride (v. 25—27) of Christ,— all mark it 
out as the most sublime, the most profound, and, if I may use the expression, the most 
advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the Gospel which it was given to St Paul 
for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world. l It is not surprising 
that when these truths had once found utterance they should have had their influence 
on the teachings of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and upon St. Peter and 
St. John; nor is this any ground whatever, but rather the reverse, for looking with 
auspicion on the authenticity of the Epistle. 1 

1 Entirely as I disagree with Pfleiderer, I have received great help from his Pwulinismus (E. T. 
It 162—193) in the study of this Epistle. 

2 See 1 Pet. i. 14 (Eph. iv. 14) ; 1 Pet. i. 20 (Eph. i. 4) ; 1 Pet. i. 7 (Eph. L 6) ; i. 5 (Eph. iii. 5) : 
ii. 9 (Eph. i. 14) ; i. 3 (Eph. L 17) ; ii. 11 (Eph. ii. 3) ; iii. 7 (Eph. iii. 6) ; v. 10 (Eph. iv. 2), &c. See 
Weiss, Petriniach. Lehrbegr. 434. 



THE LIBERATION OF ST. PAUL. 741 



EXCURSUS XXVI. (p. 649). 
Evidence as to the Liberation of St. Paul. 
The chief passages on the remaining life of St. Paul which have much historic importance 
are the following : — 

I. Clemens Romanus, possibly a personal friend and fellow- worker of St. Paul, if he 
be the Clement mentioned in Phil. iv. 3, 1 but certainly a Bishop of Rome, and a writer of 
the first century, says that :— 

"Because of envy, Paul also obtained the prize of endurance, having seven times 
borne chains, having been exiled, and having been stoned. After he had preached the 
Gospel both in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown of his faith, having 
taught righteousness to the whole world, and having come to the limit of the West, and 
borne witness 2 before the rulers. Thus he was freed from the world, and went into the 
holy place, having shown himself a pre-eminent example of endurance." 3 

II. The fragment of the Muratorian Canon (about A.D. 170), though obscure and 
corrupt, and only capable of uncertain conjectural emendation and interpretation, yet 
seems on the whole to imply the fact of " Paul's setting forth from the city on his way to 
Spain. "4 

III. Eusebius, in the fourth century, says :— 

"Then, after his defence, there is a tradition that the Apostle again set forth to the 
ministry of his preaching, and having a second time entered the same city [Rome], was 
perfected by his martyrdom before him [Nero]." 6 

IV. Chrysostom (died A.D. 407) says : — 

"After he had been in Rome, he again went into Spain. But whether he thence 
returned into those regions [the East] we do not know." 6 

V. St. Jerome (died A.D. 420) says that "Paul was dismissed by Nero, that he might 
preach Christ's Gospel also in the regions of the West." 7 

I take no notice of the inscription supposed to have been found in Spain (Gruter, pp. 
238 — 9), which gratefully records that Nero has purged the province of brigands, and of 
the votaries of a new superstition, because even on the assumption that it is genuine it 
has no necessary bearing on the question. Nor does any other writer of the least 
authority make any important contribution to the question, since it cannot be regarded 
as adding one iota of probability to the decision to quote the general assertions of Cyril 
of Jerusalem and Theodoret that St. Paul visited Spain ; nor can it be taken as a 
counter-evidence that Origen does not mention Spain when he remarks "that he carried 
the Gospel from Jerusalem to Ulyricum, and was afterwards martyred in Rome in the 

1 We can only say that this is an ancient and not impossible tradition (see Lightfoot, 
Philippians, pp. 166 — 169). 

2 The word at this period did not necessarily mean "suffered martyrdom," but probably 
connoted it. 

8 Ala <JVjA.ov [/eal 61 HavAos uwojoiovfjs /SpajSeiov t/7recrxev, e7rra/ei? Sea-ftd (popecras, (pvyaSeuflels, 
Ai0acr0eis, Kripvtj yei/ouevos ev re rrj avarokfj /cal [rrj] Sucrei, to yej/vaiov rrjs 7rio~Teu>s avrov /cXe'os e'Aa|3ei/, 
Si/caiocrvi'rjv 8iSd£ as 6A.a> tw /coo"/u.oj koX eVi to Te'pjaa ttjs oucrews eKOiav, /cal /u.apTvp7jo"as e7rl twv riyovfievuiv 
ovtws airr)\Xdyyf tow koctjoiov /cal eis rhv ayiov tottov enopeuOr], vn-op-ovrj? yevo/utevos /uteyiOTos v7roypa/u./x6s. 
— Ep. 1 ad Cor. 5 (see Lightfoot, Epistles of Clement, pp. 46—52). 

4 " Lucas obtirne Theophile cornprindit quia sub praesentia ejus singula gerebantur, sicuti et 
Bemote passionem Petri evidenter declarat, sed profeetionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficis- 
centis . . . ." 

5 tote [lev o5v a7roAoy»)cra)ievov, a50is 67rl ttjv tou >cjjpvyju.aTos SlolkovColv Aoyos exei «TTeiAacr0ai tov 
a7rc>crToAov, SevTepov 8* €7ri/3avra rfj avrf) irokei t<3 KaT avrbv (Nepcova) TeKeicodrjvai. ju.apTvpico (Euseb. 
H. E. ii. 22, 25). He quotes Dionysius of Corinth to show that Peter and Paul had both been at 
Rome (id. ib. 25), which is also stated by Ignatius (ad Rom. iv.). 

6 MeTa to yeve<r9ai ev Pwp-fj tto\iv els ttjv 'S.navLa.v a.jrr}k8ev et 8e eneWev irakiv els TavTa to, ju.epij 
ovk icrp.ev (Chrys. ad 2 Tim. iv. 20). 

7 " Sciendum est. . . . Paulum a Nerone dimissum ut evangelium Christi in occidental 
quoque paitibus praedicaret" (Jer. Catal, Scrip.). See also Tert. Scorp. 16, De Praeser. 36; Lactant 
De Mort. Perm. 2. 



742 APPENDIX. 

time of Nero." Even as late as the fourth century, no writer ventures to do more than 
allude distantly to the supposed fact in a manner which shows that not a single detail on 
the subject existed, and that tradition had nothing tangible to add to the data furnished 
by the New Testament, or the inferences to which it led. On the other hand, the 
testimony of the pseudo-Dionysius (A.D. 170) that St. Peter and St. Paul, after founding 
the Church of Corinth, wsnf to Italy — apparently together {b^oa-e) — and were there 
martyred about the same time, is, so far as it goes, somewhat unfavourable to the 
Spanish journey, and at any rate proves that even in the second century tradition had 
buried its ignorance in the shifting sand of erroneous generalities. 

If we be asked what is the historic value of this evidence, we must answer that it is 
very small indeed. The testimony of Clement, assuming it to be genuine, would be 
important from his early date if it were not so entirely vague. It is a purely rhetorical 
passage, in which it seems not impossible that he means to compare St. Paul to the sun 
rising in the east and setting in the west. The expression that " he taught righteousness 
to the whole world " shows that we are here dealing with enthusiastic phrases rather 
than rigid facts. The expression "having come to the limit of the West" is unfavourable 
to a Spanish journey. "The limit of the West," though undoubtedly it would mean 
Spain to an author who was writing from Kome, if he were speaking in plain and lucid 
prose, has not necessarily any such meaning in a glowing comparison, least of all on the 
hypothesis that the native place of the writer was Philippi. If, however, Spain is 
intended, and if the word "bearing witness" (/aapTvp^'cras) means martyrdom, then the 
author, taken literally, would imply that St. Paul perished in Spain. The argument 
that "before the rulers " must be a reference to Helius and Polycletus, or Tigellinus and 
Nymphidius Sabinus, or two other presidents left to act as regents during Nero's absence 
in Greece, is a mere gossamer thread of attenuated inference. The authority of St. 
Clement, then, must be set aside as too uncertain to be of decisive value. 1 



Nor is the sentence in the second-century Canon discovered by Muratori at Milan of 
any great value. The verb which is essential to the meaning has to be supplied, and it 
is even possible that the writer may have intended to quote Luke's silence as to any 
Spanish journey to prove that the tradition respecting it — which would have been 
naturally suggested by Rom. xv. 24 — had no authority in its favour. 

Eusebius, indeed, is more explicit, but, on the one hand, he lived so late that his 
testimony, unless supported by reference to more ancient authorities, is of no importance ; 
and on the other hand, he is so far from following his usual habit of quoting any 
authority for his assertion, that he distinctly ascribes it to tradition. He merely 
observes that "it is said," and then proceeds to support the probability of this tradition 
by an extraordinary misconception of 2 Tim. iv. 16, 17, in which he founds an argument 
for the Apostle's second imprisonment on the grounds that he spoke of deliverance from 
the first when he said, "I was saved from the mouth of the lion." His testimony is 
rendered the more worth 1 ess because in his Chronicon he misdates by nearly ten years 
the time of the first imprisonment, and his erroneous inference from 2 Tim. seems to 
show that the floating rumour was founded on a mere hypothesis suggested by the 
Epistles themselves. 2 The real proofs of St. Paul's liberation are, as we have seen, of a 
different character. 

1 See however Dollinger, First Age, 78, seq. ; Westcott, Hist, of Canon, p. 479 ; and Lightfoot, 
Ep. of Clement, p. 508, who quotes Strabo, ii. 1, Veil. Paterc. i. 2, to show that Spain is probably 
meant. 

* He makes Paul arrive at Rome A.D. 55. 



GENUINENESS OP THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 74<3 



EXCURSUS XXVH. (p. 649). 

The Genuineness of the Pastokal Epistles. 

As our knowledge of the life of St. Paul, after his first imprisonment, depends entirely 

on the decision as to the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles, I will here briefly examine 

the evidences. 

L Turning first to the external evidence in their favour, we find an almost indis- 
putable allusion to the First Epistle to Timothy in Clement of Rome. 1 That they were 
universally accepted by the Church in the second century is certain, since they are found 
in the Peshito Syriac, mentioned in the Muratorian Canon, and quoted by Ignatius, 
Polycarp, Hegesippus, Athenagoras, Irenseus, Clemens of Alexandria, Theophilus of 
Antioch, and perhaps by Justin Martyr. After the second century the testimonies are 
unhesitating and unbroken, and Eusebius, in the fourth century, reckons them among 
the homologomena or acknowledged writings of St. Paul. With the exception of 
Marcion, and Tatian, who rejected the two Epistles to Timothy, there seems to have 
been no doubt as to their genuineness from the first century down to the days of Schmidt 
and Schleiermacher. On what grounds Marcion rejected them we are not informed. It 
is possible that Baur may be right in the supposition that he was not aware of their 
existence. 2 But this would be no decisive argument against them, since the preservation 
and dissemination of purely private letters, addressed to single persons, must have been 
much more precarious and slow than that of letters addressed to entire Churches. But 
in such a case Marcion's authority is of small value. He dealt with the Scriptures on 
purely subjective grounds. His rejection of the Old Testament, and of all the New 
Testament except ten Epistles of St. Paul, and a mutilated Gospel of St. Luke, shows 
that he made no sort of scruple about excluding from his canon any book that militated 
against his peculiar dogmas. Nor is Tatian's authority of more weight. The only 
reason why he accepted as genuine the Epistle of Titus while he rejected those of 
Timothy, is conjectured to have been that in the Epistle to Titus the phase of incipient 
Gnosticism which meets with the condemnation of the Apostle is more distinctly 
identified with Jewish teaching. 3 

But perhaps it may be argued that the Pastoral Epistles were forged in the second 
century, and that the earlier passages which are regarded as allusions to them, or 
quotations from them, are in reality borrowed from Clemens, Polycarp, and Hegesippus, 
by the writer, who wished to enlist the supposed authority of St. Paul in condemnation 
of the spreading Gnosticism of the second century. No one would argue that there is a 
merely accidental connexion between, "Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and 
oppositions [or antitheses] of the knowledge [Gnosis] which is falsely so called" in 
1 Tim. vi. 20, and "the combination of impious error arose by the fraud of false 
teachers [erepoSiSaa-KaXoiv, comp. 1 Tim. i. 3, eTepoSi8acnca\etv| who henceforth attempted to 
preach their science talsely so called " in Hegesippus. 4 But Baur argues that the forger 
of the Epistle stole the term from Hegesippus, and that it was aimed at the Marcionites, 
who are especially indicated in the word "Antitheses," which is the name of a book 
written by Marcion to point out the contradiction between the Old and New Testament, 
and between those parts of the New Testament which he rejected and those which he 
retained. 5 Now, " Antitheses " may mean simply " oppositions," as it is rendered in our 
version, and the injunction is explained by Chrysostom and Theophylact, and even by 

i " Let us then approach Him in holiness of soul, lifting to Him pure and unstained hands." — 
Ep. 1, ad Cor. 29 ; cf. 1 Tim. ii. 8. 2 Baur, Pastoralbriefe, p. 138. 

3 Tit. i. 10, 14 ; iii. 9. Tatian founded a sect of Gnostic Encratites towards the close of the 
second century. * Ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 32. 

5 Tert. Adv. Marc. i. 19 ; iv. &c. Baur also {Paul. ii. Ill) dwells on the use of the word vyvifs, 
"« sound," *' wholesome," by Hegesippus and in 1 Tim. L 10. 



7 44 APPENDIX. 

De "Wette, to mean that Timothy is not to embroil himself in idle and fruitless con- 
troversies. But even, supposing that "antilogies" are meant, what shadow of proof is 
there that nothing of the kind existed among the "vain babblings" of Essenian specula- 
tion? " Hegesippus, " says Baur, 1 "considering his Ebionite views, can scarcely have 
dratfnfrom an Epistle supposed to be by Paul." It is difficult to believe that this 
remark is perfectly serious ; 2 but if it be, I would ask, Is it not indefinitely more 
improbable that the falsarius 3 would instantly condemn his own work as spurious by 
interpolating marked passages from Clemens, Polycarp, and Hegesippus, which his 
instructed readers would be sure to recognise, and which would then be absolutely fatal 
to the success of his design ? 

II. Let us, then, pass to the internal evidence. It is argued that these three 
Epistles cannot have been written by St. Paul — (1) Because "they stand far below th6 
originality, the wealth of thought, and the whole spiritual substance and value of 
the autheutic Epistles ; " 4 (2) Because they abound in un-Pauline words and phrases ; 
(3) Because their theology differs from that of the Apostle ; (4) Because they deal with 
conditions of ecclesiastical organisation which had no existence till long after the age of 
the Apostles ; (5) Because they betray allusions to later developments of Gnostic 
heresy : and these objections we will briefly consider. 

(1) Now as to the style of these Epistles, we admit at once that it is inferior to that 
of St. Paul's greatest productions. For eloquence, compression, depth, passion, and 
logical power, they cannot for one moment be compared to the letters to the Corinthians, 
Romans, Galatians, or Ephesians. St. Paul is not here at his best or greatest. "His 
restless energies," says Alford, 5 " are still at work; but those energies have changed their 
complexion ; they have passed from the dialectic character of his earlier Epistles, 
from the wonderful capacity of intricate combined rationalism of his subsequent Epistles, 
to the urging, and repeating, and dilating upon truths which have been the food of 
his life ; there is a resting on former conclusions, a constant citation of the temporis acti, 
which lets us into a most interesting phase of the character of the great Apostle. "We 
see here rather the succession of brilliant sparks than the steady flame ; burning words 
indeed and deep pathos, but not the flower of his firmness as in his discipline of the 
Galatians ; not the noon of his bright, warm eloquence, as in the inimitable Psalm of 
Love." 6 

But in what way does this invalidate their authenticity ? "We entirely dissent from 
Baur's exaggerated depreciation of their value ; if we admitted that they were as meagre 
of contents, as colourless in treatment, as deficient in motive and connexion, as full of 
monotony, repetition, and dependence, as he asserts — what then? Must a writer be a'ways 
at his greatest ? Does not the smallest knowledge of literary history prove at once that 
writers are liable to extraordinary variations of literary capacity ? Do not their shorter 
and less important works offer in many cases a most singular contrast to their more 
elaborate compositions ? Are all the works of Plato of equal value ? Do we find in the 
Epinomis the grandeur and profundity which mark the Phaedo and the Theaetetus? Is 
the Leges as rich in style as the Phaedrus 1 Is there no difference in manner between the 
Annals of Tacitus and the dialogue De Oratoribus ? "Was it the same hand which wrote 

1 Paul. ii. 101. 

2 Davidson freely admits that "there is no great difficulty in supposing that he read the 
Pastoral Epistles written in Paul's name, and remembered some of their expressions" (Introd. 
ii. 181). 

3 Admitting that " pseudonymity and literary deception " were regarded in antiquity as very 
different things, I would willingly avoid the word "forger" if there were any other convenient word 
which could be substituted for it. I quite concede to De Wette, Schleiennacher, Baur, &c, that 
the word connotes much more than it ought to do, as applied to a writer of the first two centuries, 
and that " ths forging of such Epistles must not be judged according to the modern standard ol 
literary honesVy, but according to the spirit of antiquity, which attached no such definite value as 
we do to literary property, and regarded the thing much more than the person " (Baur, Paul. 
Ii. 110}. * Baur, Paul. ii. 106, s d r ^ c y Mfc in. 33. « 1 Cor. xiit 



GENUINENESS OP THE PASTOBAL EPISTLES. 745 

Love's Labour's Lost and Hamlet ? "Would any one who read the more prosaic parts of the 
Paradise Regained recognise the poet of the first or sixth hooks of the Paradise Lost t 
Is the style of Burke in the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful the same as his style in 
the Essay on the French Revolution? It would be quite superfluous to multiply 
instances. If it be asserted that the Pastoral Epistles are valueless, or unworthy of 
their author, we at once join issue with the objectors, and, independently of our own 
judgment, we say that, in that case, they would not have deceived the critical intuition 
of centuries of thinkers, of whom many were consummate masters of literary expression. 
If, on the other hand, it be merely contended that the style lacks the verve and passion 
of the earlier Epistles, we reply that this is exactly what we should expect. Granted that 
"it is uot the object of this, as of preceding Epistles, to develop fully some essentially 
Pauline idea which has still to vindicate itself, and ou which the Christian consciousness and 
lif e are to be formed, but rather to apply the contents of Christian doctrine to practical life 
in its varying circumstances," we reply that nothing could be more natural. Granted 
that, unlike all the other Epistles, they have no true organic development ; that they 
do not proceed from one root-idea which penetrates the whole contents, and binds all 
the inner parts in an inner unity, because the deeper relations pervade the outward dis- 
connectedness ; that no one creative thought determines their contents and structure ; 
that they exhibit no genuine dialectic movement in which the thought possesses 
sufficient inherent force to originate all the stages of its development ; l granted, I say - 
and it is a needlessly large concession — that this depth of conception, this methodical 
development, this dialectic progress, are wanting in these three letters we entirely 
refuse to admit that this want of structural growth belies their Pauline origin. It is 
little short of absurd to suppose that every one of St. Paul's letters — however brief, 
however casual, however private — must have been marked by the same features as the 
Epistles to the Romans or the Galatians. I venture to say that every objection of this 
kind falls at once to the ground before the simple observation of the fact that these were 
not grand and solemn compositions dealing with the great problems which were rending 
the peace of the assembled Churches before which they would be read, but ordinary 
private letters, addressed by an elder and a superior to friends whom he had probably 
known from early boyhood, and who were absolutely familiar with the great main 
features of his teaching and belief . Add the three circumstances that one of them was 
written during the cruel imprisonment in which his life was drawing to its close ; that 
they were probably written by his own hand, and not with the accustomed aid of an 
amanuensis ; 2 and that they were certainly written in old age, — and we shall at once see 
how much there is which explains the general peculiarities of their style, especially in 
its want of cohesion and compression. There are in these Epistles inimitable indications 
that we are reading the words of an old man. There is neither senility nor garrulity, 
but there is the dignity and experience which marks the jucunda senectus? The digres- 
siveness becomes more diffuse, the generalities more frequent, the repetitions more 
observable. 4 Formulae are reiterated with an emphasis which belongs less to the 
necessities of the present than to the reminiscences of the past. Divergences into 
personal matters, when he is writing to Timothy, who had so long been his bosom com- 
panion, become more numerous and normal. 5 And yet it is impossible not to feel that a 

i Baur, Paul ii. 107. 

2 The Epistle to the Galatians and the concluding doxology of the Epistle to the Romans were 
also autographic ; and Dean Alford — than whom few men have ever been more closely acquainted 
with the style of the Apostle in all its peculiarities— has pointed out a series of resemblances between 
these writings and the Pastoral Epistles (Greek Test. iii. 86). 

a Even when he wrote the Epistle to Philemon he calls himself Paul the Aged, and he had gone 
through much since then. Supposing him to have been converted at the age of thirty, he would now 
have been nearly sixty, and could hardly have seemed otherwise than aged, considering the illnease* 
nnd trials which had shattered a weak and nervous frame. 

* 1 Tim. i. 15 ; ii. 4—6 ; iii 16, &c. ; 2 Tim. i. 9 ; ii. 11—13 ; Tit. i 15 ; U. 11 ; iii. 3, &c. &G. 

» 1 Tim. i. J I, seqq.; 2 Tim. i. 11, seqq.; 15, seqq. ; iv. 6, seqq. 



746 APPENDIX. 

Paul is still the writer. There are flashes of the deepest feeling, outbursts of the motf 
intense expression. There is rhythmic movement and excellent majesty in the doxo 
logies, and the ideal of a Christian pastor is drawn not only with an unfaltering hand, but 
with a beauty, fulness, and simplicity, which a thousand years of subsequent experience 
have enabled no one to equal, much less to surpass. In these Epistles direct logical 
controversy is to a great extent neglected as needless. All that the Apostle had to say 
in the way of such reasoning had probably been said to his correspondents, in one form 
or other, again and again. For them, as entrusted with the supervision of important 
Christian communities, it was needless to develop doctrines with which they were 
familiar. It was far more necessary to warn them respecting the fatal moral tendencies 
in which heresies originated, and the fatal moral aberrations in which they too often 
issued. 

And while we are on this subject of style, how much is there which we must at once 
see to be favourable to the authenticity of these writings ! Take the First Epistle to 
Timothy alone, which is more seriously attacked than the other two, and which is 
supposed to drag down its companions by the evidence of its spuriousness. Do we not 
find in it abundant traces of a familiar style ? Is it even conceivable that a forger would 
have actually begun with an anakoluthon or unfinished construction? Such sentences 
abound in the style of St. Paul, and to imitate them with perfect naturalness would be 
no easy task. But even supposing the possibility of imitation, would a forger have 
started off with one ? Again, it would be very easy to caricature or clumsily imitate the 
digressive manner which we have attributed to familiarity and age ; but to reproduce it 
eo simply and naturally as it here appears would require supreme literary accomplish- 
ment. Would an imitator have purposely diverged from St. Paul's invariable salutation 
by the insertion of " mercy" between "grace " and "peace "? It is easy to understand 
on psychological grounds that St. Paul might call himself " the chief of sinners " (i. 15) ; 
but would a devoted follower have thus written of him ? Would he purposely and con- 
tinually have lost the main thread of his subject as at ii. 3, 7 ? A writer with a firm grasp 
of truths which he knows to be complementary to each other would never hesitate at any 
merely apparent contradiction of his previous opinions ; still less would he hesitate to 
modify those opinions in accordance with circumstances ; but would a forger have been 
so bold as apparently to contradict in ii. 15 what St. Paul had taught in 1 Cor. vii ? 
Would he be skilful enough to imitate the simple and natural maimer in which, more 
than once, the Apostle has resumed his Epistle after seeming to be on the point of ending 
it, as at hi. 14, 15 ? St. Paul, like most supremely noble writers, is quite indifferent to 
confusion of metaphors ; but would an imitator be likely to follow him with such lordly 
indifference as at vi. 19 ? In writing to familiar friends, nothing is more natural than the 
perfectly casual introduction of minute and unimportant particulars. There is nothing 
like this in St. Paul's other letters, not even in that to Philemon, and therefore a forger 
would have had no model to copy. How great a literary artist, then, must have been the 
forger who — writing with some theory of inspiration, and under the shadow of a great 
name, and with special objects in view — could furnish accidental minutiae so natural, so 
interesting, and even so pathetic as that in 1 Tim. v. 23, or introduce, by way of precaution, 
such particulars — "unexampled in the Apostle's other writings, founded on no incident, 
tending to no result" — as the direction to Timothy to bring with him to Rome "the 
cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments." It 
seems to me that forgery, even under the dominant influence of one impressive personality 
and one supreme idea, is by no means the extraordinarily easy and simple thing which it 
appears to be to the adherents of the Tubingen criticism. It is a comparatively simple 
matter to pass off imitations of a Clemens liomanus or an Ignatius, but it is hardly likely 
that the world would be long deceived by writings palmed off upon it as those of a Milton 
— still less of a St. PauL 



GENTJTNENESS OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 747 

(2) It is said they abound in unusual, isolated, and un-Pauline expressions. Among 
these are "It is a faithful saying," 1 "piety," and "piously" (evcrejSeia., evo-e'jSw?) found 
eight times in these Epistles, and nowhere else except in 2 Pet. ; 2 the metaphor of 
" wholesomeness " (vyiTj?, vyutCveiv), applied to doctrines nine times in these Epistles, and 
not elsewhere ; 3 the use of St<nr6rn<; " Lord " for /cvpios " master " ; 4 the use of apvela-Oa " to 
deny" for the renunciation of true doctrine ; and of napaiTe'iaOai "to avoid," of which the 
latter is, however, used by Paul in his speech before Festus, and which, as well as 
npoo-exeiv, with a dative in the sense of " attend to," he very probably picked up in inter- 
course with St. Luke, to whom both words are familiar. 5 No one, I think, will be 
seriously startled by these unusual phrases, nor will they shake our belief in the genuine- 
ness of the Epistles when we recall that there is not a single Epistle of St. Paul in which 
these hapax legomena, or isolated expressions, do not abound. Critics who have searched 
minutely into the comparative terminology of the New Testament Scriptures, tell us 
there are no less than 111 peculiar terms in the Epistle to the Romans, 186 in the two 
Epistles to the Corinthians, 57 and 54 respectively in the short Epistles to the Galatians 
and Philippians, 6 even in the few paragraphs addressed to Philemon. It is not therefore 
in the least degree surprising that there should be 74 in the First Epistle to Timothy, 67 
in the Second, and 13 in that to Titus. Still less shall we be surprised when we examine 
them. St. Paul, it must be remembered, was the main creator of theological language. 
In the Pastoral Epistles he is dealing with new circumstances, and new circumstances 
would inevitably necessitate new terms. Any one who reads the list of unusual expres- 
sions in the Epistles to Timothy will see at once that the large majority of them are 
directly connected with the new form of error with which St. Paul had recently been 
called upon to deal. Men who are gifted with a vivid power of realisation are peculiarly 
liable to seize upon fresh phrases which embody their own thoughts and convictions, and 
these phrases are certain to occur frequently at particular periods of their lives, and to be 
varied from time to time. 6 This is simply a matter of psychological observation, and is 
quite sufficient to account for the expressions we have mentioned, and many more. We 
can have little conception of the plasticity of language at its creative epoch, and we must 
never forget that St. Paul had to find the correct and adequate expression for conceptions 
which as yet were extremely unfamiliar. Every year would add to the vocabulary, 
which must at first have been more or less tentative, and the harvest of new expressions 
would always be most rich where truths, already familiar, were brought into collision 
with heresies altogether new. The list of hapax, legomena in the note 7 are all due, not to 
the difference of authorship, but to the exigencies of the times. 

(3) It would be a much more serious— it would indeed be an all but fatal— objection 
to the authenticity of these Epistles, if it could be proved that their theology differs from 
that of Paul. But a very little examination will show that there is no such contradiction 

i Tim. i. 15 ; iii. 1 ; iv. 9 ; 2 Tim. ii. 11 ; Tit ill. 8. 

2 1 Tim. ii. 2 ; iii. 16 ; iv. 7 ; vi. 11 ; 2 Tim. iii. 5, 12 ; Tit. i. 1 ; ii 12. Pfleiderer suggests that 
this word eucrejSeta may hare heen taken as the fundamental idea of the Christian holy life as the 
word " faith " became gradually externalised. 

s 1 Tim. i. 10 ; vi. 3, 4 ; 2 Tim i. 13 : iv. 3 ; Tit. i. 9, 13 ; ii. 1, 8. And, as a natural antithesis, 
yiyypaiva and vcxrelv are applied to false doctrine. * 1 Tim. vi. 1, 2 ; 2 Tim. ii. 21 ; Tit. ii. 9. 

5 Alford, I.e. Can the use of SeoTroTrj? instead of xvpios be due to the literary inconvenience 
which was gradually felt to arise from the fact that the latter word was more and more incessantly 
employed as the title of our Lord Jesus Christ ? 

6 I feel convinced that the Tubingen methods applied to the writings of Mr. Carlyle (for 
instance) or Mr. Ruskin, would prove in the most triumphant manner that some of their writings 
were forgeries (a) from their resemblance to, (,S) from their dissimilarity from, their other writings. 
But as Dean Alford happily says, " In a fresh and vigorous style there will ever be (so to speak) 
librations over any rigid limits of habitude which can be assigned ; and such are to be judged of, 
not by their mere occurrence or number, but by their subjective character being or not being ia 
accordance with the writer's well-known characteristics " (Test. iii. 54). 

7 -yeveaAo-ytai, 1 Tim. i. 4, Tit. iii. 9 ; jaaratoAoyo?, 1 Tim. i. 6, Tit. i. 10 ; K€vo<^wvkw, 1 Tim, vi 
80, 2 Tim. ii. 16 ; Aoyojiaxiai, irapa9i}ia], (8e|3rjAos, dcrroxetv, TV<j>ov<r6cu ; &C. 



748 APPENDIX. 

—nothing beyond the varying expression of truths which complement bufc do not con- 
tradict each other. Some, indeed, of the alleged discrepancies are too shadowy to grasp. 
If Christianity be described as "the doctrine," and as "sound doctrine"; 1 if the word 
"faith "has acquired a more objective significance, so as sometimes almost to imply a 
body of truths as opposed to heresy; 2 if the name "Saviour" — rare in St. Paul — be 
applied to God, and not to Christ ; 3 if " Palingenesia " (regeneration) occurs only in the 
Epistle to Titus ; 4 these are peculiarities of language, not differences of theology. There 
is a dominant practical tendency in these Epistles ; — so there is, we reply, in all St. Paul's 
Epistles. The value and blessedness of good works is incessantly insisted on ; 5 — is this, then, 
to be stigmatised as " utilitarianism and religious eudsemonism," and a decided pietistic 
attenuation of the Pauline doctrine ? Are they not, then, insisted on even in the Epistles 
to the Romans and Galatians, though there he is developing a theory, and here he is 
professedly occupied with moral instructions? "Will any one attempt to prove that 
St. Paul, either in these Epistles or elsewhere, held any other view of good works than 
this — that they are profitless to obtain salvation, but are morally indispensable ? 6 De 
Wette's further objection, that St. Paul here makes an apology for the Law (1 Tim. i. 8), 
and his attempt to draw a subtle distinction between the universalism of these Epistles 
and of the other Pauline writings, deserve no serious refutation. St. Paul's method 
and object are here wholly unlike those of his Epistles to Churches composed of hetero- 
geneous and often of hostile elements ; but it may be asserted, beyond all fear of con- 
tradiction, that, bearing in mind the non- theoretical treatment of the points on which 
he here touches, and the fact that he is writing to friends and disciples already absolutely 
convinced of the main truths of his theology, there is not one word in these Epistles 
which either contradicts or seriously differs from the fundamental ideas of St. Paul. 
Even Baur — candid, with all his hypercritical prejudices — only sees in them " a certain 
iomething of the specific Pauline doctrine with a dominant practical tendency," an 
"applying of the contents of Christian doctrine to the various circumstances of practical 
life. " 7 

(4) It is not, however, on the above grounds that the Pastoral Epistles have been 
most seriously attacked. The considerations which we have here seen to be untenable 
are really due to after-thoughts ; and the assaults on the genuineness of the Epistles 
have mainly risen from the belief that they are "tendency- writings," meant to serve the 
twofold object of magnifying ecclesiastical organisation and of covertly attacking a 
Gnosticism which was not prevalent till long after the Apostle's time. The two subjects 
are by no means disconnected. The Gnostics, it is said — as the first heretics properly 
bo called — gave occasion for the episcopal constitution of the Church ; and if there were 
no such heretics at that time, then these ecclesiastical arrangements will be devoid of any 
historical occasion or connexion ! I have sought the strongest and fullest statements of 
these objections, and shall try to express the reasons why they appear to me to be most 
absolutely groundless. I quite freely admit that there are some remarkable peculiarities 
in these Epistles ; I do not deny that they suggest some difficulties of which we can give 
no adequate explanation ; I cannot go so far as to say that the objections brought against 
them are "not adequate even to raise a doubt on the subject of their authenticity ; " but 
for these very reasons I can say, with all the deeper sincerity, that, whatever minor 

i 1 Tim. i. 10 ; vi. 1. 

a 1 Tim. i 19 ; ii. 7 ; iii. 9 ; iv. 1—6 ; vi. 10, 21. Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 201. 

3 Pfleiderer says that in Tit. ii. 13 Christ is called " our great God and Saviour," and that " this 
goes bevond all the previous Christology of St. Paul." But there can be no doubt that the phrase is 
applied" to God in this place, as also in 1 Tim. i. 1 ; ii. 3 ; iv. 10 ; Tit. i. 3 ; ii. 10. The anarthrous- 
ness of Sojttjp is no valid grammatical objection. * Tit. iii. 5. 

5 Baur, Paul. ii. 106 ; De Wette, 1'ustoralbr. 117, c. ; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, 210 ; Keuss, Lea 
Epltres, ii. 314. 6 Rom. ii. 6—10 ; xiii. 3 ; Gal. v. 6, &c. ; Eph. ii. 8—10, &c. 

7 Paul. ii. 107. It is the view of some hostile critics that the Asiatic Epistles (Eph. and Col.) 
»re Pauline with un-Pauline interpolations ; and the Pastoral Epistles un-Pauline, yet cont 
Pauline matter. 



GENUINENESS OP THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 749 

hesitations and doubts may remain unremoved, the main arguments of those who reject 
the Epistles have — even without regard to other elements of external testimony and 
internal evidence in their favour — been fairly met and fairly defeated all along the 
line. 

(a) Let us first consider the question of ecclesiastical organisation. And here we are 
at once met with the preliminary and fundamental objection of Baur, that in the Epistles 
which supply us with the surest standard of St. Paul's principles he never betrays the 
slightest interest in ecclesiastical institutions, not even when they might be thought to 
he directly in his way ; and that this want of interest in such things is not merely 
accidental, but founded deep in the whole spirit and character of Pauline Christianity. 

But this form of statement is invidious, and will not stand a moment's examination. 
In the minutifB of ecclesiastical institutions, as affected by mere sectarian disputes, St. 
Paul would have felt no interest ; and to that exaltation of human ministers which has 
received the name of sacerdotalism — feeling as he did the supreme sufficiency of one 
Mediator — he would have been utterly opposed. It is very probable that he would have 
treated the differences between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy as very secondary 
questions — questions of expediency, of which the settlement might lawfully differ in 
different countries and different times. But to say that he would have considered it 
superfluous to give directions about the consolidation of nascent Churches, and would 
have had no opinion to offer about the duties and qualifications of ministers, is surely 
preposterous. It is, moreover, contradicted by historic facts. His tours to confirm the 
Churches, his solemn appointment of presbyters with prayers and fastings in his very 
first missionary journey, l and his summons to the Ephesian presbyters, that they might 
receive his last advice and farewell, would be alone sufficient to prove that such matters 
did — as it was absolutely necessary that they should— occupy a large part of his attention. 
Are we to suppose that he gave no pastoral instructions to Timothy when he sent him 
to the Churches of Macedonia, or to Titus when he appointed him a sort of commissioner 
to regulate the disorders of the Church of Corinth ? 

It is true that the pseudo-Clementines, the Apostolical constitutions, parts of the 
letters of Ignatius, and in all probability other early writings, were forged, with the 
express object of giving early and lofty sanction to later ecclesiastical development, and 
above all to the supposed primacy of Rome. But what could be more unlike such 
developments than the perfectly simple and unostentatious arrangements of the Pastoral 
Epistles ? In the rapid growth of the Christian Church, and the counter-growth of error, 
the establishment of discipline and government would almost from the first become a 
matter of pressing exigency. Even in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Romans we 
find terms that imply the existence of deacons, deaconesses, teachers, prophets, apostles, 
rulers, overseers or presbyters, and evangelists ; and a comparison of the passages 
referred to will show that all these names, with the exception of the first, 2 were used 
vaguely, and to a certain extent even synonymously, or as only descriptive of different 
aspects of the same office. 3 If the imposition of hands is alluded to in the Epistles to 
Timothy, so it is in the Acts. 4 The notion that a formal prof ession of faith was required 
at ordination so little results from 2 Tim. i. 13 that the very next verse is sufficient to 
disprove such a meaning. If the Pastoral Epistles contained a clear defence of the 
episcopal system of the second century, this alone would be sufficient to prove their 
spuriousness ; but the total absence of anything resembling it is one of the strongest 
proofs that they belong to the Apostolic age. Bishop and presbyter are still synonyms, 

1 Acts xiv. 23. 

2 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; xvi. 15 ; Rom. xii. 7 ; xvi. 1 ; PML i. 1 ; 1 Thess. v. 12 ; Eph. iv. 11 ; Acts xx. 
17,28. 

3 To a certain extent, indeed, the overseers, presbyters, and deacons, in their purely official 
aspect, corresponded to the Sheliach, the Rosh ha-Keneseth, the Chazzan of the synagogue. 

* 1 Tim. iv. 14 ; v. 22 ; Acts vi. 6 ; viii. 17. 



750 APPENDIX. 

as they are throughout the New Testament. 1 If int<rieoiros, " overseer," or "bishop'* be 

used in the singular, this is partly an accident of language in the common generic use of 
the Greek article, and partly arises from the very nature of things as a transitional stage 
to the ultimate meaning of the word — since, even in a presbytery, it is inevitable that 
some one presbyter should take the lead. Timothy and Titus exercise functions which 
would be now called episcopal ; but they are not called "bishops " ; their functions were 
temporary ; and they simply act as authoritative delegates of the Apostle of the Gentiles. 2 
Nor is there any trace of exalted pretensions in the overseers whom they appoint. The 
qualifications required of them are almost exclusively moral. The directions given are 
" ethical, not hierarchical." And yet it is asserted that one main object of the First 
Epistle to Timothy is "to establish the primacy of the bishops as against the 
presbyters " ! 3 A more arbitrary statement could hardly be formulated. Let any one 
turn from the Epistle to the letters of St. Ignatius, 4 where he will read, "Give heed to 
the bishop, that God also may give heed to you ; " to the pseudo-Ignatius, 5 who tells us 
that "he who doeth anything without the knowledge of the bishop serveth the devil"; 
to the pseudo-Clementines, which say that "the bishop occupies the seat of Christ, and 
must be honoured as the image of God ;" 6 and he will see how glaring is the anachronism 
of supposing that it was written towards the middle of the second century to oppose the 
Marcionites ; and how utterly different is the mild and natural authority which the 
Apostle assigns to a representative presbyterate from that "crushing despotism" of 
irresponsible authority for which the writers of the second century were willing to betray 
their Christian liberty. 

We will consider the minor objections on this head when we come to the actual 
passages to which exception is taken, and especially the difficult expression in which the 
Church is apparently called " a pillar and ground of the truth." 7 But another ground 
of objection is the rules about widows, which, as Baur asserts, " can only be successfully 
explained out of the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the second century," in which the term 
xrjpat is applied to an order consisting not only of bereaved persons but even of young 
virgins. 8 That this use of the word did not arise in the Apostle's time may be fairly 
assumed, but if there be not one single fact in the passage referred to which makes this 
necessary, the objection falls to the ground. Baur's only argument is that if x j}pai be 
actual widows, the Apostle gives two directly contradictory precepts about them, 
bidding the younger widows to marry again (1 Tim. v. 11 — 14), and yet ordering that a 
second marriage is to exclude them, should they again become widows, from the viduatus 
of the Church. But where is the contradiction ? "We learn from the Acts that the 
Church continued the merciful and, indeed, essential custom, which it had learnt from 
the synagogue, of maintaining those widows, who from the circumstances of Eastern and 
ancient society were its most destitute members, and whose helpless condition constituted 
a special appeal to pity. But it was only natural that each Church should try as far as 

1 Thus in 1 Tim. iii. St. Paul passes at once from " bishops " (1—7) to "deacons " (8—13), and 
afterwards speaks of these same hishops as "presbyters" (v. 17 — 19), aud in Tit. i. 5 — 7 the identi- 
fication is indisputable. No one is ignorant that "bishops "and " presbyters " are in the New 
Testament identical (Acts xx. 17 — 28 ; Phil. i. 1 ; 1 Pet. v. 2). The fact was well known to the 
Fathers, ot 7rpecr/3vTep(H to 7raAaibi/ exaXovvTO €ttl<tkottol . . . koL ol etriarKOiroi TrpecrfivTepoi (Chrys. 
aul Phil. i. 1 ; Jer. ad Tit. i. 5). The more marked distinction of the two is first found in Ignatius 
cul Polyc. 6. 2 1 Tim. i. 3 ; iii. 14 ; 2 Tim. iv. 9, 21 ; Tit. i. 5 ; iii. 12. 

8 Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 205. Yet he admits (p. 203) that in the second Epistle the remarks 
addressed to Timothy are " very far removed from the later conceptions of the exalted condition of 
a bishop," and that even in the first Epistle "the difference between bishops and presbyters does 
not appear to be any fixed difference of officers." 

* Ad Polyc. 6. If the shorter form of the seven Ignatian Epistles be genuine, they show that 
even at the beginning of the second century, the ecclesiastical development was so far in advance of 
the Pastoral Epistles as almost to demonstrate the genuineness of the latter. 5 Ad Smyrn. 9. 

6 Clem. Horn. iii. 02, 66, 70. For these and other quotations see Dr. Ligbtfoot's essay on the 
Christian ministry (Philippians, p. 209, seqq.). 7 i Tim. iii. 15. 

8 rds -rrapdevovs rd? \eyo^eua<; x'spw (Igu. od Smyrn. 13). The genuineness of the passage is fu 
from certain. 



GENUINENESS OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 751 

possible to utilise this institution, and that the widows should themselves desire to be 
serviceable to the brethren to whom they owed their livelihood. Hence " the widows " 
became a recognised order, and acquired a semi-religious position. Into this order St. 
Paul wisely forbids the admission of widows who are still of an age to marry again. Of 
the female character in general and in the abstract he does not ordinarily speak in very 
exalted terms, and in this respect he only resembles most ancient writers, although, in 
spite of surrounding conditions of society, he sees the moral elevation of the entire sex 
in Christ. He regarded it as almost inevitable that the religious duties of the ' ' order of 
widows," although they involved a sort of consecration to celibacy for the remainder of 
their lives, would never serve as a sufficient barrier to their wish to marry again ; and he 
thought that moral degeneracy and outward scandal would follow from the intrusion of 
such motives into the fulfilment of sacred functions. There is here no contradiction, 
and not the shadow of a proof that in the language of the Epistle there must be aaj 
identification of widows with an order of female celibates or youthful nuns. 1 

(/3) "We now come to the last objection, which is by far the strongest and most per- 
sistent, as it is also the earliest. The spuriousness of the Pastoral Epistles is mainly 
asserted on the ground that they indicate the existence of a Gnosticism which was not 
fully developed till after the death of St. Paul. A more extensive theory was never 
built on a more unstable foundation. 2 The one word antitheseis in 1 Tim. vi. 20, seems 
to Baur a clear proof that the First Epistle to Timothy is a covert polemic against Marcion 
in the middle of the second century. To an hypothesis so extravagant it is a more than 
sufficient answer that the heretical tendencies of the false teachers were distinctly 
Judaic, whereas there was not a single Gnostic system which did not regard Judaism as 
either imperfect or pernicious. Objections of this kind can only be regarded as fantastic 
until some proof be offered (1) that the germs of Gnosticism did not exist in the apostolic 
age ; and (2) that the phrases of Gnosticism were not borrowed from the New Testament, 
nor those of the New Testament from the Gnostic systems. Knowing as we do that 
" ^Eon" was thus borrowed by Valentinus, 3 and that " Gnosis" was beginning to acquire 
a technical meaning even when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians, 4 we see 
that on the one hand Gnostic terms are no proof of allusion to Gnostic tenets, and on the 
other, that Gnostic tendencies existed undeveloped from the earliest epoch of the 
Christian Church. It would be far truer to say that the absence of anything like definite 
allusion to the really distinctive elements of Marcionite or Valentinian teaching is a 
decisive proof that these Epistles belong to a far earlier epoch, than to say that they are 
an attempt to use the great name of Paul to discountenance those subtle heresies. In 
the Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul had dealt formally with the pretended philosophy 
and vaunted insight, the incipient dualism, the baseless angelology, and the exaggerated 
asceticism of local heretics whose theosophic fancies were already prevalent. 5 In these 
Epistles he merely touches on them, because in private letters to beloved fellow- workers 
there was no need to enter into any direct controversy with their erroneous teachings. 
But he alludes to these elements with the distinct statement that they were of Ju Jaic 
origin. Valentinus rejected the Mosaic law ; Marcion was Antinomian ; but these 
Ephesian and Cretan teachers, although their dualism is revealed by their ascetio 
discouragement of marriage, their denial of the resurrection, and their interminable 
" genealogies" and myths, 6 are not only Jews, but founded their subtleties and specula- 

i 1 Cor. xiv. 34 ; 1 Tim. ii. 12—14 ; 2 Tim. ill. 6 ; &c. 

2 Apparently the use of the word erepoSi.SaiTKaXelv in 1 Tim. i. 3 as compared with eTepoSiSacr/coAo* 
In Hegesippus first led Schleiermacher to doubt the genuineness of the First Epistle. 

8 Hippolytus (R. H. vL 20) tells us that Valentinus gave the name of iEons to the emanations 
•jrhich Simon Magus had called Roots. 

* 1 Cor. viii. 1. The adjective " Gnostic " is ascribed to the Ophites, or to Carpocrates. (Iran. 
Haer. i. 25 ; Euseb. H. E. iv. 7, 9.) 

5 See Col. i. 16, 17 ; ii. 8, 18 ; and Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, p. 54. 

6 1 Tim. i. 4 ; iv. 4 ; 2 Tim. ii. 18. 



752 APPENDIX. 

tions on the Mosaic law. 1 In dealing with these Paul has left far behind him the epoch 

of his struggle with the Pharisaic legalists of Jerusalem. Thought moves with vast 
rapidity ; systems are developed into ever- varying combinations in an amazingly short 
space of time, at epochs of intense religious excitement, and as the incipient Gnosticism 
of the apostolic age shows many of the elements which would hereafter be ripened into 
later development, so it already shows the ominous tendency of restless speculation to 
degenerate into impious pride, and of over strained asceticism to link itself with intoler- 
able license. 2 These are speculations and tendencies which belong to no one country and 
do one age. Systems and ideas closely akin to Gnosticism are found in the religions and 
philosophies of Greece, Persia, India, China, Egypt, Phoenicia ; they are found in Plato, 
in Zoroaster, in the Vedas, in the writings of the Buddhists, in Philo, in neo- 
Platonism, and in the Jewish Kabbalah. In all ages and all countries they have 
produced the same intellectual combinations and the same moral results. A writer of 
the second century could have had no possible object in penning a forgery which in his 
day was far too vague to be polemically effective. 3 On the other hand, an apostle of the 
year 65 or 66, familiar with Essene and Oriental speculations, a contemporary of Simon 
Magus the reputed founder of all Gnosticism, and of Cerinthus, its earliest heresiarch, 
might have had reason — even apart from divine guidance and prophetic inspiration — to 
warn the disciples to whom he was entrusting the care and constitution of his Churches 
against tendencies which are never long dormant, and which were already beginning to 
display a dangerous activity and exercise a dangerous fascination. If there is scarcely a 
warning which would not apply to the later Gnostics, it is equally true that there is not 
a warning which would not equally apply to errors distinctly reprobated in the Epistles 
to the Philippians, Corinthians, and Colossians, as well as to the Churches addressed by 
St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John. 4 Greek subtleties, Eastern imagination, Jewish 
mysticism — in one word, the inherent curiosity and the inherent Manicheism of unre- 
generate human nature — began from the very first to eat like a canker into the opening 
bud of Christian faith. 

Those who wish to see every possible argument which can be adduced against the 
Pauline authorship of these Epistles, may find them marshalled together by Dr. Davidson 
in the latter editions of his " Introduction to the Study of the New Testament." 5 To 
answer them point by point would be tedious, for many of them are exceedingly 
minute ; 6 nor would it be convincing, for critics will make up their minds on the 
question on the broader and larger grounds which I have just examined. But to sum 
up, I would say that, although we cannot be as absolutely certain of their authenticity 
as we are of that of the earlier Epistles, yet that scarcely any difficulty in accepting 
their authenticity will remain if we bear in mind the following considerations. (1) In 
times like those of early Christianity, systems were developed and institutions consoli- 
dated with extraordinary rapidity. (2) These letters were written, not with the object 

1 1 Tirn. i. 7 ; Tit. i. 10, 14 ; iii. 9. 

2 1 Tim. i. 7, 19 ; iv. 2 ; 2 Tim. ii. 17 ; iii. 1—7 ; Tit. i. 11, 15, 16. 

* The vagueness is due to the still wavering outlines of the heretical teachings. The " Gnos« 
ticisa " aimed at has been by various critics identified with Kabbalism (Baumgarten) ; with 
Pharisaism (Wiesinger) ; with Essenism (Mangold) ; with Marcionism (Baur)— 

" If shape it could be called which shape had none 
Distinguishable in vesture, joint, or limb." 

But whether Gnosticism be regarded as theological speculation (Gieseler), or an aristocratic and 
exclusive philosophy of religion (Neander), or allegorising dualism (Baur), if *' it is still an accom- 
plished task to seize amidst so much that is indeiinite, vague, merely circumlocutory and oidy 
partly true, those points that furnish a clear conception of it," then it is clearly idle to say that its 
undeveloped genius cannot have existed in the days of the Apostles. 

* Phil. iii. 18 ; 1 Cor. xv. 5 Vol. ii., pp. 137—195. 

6 I shall, however, touch on some of these in speaking of the Epistles separately. It has been 
said that Paley uses the discrepancies between the Acts and the Epistles to prove their indepen- 
dence, and the agreements to establish their truthfulness. It may certainly be said that the 
Ti) v >ing';n school adduces un-Pauline expressions to prove non-authenticity, and Pauline expressions 
to prove forgery. 



CHBONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF f. PAUL. 753 

of entering into direct controversy, but to guide the general conduct of those as. tthom 
that duty had devolved, and who were already aware of that fixed body of truth which 
formed the staple of the apostolic teaching. (3) They abound in unusual expressions, 
because new forms of error required new methods of stating truth. (4) Their unity is 
less marked and their style less logical, because they are the private and informal 
bttors of an elder, written with the waning powers of a life which was rapidly passing 
beyond the sphere of earthly controversies. Pauline in much of their phraseology, 
Pauline in their fundamental doctrines, Pauline in their dignity and holiness of tone, 
Pauline alike in their tenderness and severity, Pauline in the digressions, the construc- 
tions, and the personality of their style, we may accept two of them with an absolute 
conviction of their authenticity, and the third — the First Epistle to Timothy, which is 
more open to doubt than the others — with at least a strong belief that in reading it wa 
are reading the words of the greatest of the Apostles. l 



EXCURSUS XXVIII. 

Chsonology op the Life axd Epistles of St. Paul. 

To enter fully into the chronology of this period would require a separate volume, and 
although there is now an increasing tendency to unanimity on the subject, yet some of 
the dates can only be regarded as approximate. As few definite chronological indications 
are furnished in the Acts or the Epistles, w can only frame our system by working 
backwards and forwards, with the aid of datu which are often vague, from the few points 
where the sacred narrative refers to some distinct event in secular histo/y. These, 
which furnish us with our points de repere, are — 

The Death of Herod Agrippa L, A.D. 44. 
The Expulsion of the Jews from Eome, A.D. 52. 
The Arrival of Festus as Procurator, A.D. 60. 
The Neronian Persecution, A.D. 64. 

How widely different have been the schemes adopted by different chronologers may be 
seen from the subjoined table, founded on that given by Meyer. 

1 Even Usteri, Lucke, Neander, and Bleek are unconvinced of the authenticity of the First 
Epistle. Otto, TVieseler, and Reuss have said all that is to he said in favour of a single captivity ; 
but on the assumption that the Pastoral Epistles are genuine, such a theory forces us into a mass of 
impossibilities. The conviction at which I have arrived may be summed up thus :— If St. Paul was 
put to death at the eud of his first imprisonment, the Pastoral Epistles must certainly be spurious. 
But thure is the strongest possible evidence that two of them at least are genuine, and great 
probability in favour of the other. They therefore furnish us with a proof of the current tradition 
that his t/iaL as he had anticipated, ended in an acquittal, and that a period of about two yean 
between his liberation and his subsequent arrest, imprisonmeni and death. 



W W 



'54 



APPENDIX. 



EVENTS. 


1_I 


. 1 

a 
to 

S 


8 
2 

o 


a . 
o aj 

if 


to 

'3 

I 


CO 

p-i 


& 

to 




Pi 

w 


d 

o 
to 

! 


a 

o 
| 

1 


si 

so 

at 

a 

to 

M 


Ascension of Christ 


31 


33 


32 


31 


32 


31 


33 


33 


33 


33 


33 


Stephen stoned 


33 
or 
31 






Claud. 
I. 


32 


31 


33 


38? 


31 


33 


37 


Paul's conversion 


35 




33 


a. 

Claud. 

II. 


34 


33 


35 


40 


35 


34 


37 


Paul's first journey to 7 
Jerusalem S 


38 


... 




a. 

Claud. 

III. 


37 


36 


38 


43 


38 


37 


40 


Paul's arrival at Antiooh 


43 




... 


a. 
Claud. 

in. 


41 


40 


43 


43? 


42 


43 


40 


Death of James 


11 








42 


41 


44 




44 


44 


41 


The famine 


11 


41 


44 




42 


42 


44 


44 


44 


44 


42 


Paul's second journey to ) 
Jerusalem ) 


44 




... 


46 


42 


41 


44 


44 


44 


44 


42 


haul's first missionary") 
journey 3 


45 
to 
51 






a. 

Claud. 

V. 


44 
to 

47 


42 


45 
to 
46 




44 
to 
47 


44 
to 
46 


45 
to 
47 


Paul's third journey to) 
Jerusalem, to the Apos- > 
tolic convention ) 


52 








49 


49 


52 


53 


49 


51 


50 


Paul commences the ) 
second missionary jour- > 
ney ) 


52 






... j 49 


49 


53 




50 


51 


50 


Banishment of the Jews') 
from Rome } 


52 




49 


49 


49 


51 


... 


52 


49 
to 
52 


51 


Paul arrives at Corinth ... 


53 








50 


50 


51 


51? 


52 


52 


51 


Paul's fourth journey to) 
Jerusalem (al. Csesarea) > 
a i d third miss, journey ) 


55 


... 




1 52 
Coes 


52 


56 


51? 


54 


54 


53 


Paul's abode at Ephesus ... 


56 
to 
58 






53 
to 
55 


52 
to 
54 


56 
to 
59 


56 
to 

58 


54 
to 
57 


54 
to 

57 


53 

to 

55 


Paul's fifth journey to) 
Jerusalem, and impri-f 
sonment ) 


59 


... 




53 i 
or 56 

51 I 


55 


60 


59 


58 


58 


56 


Paul is removed from) 
Csesarea to Rome . . . 5 


61 


55 


57 


under Kfi 
Nero. 5b 


56 


62 


60 


60 


60 


59 


Paul's imprisonment of) 
two years' in Rome ... $ 


62 
or 
6i 




to a 
Ner. 
IV. 


57 ■ 63 61 

to | ... 1 to to 

59 1 1 65 1 63 


61 

to 


61 J 60 
to to 
63 1 62 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. 



755 





















2 








5 






00 


a 


j 




CD 


4> 


a 




g| 


ti 






€ 

1 




a 
n 


Si 


a 
a 

o 

S 


© 
a 
"3 


a 




.a 

CD 


3 
Xi 

O 


to 

a 
< 




00 

CD 


-6 

1 


.2 

S 

Hi 

►J 


00 

■s 

o 




30 


33 


32 


33 


30? 




35 


33 


31 


29 
Id. 


30 


33 




30 


30 








37 
























30 


... 


37 


or 

38 


37? 




35 




37 




39? 


38 


... 


33 


37 






37 






37 








35 






between 

37 

and 
41 






31 


37? 


or 


40 


38? 


or 


39 


35 


38 


or 


40 


38 


34 


37 






38 






38 








38 




i 










40 






40 








38 












33 




or 
41 


43 


41 


or 
41 


42 


38 


41 


or 
41 


43 


41 




37 


40 












43 






43 














39 




42 






or 
44 


43 


41 


or 44 
or 45? 




44 


44 




43 


41 


42 


about 
44 


44 


43 
or 
44 


44 


44 


44 




43 
or 
44 




44 


44 






44 






44 


















45 


between 






44 


44 


or 
45 


44 


44 








f U ) 
or 

< 45 \ 
1 or 
I 46? J 




45 


to 

46 


41 

and 

45 


44 


44 


41 










44 










45 








to 


44 


44 


44 


45 


or 


44 


44 


44 


45 


to 




44 


44 


44 










45 












46 








45 




45 

ff. 








44 


to 
49 


to 




45 


48 


46 






to 








... 


to 


about 




to 


to 


to 


45 


45 


46 










46 


48 




47 


51 


48 






47 




52 


52 


51 


50 
or 


47 


52 


51 


52 


about 
50 


52 




49 
to 


50 












51 














50 




47 




53 






51 
or 
52 


47 


52 


51 




about 
50 


52 




51 


51 












between 






51 
















54? 


54? 


52 


52 


52 

and 
54 


49 




or 
52 




52 


52 








48 


54? 


about 
54 


52 


52 


52 

or 
53 


49 


53 


52 


... 


52 


53 




53 


53 












53 














54 






19 




56 


Coes 


54 


or 


51 


55 


54 


56 


54 


55 


or 


54 


54 












54 














55 






50 




57 




55 


54 


51 

ff 


56 


54 




54 


to 

58 


55 


54 




to 




to 


... 


to 


or 


and 


to 




to 


to 


to 


55 


52 




59 




57 


55ff 


57 


57 




57 


57 


57 














58 




















53 


60 


60 


57 


58 


or 
59 


59 


60 


58 


60 


58 


59 


58 


58 


58 












60 




















55 


62 

I 


62 


59 


60 


or 
61 


61 


62 


60 


62 


60 


61 


60 


61 


61 


56 


63 


63 


60 


61 


62 


62 


63 


61 


63 


61 


62 


62 


61 


61 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


to 


58 


65 


65 


62 


63 


64 


64 


65 


63 


65 


I 61 


64 


64 


63 


63 



w w 2 



756 



APPENDIX. 



I subjoin a separate list of the dates of the Epistles adopted in this volume. The 
reasons are stated in loco, but the reader will understand that the dates in sc me instances 
can only be approximate. 

Dates op the Epistles. 



Epistle. 


Written at 


A.D. 


1 Thessalonians. 


Corinth. 


52. 


2 Thessalonians. 


Corinth. 


52. 


1 Corinthians. 


Ephesus. 


57. 


2 Corinthians. 


Philippi (?). 


68 (early). 


Galatians. 


Corinth. 


58. 


Romans. 


Corinth. 


58. 


Philippians. 


Rome. 


61 or 62. 


Colossians \ 
Philemon } 


Rome. 


63. 


Ephesians. 


Rome. 


63. 


1 Timothy. 


Macedonia (?). 
Macedonia (?). 


65 or 66. 


Titus. 


66. 


2 Timothy. 


Rome. 


67. 



The subjoined table will give the probable dates of the chief events in the Apostle's 
life, with those of the events in secular history with which they synchronised. 

Table op Contemporary Rulers, etc. 



U 



u 



38 



Tiberius 
(sole Emperor). 



Retires to Capreee 

A Phoenix said 
to have been 
seen in Egypt. 



Gaius (Caligula) 
(March 16). 



Orders his statue 
to be placed 
in the Temple. 
Embassy of 
Philo. 

Claudius 
(Jan. 24). 
Disciples called 
Christians at 
Antioch. 



Pbooueatobs. 



Pontius Pilatus 



Marullus 

(*Ii7n-apx»}s). 



Legates of 
Syeia. 



Vitelllus. 



Petronius 
Turpilianus. 



Vibuis Mar- 
sus. 



Herod 
Agrippal. 



Herod 
Agrippa I. 
(dominion 
extended). 



High Pbiests 



Caiaphas. 



Jonathan 



Theophilus. 



Simon 
Kanthera. 
Matthias. 



Elionseus, 

son of 
Kanthera. 



Events in Lipb 
of St. Paul. 



Martyrdom 

of Stephen. 

St. Paul's 

Conversion. 

First Visit to 
Jerusalem. 
At Tarsus. 



At Antioch. 



CHRONOLOGY OP THE LIFE OP ST. PAUL. 

Table of Contempokaey Ruleks, etc. — continued. 



757 





EMPERORS. 


Procurators. 


Legates op 
Syria. 


Kings. 


High Priests. 


Events in Lifh 
of St. Paul. 


a 


Famine (Jos. 


Cuspius Fadus 


Cassius 


Death of 




Second Visit 




Antt. xx. 5, 2). 




Longinus. 


Herod 
Agrippa I. 




to Jerusalem. 


45 










Joseph 


First Mission 










Ben Kamhit. 


Journev 


46 




Tiherius Alex- 
ander. 










47 












Ananias, 

son of 

Nebedseus. 




48 




Ventidius Cu- 
manus. 


Ummidius 
Quadratus. 








49 


Expulsion of 
Jews from 
Rome. 






Agrippa 
II. , King 
of Chalcis. 






50 


Caractacus taken 
to Rome. 












51 




""" 








Third Visit tc 
Jerusalem, 
and Synod. 
At Corinth. 


62 


mm 


••#•« 




Agrippa 
II. (Bata- 
nsea and 
Tracho- 
nitis). 


IshmaeL 
Ben Phabi. 


1, 2 Thess. 


53 




Claudius Felix 






Fourth Visit 


54 


Nero (Oct. 13) 










to Jerusalem. 


55 
56 


Birth of Trajan. 












57 


Trial of Pomponia 
Greecina (as a 










Paul at Eph. 












ICor. 




Christian I). 












58 












Second Ep. to 

Corinthians. 

Epistle to 

Galatians. 


59 


Murder of Agrip- 
pina. 












60 


Porcius Festus 


Corbulo 








61 


Revolt of Boa- 
dicea. 








Joseph Cabi 


At Rome. 


62 


Deaths of Burrus, 


Albinus 






Ananus 


Epistle to 
Philippians. 




Octavia, and 










Pallas. | 












Nero marries 

Poppsea. 
Power of Tigel- 












63 






•••••• 


Jesus, 


Ep. to Colos- 




linus. 








son of 
Damnaeus. 


sians, Phile- 
mon, and 
Ephesus. 












Paul liberated. 


61 


Great Fire of 












Rome. 














Persecution of 














Christians. 












65 


Death of Seneca 


Gessius Florus 




...... 




First Epistle 
to Timothy. 


66 


Beginnings of 
Jewish War. 
Nero in Greece. 










Ep. to Titus. 


67 


Siege of otapata 










Second Epistle 
to Timothy. 


68 


Suicide of Nero 
(June). 
Galba. 


Vespasian takes 
Jericho. 








Martyrdom. 



758 APPENDIX. 



EXCURSUS XXIX. 

Traditional Accounts of St. Paul's Personal Appearance. 

The traditional accounts of the personal appearance of the great Apostle are too late tc 
have any independent value, but it is far from improbable that where they coincide they 
preserve with accuracy a few particulars. Such as they are, the reader may perhaps 
care to see them translated ; but he must bear in mind the sad probability that there 
were periods of St. Paul's career at which, owing to the disfigurement wrought by the 
ravages of his affliction, we should not have liked to gaze upon his face. 

In the sixth century John of Antioch, commonly called Malala, 1 writes that "Paul 
was in person round-shouldered (T~n tiKlkCix <«>i>5oei8ijs), with a sprinkling of grey on his head 
and beard, with an aquiline nose, greyish eyes, meeting eyebrows, 2 with a mixture of 
pale and red in his complexion, and an ample beard. With a genial expression of coun- 
tenance, he was sensible, earnest, easily accessible, sweet, and inspired with the Holy 
Spirit." 

Nicephorus, 3 writing in the fifteenth century, says, " Paul was short, and dwarfish in 
stature, and, as it were, crooked in person and slightly bent. His face was pale, his 
aspect winning. He was bald-headed, and his eyes were bright. His nose was prominent 
and aquiline, his beard thick and tolerably long, and both this and his head were sprinkled 
with white hairs. " 

In the Acts of Paul and Thekla, a romance of the third century, he is described as 
" short, bald, bow-legged, with meeting eyebrows, hook-nosed, full of grace." 4 

Lastly, in the Philopatris of the pseudo-Lucian, 5 a forgery of the fourth century, 6 
he is contemptuously alluded to as " the bald-headed, hook-nosed Galilaean who trod the 
air into the third heaven, and learnt the most beautiful things." 

The reader must judge whether any rill of truth may have trickled into these accounts 
through centuries of tradition. As they do not contradict, but are rather confirmed by, 
the earliest portraits which have been preserved to us, we may perhaps assume from 
them thus much, that St. Paul was short — a fact also mentioned by the pseudo- 
Chrysostom," and to which he may himself allude with somewhat bitter touches of 
irony in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians 8 — that he had a slight stoop, if not a 
positive bend, in the shoulders ; that his nose was aquiline, and that his thin hair was 
early "sable-silvered." We may also conjecture from these notices that his face was 
pale, and liable to a quick flush and change of expression, and that when he was not 
absolutely disfigured by his malady, or when he was able to throw off the painful self- 
consciousness by which it was accompanied, the grace and sweetness of his address, the 
dignity and fire of his bearing, entirely removed the first unfavourable impression caused 
by the insignificance of his aspect. We may conclude that this was the case from many 
of the circumstances of his intercourse with men and churches, and also from the fact 
that the rude inhabitants of Lystra take him — before he had yet attained to middle age, 
and before his body had been so rudely battered as it was by many subsequent miseries 
— for an incarnation of the young and eloquent Hermes. 

» X. 257. 

2 This owo(J>puw/xa, and the expression arevLaas, may he the sole ground for fancying that the 
eye* of St. Paul were grey and bright. > 3 H. E. ii. 37. 

* I can make nothing of the euxi^/u-os following the ay/cv'Aos reus /ci'/jju.ais. 8 Philopatr. 13. 

• Such is the opinion of Gesner in his dissertation De Aetate et Auctore Philopatridis. 
1 4 Tp*irrjxvs ai/0po>7ros. 8 2 Cor. x. 10—16, especially verse 14. 



INDEX 



Abennerig, King — Ananias' influence over bis 

family, 429. (See Ananias.) 
4.bhoda Zara, Quotations from, 453-4. 
Abrabam — bis wives as types, 32. 
Acts of Apostles — Tbe intention and genuine- 
ness of ; not a perfect bistory, 4-5 ; cbief 
uncial MSS. of, 730-1 ; its abrupt termi- 
nation not explained, 647. 
Adiabene — Province of, 173 ; Eoyal family of, 

bow entangled by Judaisers, 429. 
Adrian VL — bis remark on tbe statuary of 

tbe Vatican, 298-9. 
Advent, Nearness of final Messianic, 343. 
iEneas bealed, 148. 
Agabus — bis prophecy, 172, 520. 
Agapse— Institution of, 51 ; held witb closed 
doors, 99-100 ; in reference to tbe circum- 
cision of Titus, 236 ; abuse of, at Corintb, 
382. 
Agrippa I. and II., 734-8. 

Agrippa II. — bis desire to hear Paul, 556; 
Paul brought before, 556 et seq. ; his use of 
the word " Christian," 560. 
Agrippa Herod. (See Herod ) 
AMbba — 33 rides of, 34. 

Alexandria, Tbe learning of tbe Jews of, 70-2. 

Altar, Altars — built by advice of Epimenides, 

301 ; Paul's view of tbe altar at Athens to 

the Unknown God, 301. 

Ananias and Sapphira— their sin and death, 

60. 
Ananias (of Damascus) — his doubts about 

PauL 113 ; his intercourse with Paul. 114. 
Ananias (Jewish merchant) — bis ascendancy 

over King Abennerig and bis family, 429. 
Ananias (the high priest) — his outrage on 

PauL 539-40. 
Andrew — Andrew and Philip, though Hellenic 

names, yet common among the Jews, 74 
Annas — his treatment of Peter and John, 60. 
Antichrist — Jewish and heathen influences in 

Rome, 585-8. 
Antinomies of Paul, 732-3. 
Antioch (in Syria) — Mission of Paul and Bar- 
nabas, a.d. 44, 162 ; description of, 162-3 ; 
earthquake at, a.d. 37, 165 ; Christians 
first so called at, 167 ; Church and religious 
feelings at, 182 ; state of Church in, 224 ; 
false brethren in Church, 224-5; Peter 
and Paul at, 247 et seq. 
Antioch (in Pisidia) — Description of, 204-5 ; 
Paul and Barnabas at, 205-6; synagogue 
and worship, 205 ; Paul preaches in syna- 
gogue, 207, 
Antonius (Emperor) and Babbi Juda Haka- 

dosh, 430. 
Apollonius Tyaneus at Ephesus, 360. 
Apollos — as regards authorship of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, 6; at Ephesus — journey 
to Corinth — his preaching there, 361 ; un- 
intentional cause of division in tbe Church 
at Corinth, 362 ; his report of the Corin- 
thian Church to Paul, 376 ; results of his 
teaching at Corinth, 380. 



Apostle— of love, John, 1 ; of tbe Foundation 
stone, Simon, 1; of progress, Paul, 1; cf 
the Gentiles, Paul, 2 ; the source and vin- 
dication of Paul's authority as an Apostle, 
406-7 ; term of authority first used by Paul 
in his Epistle to the Galatians, 431-2. 
Apostles — their antecedents compared with 
those of Paul. 3 ; bold after weakness, 47 ; 
their Lord's intercourse with them after 
His Be.-urrectl n, and the power of His 
Besurrection on them, 47 ; the regenera- 
tors of the world, 47 ; their last inquiry 
of their Lord as to the promised kingdom, 
48; their feelings after their Lord's As- 
cension, 48; Jews still, only with belief in 
Christ, 48 ; the holy women joining witb 
them in prayer, 49 ; fill up vacancy of 
Judas Iscariot 49, 50 ; as witnesses of their 
Lord's Besurrection, 49; their hope be- 
tween Ascension and Pentecost, 50 ; tbe 
promise of the Holy Ghost fulfilled, 52 ; 
speaking with tongues, 52-3 ; limit of the 
gift of tongues, 54 ; different views of the 
gift, 54-5 ; charge of intoxication refuted, 
58 ; miracles and signs done by them, 59, 
60, 148, 192, 199, 214 ; conduct under per- 
secution, and strength of their position, 
59 ; scourged, though defended by Gama- 
liel. 61 ; their early failing to grasp the 
truth, 80 ; their perception that the Mo- 
saic Law was to be superseded, 80 ; their 
failure to understand the teaching of their 
Lord, 81 ; remain in Jerusalem when 
others fly from Saul's persecuting zeal, 98 ; 
tradition of twelve years as the limit fixed 
by their Lord for their abode in Jerusalem, 
180; Greece and Borne in their time, 186; 
showing the superiority of Christianity 
over Stoicism, 188 ; convinced by Paul on 
circumcision, 230; letter after their de- 
cision on circumcision, 242 ; genuineness 
of this encyclical letter, 245. 
Apostobcal Journeys of Paul— the firsi,, ad. 
45-46, Antioch in Syria, Seleucia, Cyprus, 
Perga in Pamphylia, Antioch in Pisidia, 
Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, 
Antioch in Pisidia, Perga, Attalia, An- 
tioch in Syria, 189-224 ; the second, a.d. 
53-56, Antioch in Syria, Derbe, Lystra, 
Pbrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Troas, Samo- 
tbrace, Neapolis, Philippi, Tbessalonica, 
Bercea, Athens, Corintb, Ephesus, Csesa 
rea, Jerusalem, 256-353 ; the third, a d. 
56-60, Jerusalem, Antioch in Syria! 
Galatia, Pbrygia, Ephesus, Troas, Mace« 
donia, LTLyricum, Corintb, Troas, Assos, 
Mitylene, Chios, Trogylbum, Miletus, 
Cos, Bhcdes, Batara, Tyre, Ptolemais, 
Cassarea, Jerusalem, 354-521. 
Apotheosis of Boman Emperors, 717-8. 
Aquila and Priscilla — their relation to Paul, 

317. 
Arabia, tbe scfme of Paul's retirement on bis 
conversion, 116, 120. 



760 



nrosx. 



Aramaic— Paul's knowledge of, 10 ; in relation 
to the gift of tongues, 57; decay and 

advance of among Jews, 71. 

Aratus, poet of Cilicia, quoted by Paul, 308. 

Aretas, Emir of Petra, 101. 

Aristarchus, Paul's companion on bis voyage 
to Eome, 563. 

Art — its relation to Christianity, 299. 

Artemas— Artemidorus, 660. 

Artemis— Temple at Ephesus, 357-60 j wor- 
ship at Ephesus, 360-1. 

Ascension of our Lord, 47. 

Athens — Associations and description, 295; 
the statuary of, 297 ; Paul at, 296 et seq. ; 
philosophers of, 302-4; Paul's preaching 
and its results, 304 et seq. ; Paul ques- 
tioned by the Athenians, 306 ; Athenian 
view of the Eesurrection and judgment 
to come, 311 ; later growth of the Church 
at Athens, 313 ; Paul leaves Athens, 313. 

Augustus Csesar— his protection of the Jews, 
504. 

Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus, on Christianity, 
72L 

B. 

Baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch and its 
results, 147, 160. 

Barnabas, St.— with Paul at Lystra, 11; his 
early relations with Paul, 133 ; his influ- 
ence with the Apostles in Paul's favour, 
134; twice secured Paul's services for the 
work of Christianity, 134, 162 : his need 
of help, 162; his view of the admission of 
the Gentiles to the Christian covenant, 
161-2 ; his view of Paul's character, 162 ; 
commencement of their joint work, 162 ; 
separated jointly with Paul by the H oly 
Spirit for the work of converting the 
world, 188; dispute with Paul as to the 
companionship of Mark, 254 ; their sepa- 
ration, 254; friendship with Paul not 
broken, but mutual loss owing to the 
separation, 255-6. (See Paul.) 

Bar-Jesus, the sorcerer, 197. 

Basil, St.— his Christian education at Athens, 
313. 

Berenice— Paul before her, 557; her character, 
738. 

Berceans cort pared with the Thessalonians 
as to gladness in receiving the word of 
God, 293. 

Bethany, the scene of our Lord's Ascension, 
47. 

Boohs and Parchments of Paul at Trnas, 
21, 68 et seq. 

Burdens laid on Proselytes, 718-19 

Burrus, Afranius— his character, 577 ; in charge 
of Paul, 578 j as formerly Pras.orian Pre- 
fect, 668. 

C. 

Caesar. (See distinctive names.) 

Caiaphas — Peter and John before, 59, 60 ; as 

guilty of the blood of Christ, 93. 
Caligula. (See Gaius.) 
Captivity, Paul's Epistles in, 5*8 et seq. 
Carpus of Troas, Paul's cloak, books, and 

parchments left with, 21, 681-2. 
Castor and Pollux, ship in which Paul sailed 

from Melita, 575. 
Cenchreee, Church at, 320. 



Cephas. (See Peter.) 

Chamber of the Last Supper and of assembly 

of the Apostles, 48, 181. 

Charity, 395 

Chastity, 389. 

Chief Priests. (See Priests.) 

Chosen People. (See Jews. ) 

Chrestian and Christian, 169. 

Christ. (See Jesus.) 

Christendom founded by St. Paul, 2. 

Christian, Christians — Origin of the name, and 
where first used, 167-9; " Christian" and 
"Nazarene," 169; Christian character as 
opposed to Jewish character, 406 ; con- 
trast brought out in Paul's Epistles to the 
Corinthians, 407 ; the life oi the Christian 
a life in Christ, 507; Christian and Chres- 
tian, 169 ; Christian unity (see Unity) ; at 
first not in disfavour with the Pharisees, 
but used by them against the Sadducees, 
78 ; their observances and their position, 
79 ; charged with blasphemy rather than 
with idolatry, 96 ; first so called at Antioch 
in Syria, 167 ; their endurance under per- 
secution, 186 ; living sacrifice required of, 
502 ; dangers dreaded by Paul for the 
Christians of Eome, 503. 

Christianity — Conditions of, to the Jews, 184 ; 
views of, by Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius, 
186 ; compared with Stoicism, 187-8 ; rela- 
tion of, to art, 299; judgments of early 
Pagan writers on, 720-1 et seq. ; its intro- 
duction into Eome, 447 et seq. 

Chronology of the life and Epistles of St. 
Paul, 753. 

Chrysostom, St. — his estimate of St. Paul, 3, 
689. 

Church, The — Its vitality from early times, 
47 ; the early days of, 59 et seq. ; Paul twice 
secured for work of, by Barnabas, 131, 
162; rest and progress, 144 et seq.; work 
begun by Stephen, advanced by Philip, 
completed by Paul, 160-1; the early 
Church at Antioch in Syria, 182; false 
brethren in the Church at Antioch in 
Syria, 225 ; peril to, from the difference on 
circumcision, 228; growth of, at Athens, 
313; Church founded by Paul at Corinth, 
319 ; Church at Cenchrese, 320; danger to, 
at Corinth, 377; the heathen not judges 
in Church questions, 389; qualifications 
for office in, 653-6 et seq. ; regulations for 
rulers in, 654, 656. (See names of the 
several Churches.) 

Cicero — his views of Athenian philosophy, 
303. 

Circumcision— disputed point at the Church 
at Antioch in Syria, 225 et seq. ; disputes 
dangerous to the Church, 228; question 
submitted to Church at Jerusalem, and 
especially to the Apostles as having known 
the Lord Jesus Christ, 228 ; decision and 
encyclical letter of the Apostles, 242-3 ; of 
Timothy and Titus, 261; absence of ne- 
cessity for, the key-note of Paul's Epistle 
to the Galatians, 428; Defence of, by 
Judaisers, 428; its use to Judaisers, 430; 
as required by the Jews, 738. 

Civil Governors. (See Governors. ) 

Claudius, his accession, and consideration for 
the Jews, 143 ; his attempt to eject the 
Jews from Eome, 446 ; his persecution of 
the Jews, 504. 

Clement, St.— writing of Paul, 5. 



INDEX. 



761 



Clemen tines, Attacks on Paul in the, 724-6. 

Cloak, Paul's, "books, and parchments left at 
Troas, 21 ; 681-2. 

Coleridge, Opinion of, on Paul's Epistle to 
the Romans, 456. 

Colossse, Account of, 607. 

Colossians— Paul's Epistle to, 608 et seq. ; 
causes of, 608 ; state of Church described 
to Paul by Epaphras, 608 ; false teachers 
in Church at Colossse, 609 ; objects of 
Epistle to, 610; genuineness of Epistle 
to, 614 ; account of Epistle to, 615 et seq. ; 
Jesus the remedy against tbe Phrygian 
mysticism of, 616; warning to, against 
false teachers, 618 ; future of the Church, 
622. 

Conscience, Happiness of clear, 507-8. 

Corinth — Paul visits, 314 ; description of, 
314-5; Church founded at, by Paul, 319; 
Paul's pain at the immorality of Corinth, 
382-3; dangers to Church, 377-8; results 
of Apollos' teaching at, 380 ; false teachers 
in Church at, 381 ; further division in 
Church at, 381 ; disputes in Church at, 
381-2 ; incest in Church at, 383 ; here Paul 
wrote Epistles to Galatians and fconians, 
423 ; Paul's rejoicing in Cburch of, 423. 

Corinthian, Corinthians — Epistles to, 343 ; 
wherein different from rest in plan and 
divisions, 343 ; relapse of Corinthian Chris- 
tians into sensuality, 377 ; causes of Paul's 
First Epistle to, 378 ; sins at the Lord's 
Supper, 383; account of 1 Corinrhiaus, 
384-401 ; Paul's warnings against f.dse 
teachers and divisions in Church, 3^6-7; 
Paul's dealing with cases of incest, 388-9; 
on chastity, meat offered to idols, and re- 
surrection from the dead, 389 et seq. ; sel- 
fishness the origin of disorders in Gaurch, 
397; Paul's self-defence to, 403; restora- 
tion of Mark, 404; punishments for pro- 
fanation of the Lord's Supper, 404 ; a c count 
of 2 Corinthians, 402-19 ; 2 Corinthians, 
Paul's self-vindication not self-commen- 
dation, 408-10 ; Church behind Macedonian 
Church, which, though poor, collected for 
necessities of the saints, 414. 

Cornelius and his friends converted to the 
Christian faith, 158. 

Covering of the head for women, 394. 

Cretans, Account of, by Epimenides, 661. 

Crispus baptised by Paul, 319. 

Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas at; — its sbar3 in 
the propagation of Christianity, 195; the 
Tews c . :96. 



Damaris, 312. 

Damascus — State of feeling between Jews and 
Christians, 126 ; Paul's escape from, 128 ; 
under Hareth, 708-9. 

David, poetry of Psalms compared with St. 
Paul's Epistles, 10. 

Deacons— Cause for and appointment of, 74-5; 
their names, 75 ; results of their appoint- 
ment, 76. 

Death overcome by life, 476-8. 

Denys, St., of France, 312. 

Derbe, Paul and Barnabas at, 218. 

Diana. (See Artemis.) 

Diaspora. (See Dispersion.) 

Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Denyg, 312. 

Disciples. (See Apostles.) 



Dispersion of the Chosen People, 65-6 ; re- 
sults of, on Jews, Greeks, and Romans, 
66 et seq. 

Dorcas raised from the dead, 148. 

Drusilla with Felix hearing Paul, 550. 



E. 



Earthquake at Antioch, A.D. 37, 165. 

Ebionites and Nazarenes, 725. 

Effort, Hurnan, necessary but ineffectual, 732. 

Elymas, his blindness, 199 ; his resistance of 
Paul, 197-9. 

Emperors, Roman, Apotheosis of, 717-18. 

Epaphras of Colossse— Visit to Paul, and its 
results, 593 ; his messages to Paul on the 
Church at Colossse, 608. 

Epaphroditus of Philippi— Visit to Paul, and 
its results, 594 ; his work at Rome : illness, 
recovery, return to Philippi, 594-5. 

Ephesus — Ephesians — visited by Paul, 354 ; 
description of, 354-5 ; A development of 
Christianity at, 354 ; sketch of its history, 
355-6; reputation of its inhabitants, 356; 
Temple of Artemis at, 357-360; super- 
stition of, 359; Christians burn magical 
books, as the results of Paul's labours, 
365-6 ; outbreak which occasioned Paul's 
departure, 368-376 ; Sketch of Church at, 
375-6 ; Paul's Epistle to the Romans pro- 
bably also sent to Ephesus, 450; Paul's 
interview with elders of the Church at 
Miletus, 515-17 ; sketch of Paul's Epistle 
to the Ephesians, 630 et seq. ; phraseology 
and doctrines of the Epistle, 739-40. 

Epictetus on Christianity, 721. 

Epicureans, 303-4. 

Epimenides— Altars built by his direction, 
301 ; Paul's quotation from, in Epistle to 
Titus, 661. 

Epistle — Epistles — Paul's — value and power 
of, 2 ; Genuineness of, 4-6 ; to Hebrews 
as work of Apollos, 6 ; Undesigned coin- 
cidences in, 6 ; compared with poetry of 
Psalms of David, 10; their testimony to 
Paul's "stake in the flesh," 121 et seq. ; 
Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians, 289 ; 
1 Thess. , account of, 325 et seq. ; Paul's 
Epistles compared with our Lord's Sermon 
on the Mount, 327 ; Paul's intense feelings 
conveyed in his Epistles, 327 ; their 
character, 327; salutation and opening, 
328-9 ; characteristics of 1 Thess., 329 et 
seq.; 2 Thess., account of, 340 et seq.; 
object of this Epistle, 343; difference of 
the plan and the division of 1 and 2 Cor. 
from Paul's other Epistles, 343; explana- 
tion of 2 Thess. 1—12, 346 et seq. 1 Cor. 
written during latter part of stay at 
Ephesus, 376 ; cause of this Epistle, 378 
et seq. ; account of ditto, 384 et seq. ; sub- 
jects of several, 403; 2 Cor., account of, 
406 et seq.; Epistles to Galatians and 
Romans written at Corinth, 423 ; cause of 
the Epistle to the Galatians, 426 ; object, 
viz., to prove circumcision unnecesary, 
427-8 ; lasting results of the Epistle to the 
Galatians, 431 ; account of ditto, 431 et 
seq.; cause of Epistle to the Romans, 445 ; 
account of ditto, 445 et seq. ; conclusion of, 
as probably intended originally, 509 ; actual 
conclusion of, 510 ; epistles written at 
Corinth made the subject of Paul's 



762 



INDEX. 



preaching in that city, 511 ; their bearing 
on Paul's life — division into groups, 588 
et seq. ; order in which written, 591 ; of 
the captivity, 592 et seq.; to Colossians, 
608 et seq. ; to Philemon, 623 et seq. ; the 
Christology of the epistles of the captivity, 
613-14 ; to Ephesians, 630 et seq. ; causes of 
this epistle; its genuineness, subject, 
style, compared with Epistle to Colossians, 
631 et seq. ; pastoral, 647 et seq. ; 1 Timothy, 
650 et seq. ; to Titus, 660 et seq. ; genuine- 
ness of the pastoral epistles, 664, 743 et 
seq. ; Paul's account to Timothy of his 
loneliness in prison ; the support of him 
by his God, and his Roman trial; his 
approaching end, 676 et seq. ; 2 Timothy, 
account of, 676 et seq. ; Chief uncial MSS. 
of, 730-1 ; Paul's Epistles, division into 
groups of — Eschatological, Anti- Judaic, 
Christological or Anti-Gnostic, Pastoral, 
733-4 ; phraseology and diction of Epistle 
to the Ephesians, 739-4 ■ ; chronology of 
Paul's Epistles, 753-5 ; dates of ditto, 756. 

Etesian winds, 563-4. 

Eunice and Lois visited by Paul, 258. 

Eunuch, Ethiopian, baptised by Philip, 147 ; 
results of baptism to infant church, 160. 

Euodia and Syntycke as Christian women of 
Macedonia, 277 ; exhorted to unity by 
Paul in Epistle to Ephesians, 595. 

Euroaquila— Eur. clydo, 566-7. 

Eutyckus, fall and restoration to life, 513-14. 

Evodius, Bishop of Antioch, tradition of, as 
inventor of the name of •' Christian," 



Faith— revived by writings of Paul, 2 ; Justi- 
fication by, first taught by Paul, 2; 
Power of justification by, 461, 464, 472 et 
seq. ; difference between justification by 
faith and justification by the Law, 486; 
relation of hope to, 490. 

Feasts, Love Feasts, 51. (See Agapse.) 

Felix, his judicial impartiality, 323, 504 ; made 
Procurator of Juda3 1 A D. 52, 550 ; bis 
estimation among the Jews, 547-8 ; de- 
ferred completion of Paul's trial for 
evidences of Lysias, 549; trembles at 
Paul's reasoning, 550; bis attempts to 
procure bribes for Paul's release, 551 ; 
cause of his disgrace — his last act of 
injustice to Paul, 552 et seq. 

Festus — his judicial impartiality, 323, 504; 
succeeds Felix as Procurator of Judsea 
A.D. 60, 552; brings Paul before Agrippa, 
556 et seq. ; his treatment of Paul, 553-5. 

Flaccus, Governor of Alexandria, arrest and 
death, 140. 

Food, Paul's rules as to use of, 505-6. 

Forgiveness of the redeemed, Paul's view of, 
732. 

Foundation stone, Peter the Apostle of, 1. 

Free will, Paul's view of, 732. 



G. 



Gains (Caligula) — succeeded Tiberius as 
Emperor of Rome, 137; friend of Herod 
Agrippa, 138; intended profanation of the 
Temple at Jerusalem, and death, 142-3. 



Gaius (convert of St. Paul) baptised bj Fan], 
320. 

Galatia — Galatians — Paul's visit to, 263 et 
seq.; their kindness to Paul, 266-7; 
Churches in, founded by Paul, 268. 

Galatians, Paul's Epistle to — Cause of, 426; 
object, to prove circumcision unneces- 
sary, 427-8 ; lasting results of, 431 ; ac- 
count of, 431 et seq. ; apostolic authority 
in the opening salutation first assumed in 
this Epistle, 431-2 ; sense of wrong in the 
mind of the writer — abrupt plainness — 
charge of perverting the Gospel— vj ndi- 
cation of the Apostolic character — com- 
mission and labours— recognition by the 
other Apostles— dispute with Peter, 433-4; 
who are sons of Abraham — from what 
Christ has ransomed us — use of the law, 
436 ; concord of law and promise — all free 
in Christ and Abraham's seed — difference 
between old and new covenants — old cove- 
nant fulfilled its office, 437-9 ; allegory of 
Sarah and Hagar and their sons — Gala- 
tians can combine neither law and gospel 
nor flesh and spirit — the question not of 
circumcision or uncircumcision, but of a 
new creature, 440-3. 

Galen on Christians, 721. 

Gallio, Lucius Junius Annseus, brother of 
Seneca, uncle of Lucan, made Pro-consul 
of Asia, 321 ; character (generally misun- 
derstood) among his friends, 321 ; his in- 
difference when Paul is brought before 
him, 322 ; his reason for refusing to com- 
mit Paul, 322 ; his judicial impartiality, 
323 ; result of his justice to Paul while in 
Corinth, 351 ; protecting Paul by his dis- 
dainful justice, 504. 

Gamaliel— as instructor of Paul, 3, 15, 25 ; his 
views of the wisdom of the Greeks, 21 ; 
Rabbi, Rabban— his parentage— liberality 
of his views, 25; his character, 26; as a 
Pharisee, 26 ; value of his teaching to 
Paul, 27 ; defence of Paul. 61-2 ; Gamaliel 
and the school of Tiibingeii, 704-6. 

Gentiles— Deliverance and admission of, to 
the Church of Christ, 145; commence- 
ment of their reception into the Church, 
160 ; their generous help of Jewish 
Christians, 172 ; Simeon's prophecy, 183 ; 
of Pisidia gladly accept Gospel preached 
by Paul on its rejection by the Jews, 211 ; 
Paul's future care, 223; moderation of 
the Gentile Christians of Rome towards 
Jewish Christians when Paul wrote the 
Epistle to the Romans, 452; their sin 
of denying and abandoning God, their 
punishment, 465 ; Gentiles and Jews 
equally guilty before God and equally 
redeemed, 470. 

Ghost, Holy. (See Holy Ghost.) 

Glossolalia, 30, 54-7. (See Tongues.) 

God — Peace only in His Love, 40; His deal- 
ings with men, 51 ; visions from, 109 ; 
His warnings, 112 ; universal worship 
prophesied by Zephaniah , 183 ; only giver 
of blessing on ministerial labours, 386; 
effect of His righteousness on man, 461 ; 
truth to His promise proved by Paul, 
471-2; manifestation of His Righteous- 
ness, 473 ; His infinite love the solution of 
predestinarian difficulties, 494 ; His grace, 
wisdom, judgments, 501 ; kingdom of God 
defined, 507; God working in man, and 



INDEX. 



763 



judging through Christ, 732. (See Un- 
known God.) 

Gospel— Witness to our Lord, 184; women's 
part in dissemination of, 184; the power 
of, 460 ; for Jews and Gentiles alike, 465. 

Governors, Civil— Duties to, 503 ; Functions 
of, 503 ; Paul's teachings of obedience to, 
504-5. 

Grace— Relation to sin, 479-80 ; Abundance 
of, above sin, 494 ; wisdom, and judgments 
of God, 501 ; source of grac •, mercy, and 
pity, 502. 

Greece — Character of, in time of the Apostles, 
186. 

Greeks — Their " wisdom," 21 ; Eesults on, of 
the dispersion of the Jews, 66 ; contact 
with Jews, 66-7; conversion of Greek 
Proselytes, 161 ; their violent treatment 
of Sosthenes before Gallio, 324. 

Gregory of Nazianzus— his Christian educa- 
tion at Athens, 313. 



Habakkuk, quoted by Paul, 464. 

Hagada ani Hagadist, 33 et seq. 

Halacha andHalachist, 33 et seq. 

Hallel studied by Paul when a boy, 25. 

Heathendom iu the time of the Apostles, 186. 

Hebraism and Helleuism, 65 et seq. 

Hebrew — Paul's knowledge of, used by our 
Lord in Paul's conversion, 10. 

Hebrews, Epistle to, as work of Apollos, 6. 

Helena, Queen— Her protracted vows, 429. 

Hellenism and Hebraism, 65 et seq. 

Herod Agrippa — His character, 139 ; impri- 
soned by Tiberius, released by Gaius on 
his accession to the Empire, and appointed 
successor as Tetrarchto Herod Philip andi 
Lysanias, 139 ; beginning of his reign, re- 
ception at Alexandria, 139 ; bis influence 
and promotion, 174 ; observance of the 
Mosaic Law, 175 ; slays James — arrests 
Peter, 175*7 et seq. ; his death, 179 et seq. 

Herods in the Acts, 734-8. 

Hillel— grandfather of Gamaliel, 25, 26, 73; 
The seven rules of, 34 ; dealing with bur- 
densome Mosaic regulations, 39. 

Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit — Promise of, to 
Apostles, 47 ; Gift of, at Pentecost, 52 ; 
effects of gift, 53. 

Hope — Its power unto salvation, its relation 
to faith, 4901. 

Hope and Peace, the result of justification by 
faith, 475-6. 

Hymn at first Pentecost, after gift of tongues, 
57. 



Iconium (Konieh) visited by Paul and Bar- 
nabas, 212. 

Idolatry — Influence of, on Jewish and other 
communities, 69. 

Idols— Meats offered to, 389, 391. 

Incest in Corinthian Church— Paul's dealing 
with, 388-9. 

Inspiration. (>ee Verbal Inspiration.) 

Isnmael — Thirteen rules of, 34. 

Israel— the restoration of, 500. (See Jews.) 

Issachar, High Priest, 735. 

Izates, son of Abennerig, circumcised, 173, 



James the Greater, his death, 176. 

James the Less, cause for his respect by tha 
people, 80 ; compared with Paul, 131 ; con- 
vinced by Paul as to circumcision, 230; 
description of, 239 ; on circumcision, 240 
et seq. ; error in his view of Paul's work, 
426 ; with elders of the Church receives 
Paul at Jerusalem, 522. 

Jason — Name identical with Jesus, 14 ; charge 
against Jason by Jews of Thessalonica, 
291. 

Jerome, St. — Fragments of traditions of Paul, 
9; on Paul, 689; compared with Paul, 
496. 

Jerusalem — crowd at first Pentecost, 57 ; 
birthplace of Christianity, 354; its dan- 
gers to Paul, 444 ; state of feeling among 
Jews at time of proposal of James and 
elders to Paul, 527-8. 

Jesus Christ the Lord — speaking to Paul in 
Hebrew at his conversion, 10 ; His notice 
of beauties of nature not the subject of 
Paul's language, 12 ; name identical with 
Jason, 14 ; love manifested in His death, 
risen, glorified, known to Paul by revela- 
tion, 42 ; intercourse with disciples after 
Resurrection not continuous, 47 ; promise 
of Holy Spirit to Apostles ; power of 
His Resurrection, 47 ; His Ascension, 
48; His mission to found a kingdom, 
81 ; His purposes to supersede the 
Law not seen in His observance of it, 
81; significance not seen at the time of 
His teaching on the Sabbath, 81 ; univer- 
sality of spiritual worship, &c, 81; 
fulfilled the Law in spiritualising it, 81 ; 
as Messiah, an offence to the Jews, but 
still that which Stephen undertook to 
prove, 83-4 ; why He declared Himself to 
Paul as " Jesus of Nazareth," 111 ; all in 
all to Paul, 114 ; second special revelation 
to Paul, 135 ; deeper meaning underlying 
many of His words, 150 ; tradition that 
twelve years was the limit laid down by 
Him for abode of His disciples in Jeru- 
salem, 180 ; light to Gentiles, 183 ; errone- 
ous view of Him by Suetonius, 186; the 
fundamental conception of all Christianity 
in John and Paul, 724; undivided, 385; 
object of all preaching, 386 ; the only 
foundation, 387 ; common foundation for 
Jew and Gentile, 456; bond of human 
society, 456 ; this is the basis of all Paul's 
epistles, 456 ; Power of life in, 490 ; His 
sacrifice and exultation, 599, 600 ; the 
Divine Word the remedy for Phrygian 
mysticism, &c, in the Coloseian Chris- 
tians, 616 ; as judge, 732. 

Jews — as persecutors of Paul, 5; their care 
for youths as to " dubious reading," 22 ; 
marriage customs, 25, 46, 95 ; value of the 
Scriptures among them, 29 ; their litera- 
ture, 32-3; vows, 40; as originators of 
discord among Christians, 42 ; underrating 
the apostolic dignity of Paul, 42 ; cus- 
toms of Christian Jews in synagogues, 49 ; 
persecuting the apostles, 60 et seq.; the 
dispersion of, 65 et seq.; result of the dis- 
persion on themselves and on Greeks and 
Romans, 66-8; result of contact on the 
Greeks, 66-7; violent outbreaks, 67; 
causes which, led to their commercial 



764 



INDEX. 



character 69-70; of Alexandria, their 
learning, advance in literature, more en- 
lightened than the Rabbis of Jerusalem as 
to the purposes of G-od's gifts, 70-2; 
change of language on dispersion, and 
results of contact with Aryan race, 71 ; 
ordinances to prohibit relations with 
heathen, and bloodshed resulting from 
them, 73-4 ; their Greek names, 75 ; their 
Messianic hopes, 83; their reverence for 
Moses, 85; infuriated at Stephen's view 
of the law of Moses, 86; not naturally 
persecutors, 96; the forbearance of the 
Christian Jews of Rome to Gentiles 
when Paul wrote his Epistle to the 
Romans, 452 ; of Damascus — their feeling 
towards Christians — their reception of 
Paul's preaching, 126-7 ; their scourgings of 
Paul, 127 ; relief at death of Tiberius, 
138 ; allegiance to Gaius, 138 ; how re- 
garded in Alexandria — barbarities prac- 
tised on them, 139—141 ; contributions for 
brethren in Judaea, 172 ; Jewish Christians 
helped by Gentiles in return for spiritual 
wealth, 172 ; of Antioch in Syria, 181 ; con- 
ditions on which alone they could accept 
Christianity, 184 ; two Jews (Paul and 
Barnabas) on a journey for the conver- 
sion of the world, 188 ; of Cyprus, and 
of Salamis, 195 ; their lectionary, 207 ; 
jealousy of th- Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, 
against the Gentiles at Paul's preaching, 
211; Paul atoned at Lystra by Jews of 
Antioch and Iconium, 217 ; their hatred 
of Paul, 218 ; their hatred of Paul and 
Christ, 290; disturbance caused by them 
against Paul at Thessalonica, 291 et seq. ; 
belief of Jews of Bercea, 293 ; Paul's inter- 
course with, and teaching of the Jews of 
Athens, 302 ; Paul's complaints of the Jews 
of Corinth, 321 ; their animosity against 
Christians, even to bringing false accusa- 
tions against them, 323 ; of Thessalonica, 
331 ; their calumnies against Paul, 331 ; 
their persecution of Paul, 332 ; scourgings 
715-7; Ha 1 red of, in classical antiquity, 
719-20; of Ephesus, 361; their opposi- 
tion to Paul, 361 ; intr educed into Rome 
by Poinpey, 445 ; his treatment of them, 
445 ; useless as slaves, 445 ; consequent 
emancipation, 446 ; multiply and nourish, 
446 ; cause of their position in the world , 
446 ; attempts of Sejanus and Claudius to 
eject them from Rome, 446 ; Seneca's ac- 
count of the Jews in Rome, 446 ; convicted 
by Paul of the e ame sin as the Gentiles, 
in forsaking and denying their God, 467 
et seq. ; equally redeemed with the Gen- 
tiles, but their hope vain while on wrong 
foundation, 492; Rejection of, from pri- 
vileges, 495; Love of Paul for, 496; not 
naturally, but spiritually alone, heirs of 
the promises, 497 ; their want of faith in 
rejection of the Gospel, 498-9; their rejec- 
tion by their God neither entire nor final, 
499-500 ; their restoration, 500 ; their pro- 
tection by Roman law, 504 ; their plot 
against Paul's life, 511 ; causes of their 
plot, 511 ; its discovery and prevention, 
511 ; customs as to Nazarite vows, and 
proposal of elders at Jerusalem to Paul, 
523-4; disposition at time of Paul's fifth 
visit to Jerusalem, various outbreaks, 528 
•t $eq. ; of Ephesus, outbreak against 



Paul, 531 et seq, ; charge against Paul of 
defiling the temple, 531 et seq. ; Division 
among, at Paul's answer as to the resur- 
rection, 543; coutest with the Greeks in 
market-places of Csesarea, 551-3 ; edict of 
banishment by Claudius, 579 ; their reply 
to Paul's appeal to Caesar, 579; Number 
of, in Rome, 580; they hear Paul, 580; 
influence and trade at Rome, 585-6. 

Joel, Fulfilment of prophecy of, at Pentecost, 
54. 

John — As a " son of thunder," 1 ; impress 
of individuality on Church, 1 ; Martyrdom 
of life, his miracles, 59 ; description of 
Rome in Apocalypse, 186; convinced by 
Paul on circumcision, 230 ; compared with 
Paul, 723-4. 

John and Peter— Two chief apostles, 1 ; be- 
fore the chief priests, 60; their 1 now- 
led ge of the mind of Christ, 724. 

John Mark. (See Mark.) 

Jonathan, High Priest at death of Stephen, 
88, 93. 

Joseph, the Levite of Cyprus— his early rela- 
tions with Paul, 132. 

Joseph Barsabbas, surnamed Justus — chosen 
with Matthias at election of an apostle, 
49. 

Josephus — his allusion to death of Herod 
Agrippa, 179. 

Journeys— Apostolical, of Paul. (See Apos- 
tolical.) 

Juda Hakkadosh, Rabbi, and the Emperor 
Antoninus, 430. 

Judaisers, Judaising Teachers — Judaism — 
Paul's controversy with, in 2 Corinthians, 
Galatians, and Romans, 406; success in 
undoing Paul's work in Antioch, Corinth, 
and Galatia, hence Epistle to Galatians, 
425-6; their charges against Paul, 427; 
circumcision the ground of their conten- 
tion with Paul, 428 ; their motive in de- 
fending circumcision, 430 ; their hostility 
at Jerusalem dangerous to Paul, 444. 

Judas Iscariot— his fall by sin and his end, 
49 ; antitype of Ahitophel, 49. 

Jude, misapprehension of his Epistle, 726. 

Judgment, Paul on, 732. 

Julian, attempt to substitute the term " Naza- 
rene " for "Christian," 169. 

Julius (Centurion) — his judicial impartiality, 
323 ; placed in charge of Paul to take him 
to Rome, 561 et seq.; gives up his charge 
of Paul, 577. 

Julius Caesar, his protection of the Jews, 
504. 

Justification by faith. (See Faith) 

Juvenal, his description of Rome, 187. 



K. 



Kephas. (See Peter.) 

Kingdom of God— erroneous ideas of, 36-7; 
foundation of, Christ's mission, 81 ; defini- 
tion of, 507. 

Konieh. (See Iconium.) 



L. 



Languages. (See Tongues.) 

Last Supper, Upper room of, 48, 181. 

Law — The x*ighteousness of, and what d«. 



INDEX. 



765 



pended on it, 36 ; its 248 commands and 
365 prohibitions, 37 ; Oral, nullity of, 37 
its traditions and glosses injurious, 37-9 
requirements before God, 38-9; require 
ments impossible for man to satisfy, 39 
Hypocrisy in observance of, 39 ; of Moses 
our Lord's explanation of its destiny, 85 
Use, obj acts, and end of, 478, 651 ; its posi- 
tion in the scheme of salvation, 480 et si 
why not justifying, 482 ; multiplying 
transgressions, 482-3; difference between 
justification by the Law and justification 
by faith, 485; position further defined, 
487 ; illustration from marriage, 487 ; its 
relation to sin, 488 et seq. 

Lectionary, Jewish, 207. 

Levanter, 566. 

Lex Porcia, 23. 

Life — overcoming death, 479-80; in Lhrist, 
490 ; its power, 490. 

Lois and Eunice visited by Paul, 258. 

Longinus on the style of Paul, 15, 689. 

Lord. (See Jesus.) 

Love— John, the Apostle of, 1 ; infinite love 
of God the solution of predestinarian diffi- 
culties, 494; the debt of all, 505. (See 
Charity. ) 

Love Feasts, 51 ; held with closed doors, 99- 
100. (SeeAgapae.) 

Lucau, his relation to GalUo, 321. 

Lucian on Christianity, 721. 

Luke — possible errors and minute exactness, 
64 ; not professing to give a complete bio- 
graphy of Paul, 116; Paul's companion 
from Troas on second Apostolic journeys, 
271 ; his fidelity to him, 271 ; antecedents 
and history — his character as physician, 
and in his relation to Paul, 272 ; with Paul 
at Philippi, 511; his companion on bis 
voyage to Rome, 563 ; as historian of ihe 
Apostles, 647 ; abrupt ending of the Acts 
not explained, 647-8; his faithfulness to 
Paul in his imprisonment, 670. 

Luther, Martin, compared with Paul, 2, 431, 
496 ; Opinion of, Epistle to the Romans, 456. 

Lydia — baptised, 276 ; entertains Paul, 276 ; 
and friends at Philippi, their care for Paul 
in his imprisonment at Rome, 594. 

Lysias— his judicial impartiality, 323; pro- 
tecting Paul by his soldier-like energy, 
504 ; rescues Paul from the Jews in the 
Temple, 533 ; bis error about .Paul, 533 ; 
permits Paul to speak to the Jews, 534 ; 
informed by Paul's nephew of plot of the 
Jews to take Paul's life— rescues him — 
and sends him from Jerusalem to Csesa- 
rea, 544 et seq. 

Lystra— visited by Paul and Barnabas, 214 ; 
Paul's sufferings there rewarded by his 
conversion of Timothy, 217 ; visited again 
by Paul, 258. 

M. 

Macedonia— Influx of Jews and Greeks, but 
without mixing with each other, 67; 
visited by Paul on second apostolic 
journey, 473 et seq. ; position of women 
in, 276-7. 

Malta, in connection with Paul's shipwreck, 
571-3. 

Man— Three great epochs in the religious 
history of, 476 ; four phases of, 483 ; not 
under the law but under grace, 483. 



"Man of Sin," 726-9. 

Manaen (Menahem), foster-brother of Herod 
Antipas, 182. 

Manuscripts — Chief uncial MSS of the Acts 
of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. 
Paul, 730-1. 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus on Christianity, 
721. 

Mark — interpreter to St. Peter, 55 ; com- 
panion of Paul and Barnabas, 181, 194; 
relationship to Barnabas, 201 ; leaves 
Paul and Barnabas at Perga, 202 ; as 
the cause of separation between Paul 
and Barnabas, 254 ; result to him of the 
difference between Paul and Barnabas, 
256 ; again welcomed by Paul as a fellow- 
labourer, 256. 

Marriage— Age for, and customs among 
Jews, 25, 46, 95; Rabbinical injunction 
to marry young, 46 ; in reference to Paul, 
46 ; Paul's view of marriage and virginity 
as given to the Corinthian Church, 391. 

Mary, the mother of our Lord— Worship of, 
in Cyprus, 197. 

Mary, owner of the house in which was the 
upper chamber in which the Apostles 
met, and possibly in which the Last 
Supper had taken place, 181. 

Masters and Servants— Mutual duties, 657. 

Matthias chosen an Apostle, 49, 50. 

Meat and other food, Pauls rules as to the 
use of, 505-6. 

Melancthou's opinion of Paul's Epistle to the 
Romaus, 456. 

Melita. (See Malta.) 

Menahem. (See Manaen.) 

Mercs Vessels of, 498. 

Messiah— Rabbinical idea of conditions of His 
coming, 37 ; fulfilling many prophecies, 85. 

Miletus, Paul's interview at, with elders of 
the Church of Ephesus, 515. 

Miracles wrought by Apostles, 59, 60, 148, 192, 
199, 214. 

Mishna — rules for m rriages, 46 ; marriage the 
first of its 613 precepts, 46. 

Missionary journeys of Paul. (See Apos- 
tolical.) 

Mnason entertains Paul at Jerusalem, 521. 

Monastic life compared with Pharisaism, 36. 

Monobazus, King of Adiabene, and his family, 
173. 

Monobazus, son of Abennerig and Helena, 
circumcised, 429. 

Mosaic Law. (See Law.) 

Moses — Jewish reverence for, 85 ; his claim 
on mankind, 85-6 ; Relation of Paul to, 
before and after his conversion respec- 
tively, 120 ; his marriage, 183. 

Mount of Olives, scene of our Lord's Ascen- 
sion, 47. 



"Nazarene"— Julian's attempt to get this 
word substituted for " Christian," 169. 

Nazarenes and Ebionites, 725. 

Nazarite vows, Jewish customs as to, and 
proposal of elders at Jerusalem to Paul, 
523-4. 

Nero — Points with, in Paul's favour, 561 ; per- 
secution, 585, 668 ; the direction of his 
influence at Rome, 587-8; his govern- 
ment, 668 ; Paul before Nero, 671 et seq. j 
hia character, 673. 



766 



INDEX. 



New Testament (See Testament.) 

Nicodemus as a Pharisee, 26. 

Nicolas— Significance of his appointment as a 
deacon, 75 ; evidence connecting him with 
the Nicolaitans insufficient, 75. 



Offertory, Paul on the, 414, 419, 420, 421, 444. 

Old Testament. (See Testament.) 

Olives, Mount of. (See Mount of Olives.) 

Onesimus — Visit to Paul and conversion, 58 ; 
subject of Paul's Epistle to Philemon, 
608 ; his offence and its legal conse- 
quences, 623 et seq. 

Onesiphorus— his search for Paul and visits to 
him in prison at Rome, 666-7 ; his kindness 
to Paul, 670. 

Oral Law. (See Law.) 

Our Lord— our Bedeemer — our Saviour. (Sm 
Jesus.) 

P. 

Paganism and its results, 466. 

Paphos, Soothsayers of, 198. 

Paraclete. ( See Holy Ghost. ) 

Parchments and hooks of Paul at Troas, 21, 
681 et seq. 

Parthenon dedicated to Virgin Mary, 313. 

Pascal, antecedents of, and compared with 
Paul, 3. 

Passover, Upper room of, 48, 181. 

Pastoral Epistles, Paul's genuineness of, 664, 
743. 

Paul — Apostolical journeys of (see Apos- 
tolical) ; Apostle of Progress, 1 ; "in 
deaths oft," 1 ; Apostle of the Gentiles, 2 ; 
teacher of justification by faith, 2 ; under 
God the founder of Christendom, 2 ; value 
of his Epistles, 2 ; power of his writings, 
2, 3 ; his character, 2-4 ; antecedents and 
life compared with those of Luther, Wes- 
ley, and others ; antecedents compared 
with those of other Apostles, 3, 7; his 
education, 3, 7 ; his history gathered 
from the Acts and the Epistles but frag- 
mentary, 5, 6 ; genuineness of his Epistles, 
4-6; his account of his own sufferings, 
compulsory, 5; sufficiency for materials 
of his life and character, 7 ; undesigned 
coincidences in his Epistles, 7; "Paul 
the aged," 7, 8 ; birthplace and boyhood, 
8 et seq. ; parentage and descent, 9, 
20 ; power in his nationality, 9, 20 ; 
languages known to him, 9, 10 ; languages 
in which he spoke, 10 ; his inner life, 11, 
12 ; unobservant of such, beauties of nature 
as were frequently mentioned by our 
Lord, 12 ; early impressions at Tarsus, 13 ; 
influencing causes of his trade, 13 ; in- 
fluence of his trade on his character, 14; 
his parents, 14 ; their privileges as Roman 
citizens inherited by him, 14 ; his kinsmen, 
15 ; his education under Gamaliel, 15 ; a 
Hebraist, though writing in Greek, 15; 
Longinus' criticisms on his style, 15; 
Cilicisms in his style, 16 ; influence on 
him of his residence in Tarsus, 16 et seq. ; 
his preference of folly with God over the 
wisdom of heathendom, 19 ; not of Hellenic 
culture, his style peculiar and his Greek 
provincial, his thoughts Syriac, hia dia- 



lectic method Rabbinic, 21; his bookl 
and parchments at Troas, 21, 681 et seq. ; 
those books, not Greek literature, 21-2; 
acquaintance with Greek literature, 22 j 
classic quotations and allusions, 22; 
Roman citizenship, 23-4 ; scourgings, 24 ; 
Roman citizenship not inconsistent with 
Jewish descent, 24; early studies, 25; 
claims to be a Pharisee, 26 ; knowledge of 
the Old Testament, quoting the LXX., 
27 ; value to him of Gamaliel's teaching, 
28 ; his views of inspiration, 28 ; use of 
the Old Testament and of Scriptures 
generally, 28-9 ; his style of argument to 
Jews, 29; as Hebrew and Hellenist, 33; 
endeavours to keep the Law, 37 ; miscon- 
ception of the Oral Law, 37 ; extent of his 
obedience to the Law, 38 ; early anxieties, 
38-9 ; compared with Luther, Bunyan, and 
John Newton, 40 ; early inward struggles, 
40-1 ; saw the Lord Jesus Christ, 41-3 ; 
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ by 
faith, 43 ; not at Jerusalem at the time of 
our Lord's ministry and crucifixion — influ- 
ence on him of Stephen's dying words, 44, 
97 ; his marriage, 44-6 ; early dealing with 
the infant Church, 47 ; cause for his hatred 
by the people, 80 ; his part in the dispute 
with Stephen in the Synagogue of the 
Libertines, 82 ; his feelings on listening to 
him, 82 ; holding the clothes of those who 
stoned Stephen, 94 ; aged thirty years at 
Stephen's martyrdom, 95 ; member of 
the Sanhedrin, and so a married man, 
95; his fury against Christians, 96; 
even under- rated as a persecutor, 97; 
his confession of erring obstinacy in per- 
secuting the Church, 98 ; under persecu- 
tion, 99; his commission for Damascus, 
100 ; reflections on his way to Damascus — 
conversion, 101-9 ; inward struggles, 105-6 ; 
knowledge that he had been spoken to by 
his God, 109; result of having seen the 
Lord Jesus Christ, 109, 110 ; his blindness, 
109 ; the two accounts of his conversion, 
111-12; immediately after his conversion 
led blind into Damascus, 113 ; entry into 
and departure from Damascus, 113 ; ori- 
ginal mission to Damascus, 114 ; his con- 
version as an evidence of Christianity, 
114 ; Christ all in all to him, and his 
witness to Christ, 114 ; a preacher of the 
cross and the Crucified, 115 ; a Nazarene, 
115 ; the training necessary for his great 
work, 117 ; retirement into Arabia — his 
need of retirement, 116-17 ; source of his 
Apostleship, 118 ; frame of mind after his 
conversion, 118-19 ; his relation to Moses 
and Mosaism, 120; his "thorn in the 
flesh" here called "stake in the flesh" 
121 at seq.; traces of his "stake in the 
flesh, " 122 et seq. ; object of his " stake in 
the flesh," 125; return to and preaching 
at Damascus, 125 et seq. ; how his preach- 
ing was received by the Jews of Damascus, 
126 ; scourged by the Jews, 127 ; escape 
from Damascus, 128 ; journey from Da- 
mascus to Jerusalem, andAreception there, 
128-30; meeting with Peter at Jerusalem, 
130 ; compared with James, 131 ; early 
relations with Joseph, Mark, and Barna- 
bas, 132-4 ; early trials, 135 ; twice secured 
by Barnabas for the work of Christianity, 
134, 162 ; his recognition by the Apostlea 



INDEX. 



767 



through Barnabas, 134; early ministry, 
perils, escapes — second vision of a mission 
from the Lord Jesus to the Gentiles, 134 
et seq. ; again at Tarsus, 136 ; shipwrecks, 
136 ; as Apostle of the Gentiles, 145 ; 
influence in Church advancement of Paul, 
Stephen, and Philip, respectively, 161 ; 
supplying the help needed by Barnabas — 
with Barnabas at Antioch in Syria — their 
joint work begun, 162 ; preaching at 
Antioch in Syria and its results, 166 et 
seq. ; separated with Barnabas by the 
Holy Spirit for the work of converting 
the world, 188; Apostle of the Gentiles, 
188 ; first Apostolic journey, 189, 219 ; 
description of Paul, 191-2; strikes Ely- 
mas blind, 199; his miracles, 199, 214; 
a widower and childless, 192 ; defects 
more than counterbalanced by his gifts, 
192-3 ; at Cyprus, 195 et seq. ; at Salamis, 
196-7 ; reason for change in his name, 200 ; 
Mark leaves Paul and Barnabas at Perga, 
202 ; ac Antioch in Pisidia, 204-5 ; preaches 
there, 207 ; results, 21U-11 ; there also, on 
rejection of the Gospel by the Jews, 
turns to the Gentiles, 211 ; at Iconium, 

212 ; preaches at Iconium, 213 ; results, 

213 et seq. ; at Lystra, 214 ; Paul preaches, 
214 ; heals a cripple, 214 ; taken for gods, 
214-15; disclaim the honours offered to 
them, 215-16; stoned by Jews at Lystra, 
217 ; converts Timothy, 217 ; with Barna- 
bas leaves Lystra, 218; at Derbe, 213; 
work and success, 218 ; Gains and other 
friends and converts, 218; return from 
Derbe to Antioch in Syria, completing 
first Apostolic journey, 219 ; results of 
first Apostolic journey, 221 ; convictions 
after first Apostolic journey, 221-2; con- 
scious of special mission to Gentiles, 
223-4; with Barnabas goes to Jerusalem 
on question of circumcision, 228; con- 
verts Titus who goes with him to Jeru- 
salem, 229 ; convinces John, Peter, and 
James on circumcision as unnecessary, 
230 ; zeal for poor of Church at Jerusalem, 
231 ; circumcises Timothy, 232 j Nazarite 
now, 235 ; witn Peter at Antioch in Syria, 
247 et seq. ; his prominence as a guide of 
the Church, 247 ; influence at Antioch, 
where he is joined, by Silas, 247; rebukes 
Peter for change of bearing towards 
Gentiles, 250 et seq. ; result of rebuke on 
Peter, 252 et seq.; dispute with Barnabas 
as to the companionship of Mark, 254 ; 
separation, 254 ; mutual loss to Paul and 
Barnabas, though friendship not broken, 
254 ; the welcome of Mark again as fellow- 
labourer, 256, 681 ; second Apostolic 
joorney, 256-353; visits Churches of Syria 
and Cilicia, Tarsus, Derbe, and Lystra, 
257 et seq. ; love for Timothy, 259 ; love 
for his churches, 259 ; circumcision of 
Timothy and Titus, 261 ; goes through 
Phrygia and Galatia, 262 ; visits Iconium, 
262 ; Antioch and Pisidia, 262 ; visits Jews 
on Euxine, Galatia, and results, 263 ; ill- 
ness in Galatia, 264 et seq. ; cause of illness, 
266 ; kindness of Galatians, 265-6 : founds 
churches in Galatia, 26S j visits Bithynia, 
Troas, Alexandria, 269 et seq. ; meets with 
Luke, 271; Luke's fidelity to him, 271; 
takes Luke with him from Troas, 271 ; in 
his relations with Luke, 272; at Philippi, 



274 ef seq. ; ministry at Philippi, 276 ; bap- 
tises Lydia of Thyatir t, 276 ; lodges with 
Lydia, 276 ; reason for accepting pecu- 
niary aid from Philippi only of all his 
churches, 276 ; his fellow-workers at Phi- 
lippi, 277 : casts out spirit of divination 
from possessed damsel. 278-9 ; anger of 
owners, 279 ; charge against Paul and 
Silas, 279 ; imprisoned and scourged, 
2S1-2 ; conversion and baptism of jailor, 
283-4 ; fear of the magistrates, 284 ; Paul 
and Silas leave Philippi, 285 : leave Luke 
behind them, 2S5 et seq. ; at Thessalonica, 
236 ; poverty when there, 2S7 ; mini stry 
there, 288 ; preaches Christ in synagogue, 
2S8 ; believers chiefly amone the Gentiles, 
288; Epistles to the Thessalonians, 239 
et seq. ; dangers, 291 j hatred of Paul by 
the Jews, 290 ; in concealmenr, 292 ; 
escape from Thessalonica, 292-3 ; with 
Silas leaves Thessalonica for Berasa, 293 ; 
Athens, 295 et seq. ; his feelings at Athens, 
296, 300 ; intercourse with the Jews of 
Athens, 302 ; altar to the Unknown God, 
301 ; preaches at Athens, 304 ; result, 305 
et stq. ; view of, in society, 3^5 ; answers 
questions of the Athenians, 306 ; declares 
true God and the resurrection of the 
dead, 303-311; tact in addressing Athe- 
nians, 309 ; leaves Athens, 312 ; apparent 
failure, 312 ; germ of victory in all his 
apparent failures, 312-13 ; at Corinth, 314; 
Epistles to the Corinthians and Thessa- 
lonians, 315; grief at the wickedness of 
Corinth, 316 et seq. ; will accept nothing 
from the Corinthians lest it be used as a 
handle. 317 ; relation to Aquila and Pris- 
cilla, 317 ; works as a tent-maker, 318 ; 
joined by Silas and Timotheus, 318 ; re- 
ceives contributions from Philippian 
Christians, 318; founds Church at Corinth, 
319-20 ; complaints of Paul by Jews of 
Corinth, 322 ; not allowed by Gallio to 
defend himself 322 ; dismissed by Gallio, 
322-3 ; his supposed correspondence with 
Seneca, spurious. 325 ; writes 1 Thess., 
probably his earliest Epistle, 325 ; account 
of 1 Thess., 325 et seq. ; his intense feelings 
conveyed in his writings, 326 ; anxiety as 
to reception and result of his Epistles, 
327; salutation and introduction in 
Epistles, 328 ; thankfulness on behalf of 
Thessalonian Christians in 1 Thess., 329, 
330 ; dangers at Thessalonica and Philippi, 
330-1 ; calumnies from Jew- and Gentiles, 
331 ; answer to Thessalonian calumnies in 
his life and disinterestedness, 331 ; taking 
nothing from them, 331 ; persecution by 
the Jews, 332; joy in the Christians of 
Thessalonica, 3-33 ; visit of Timothy to 
Thessalonica. 333 ; his report of the faith 
which he finds there, 333; enjoins prac- 
tical Christian duties on the Thessa- 
lonians, 333-5 ; on the resurrection of the 
dead, 335 et seq.; corrects error and sloth 
caused by idea of day of the Lord as near 
at hand, 340 ; account of 2 Thess., 340 et 
seq.; view of day of the Lord, 341 ; object 
in 2 Thess., 343 ; style illustrative of 
writer's c hara cter, 6S9-693 ; various writers 
in testimony of, 639 et seq.; Ehetoric of, 
693-6; classic quotations and allusions, 
696-701 ; a Hagadist, 701 ; Paul and Philo, 
701 et seg. ; in Arabia, 709 ; " stake in the 



768 



INDEX. 



flesh," 710-15; Paul and John, 723-4; 
attacks on Paul in the Clementines, 724-6 ; 
stay at Corinth, 351 ; at Ephesus, 352, 354 
et seq.; in his character as a Jew, 352 ; his 
temporary Nazarite vow and its condi- 
tions, 351-2 ; preaches Christ at Ephesus, 
352 ; goes to Jerusalem for fourth time, 
353 ; his four visits enumerated, 353 ; end 
of second Apostolic journey, 353 ; recep- 
tion at Jerusalem, 353 ; third Apostolic 
journey, 354-521 ; goes again to Antioch. 
and again visits Churches of Phrygia and 
Galatia, 354 ; peril at Ephesus, 360 ; testi- 
mony to Apollos, 362 ; labours at Ephesus, 
362; withdraws his disciples from Jews of 
Ephesus, and disputes daily in Jthe school 
of Tyrannus, 363; success at Ephesus, 
363; perils— outbreak at Ephesus from 
worshippers of Diana, 371 et seq.; leaves 
Ephesus, 375; joined by two Ephesians, 
Tychicus and Trophimus, 375 ; care for 
Corinthian Churches, 376-7 ; distress at 
news of Church from Corinth, 380 ; begins 
1 Corinthians, 384; declaration to the 
Corinthians of purpose of his mission, 
385 ; declares doctrine of crucified Saviour, 
385 ; exhorts to unity in Christ, 386 ; con- 
demns divisions in the Church, 387 ; warns 
against false teachers, 387 ; case of incest 
in Corinthian Church, 388 ; on chastity, 
389-391 ; meat offered to idols, 391 ; re- 
surrection of the dead, 398-400; on 
marriage and virginity, 390-1 ; his own 
struggles, 392; examples of those who 
have fallen through want of self-disci- 
pline, 392 ; on the head covered or un- 
covered at prayer, 394; condemnation 
of practices in Corinth at the Lord's 
supper, 394 ; on charity, 396 et seq. ; 
leaves Ephesus for Troas, and goes 
thence (in consequence of a vision) 
to Macedonia, 401; subjects of several 
Epistles, 403; self-defence to the Corin- 
thians, 403 et seq., 408 et seq. ; controversy 
(in three phases) with Judaism in 2 Corin- 
thians, Galatians, and Romans, 406; source 
and vindication of his authority as an 
Apostle, 407 et seq. ; character of his 

g reaching described by himself, 411 et seq. ; 
is ministry a ministry of reconciliation, 
413; himself an ambassador for Christ, 
413 ; no burden to the Corinthians, 414 ; 
the plainness of speech, indignation and 
irony, and yet meekness and gentleness 
of 2 Corinthians, from end of Chapter ix., 
414 et »i. ; warning against false teachers 
416-17 ; his own labours and perils, 417 et 
seq. ; visions and revelations, 418 et seq. ; 
not burdensome to Corinthian Church, 
but caught them with guile, 419 ; route 
and work in Macedonia, 420 et seq. ; pledge 
to the Apostles at Jerusalem, 421 ; leaves 
Macedonia and returns to Corinth, 422; 
his companions, 422-3 ; absence of infor- 
mation as to his intercourse with the 
Church at Corinth on his return thither, 
424-5 ; ground for inferring his success in 
denting with Corinthian difficulties, 425 ; 
hit inmost thoughts revealed in Galatians 
and Romans, 425; grief at success of 
Judaising teachers at Antioch and Corinth, 
and in Galatia, 425-6; hence Epistle to 
the Galatians, 426; charges against him 
by Judaising teachers, and his replies, 



427 ; resistance of those who advocate the 
necessity for circumcision, 428 et seq. ; 
compared with Luther, 431 ; Apostolic 
authority first vindicated in Epistle to 
Galatians, 432; determination to go to 
Jerusalem through whatever danger, and 
afterwards to Rome, 444 ; his faith in his 
God, 444-5 ; doubts as to accounts of his 
martyrdom, 448 ; in his character of 
deserter of Judaism, and defender of the 
spiritual seed of Abraham only as the true 
Israel of God, 458; interpretation of 
Habakkuk on tif e by faith, 464 ; cause of 
some logical defects in his statements, 
476 ; objections to his arguments in 
Romans, 484 ; his use of different methods 
in argument, 484 ; apparent contradictions 
in his writings, 485 ; only jealous for the 
truth, 486-7 ; indifference to apparently il- 
logical rea«ons in his teaching, 487; method 
in enforcing truth compared with that 
of Luther, Jerome, and others, 496 ; grief 
for hardness of heart, 496 ; love for the 
Jews, 496 ; protected by the Roman im- 
partiality of Gallio, Lysias, Felix, and 
Eestus, 504 ; plot of Jews again-t his 
life, 510 ; Sosipater, Aristarchus, Secun- 
dus, Gaius, Timotheus, Tychicus, Trophi- 
mus, and Luke, his companions, 511 ; at 
Philippi, 511 ; at Troas, 511 et seq. ; voyage 
by Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Trogyllium 
to Miletus, 514-15 ; interview with the 
elders of the Ephesian Church at Miletus, 
515-17; voyage from Miletus by Cos, Cnidus 
Rhodes, latara,and Cyprus.to Tyre, 517-18; 
at Tyre, 519 ; visits Philip the Evangelist 
at Caesarea, 519; fifth visit to Jerusalem, 
and end of the third Apostolic journey, 
521 ; reception by James and elders of the 
Church at Jerusalem — their proposal to 
him, 522-4 ; does as James and elders pro- 
posed to him as to Nazarite vows, 527 ; out- 
break of the Jews in the temple against 
him, 531; charged by the Jews with defiling 
the Temple, 531 ; rescued by Lysias from 
the Jews in the Temple, 533 ; address to 
the Jews after their outrage on him in the 
Temple, 534-5 ; order to scourge him — 
declares himself a Roman citizen, 536-7; 
before the Sanhedrin — his treatment by 
the High Priest — his protest— his defence, 
538 et seq. ; encouraged by a vision, 543; 
saved by his nephew from a conspiracy of 
Jews against his life, 544 et seq. ; sent by 
Lysias to Caesarea under escort, 546 ; the 
conduct of Lysias, 546 ; letter of Lysias to 
Felix, 546 ; preparations for his trial before 
Felix, 547 et seq.; defence before Felix, 
548-9 ; trial not concluded, but again 
summoned before Felix, 550 ; power of 
his arguments with Felix, 550; attempts 
of Felix to procure bribes for Paul's re. 
lease, 551 ; before Festus — appeal to Csesar, 
554 et seq.; before Festus and Agrippa, 558 ; 
his defence, 558 et seq. ; sent in charge of 
Julius the centuricu. tc Eonae with Luke 
and Aristarchus as his fellow-voyagers, 
561-3 ; voyage to Rome by Sidon, Cyprus, 
Myra, Cnidus, Fair Havens, where waited 
long — his courage in danger — Melita, 563 
et seq.; shipwreck at Melita. 572 et seq.; 
the viper at Melita, 574 ; declared a god, 
574; heals Publias' father, 574; voyage 
and journey to Rome from Melita by Sy- 



INDEX. 



769 



recuse, Bheginm, Puteoli, Baise, Capua, 
Appii Forum, Three Taverns, 577-8 ; treat- 
ment at Eome, 578 ; his honds, 578 ; appeal 
to Caesar, 519 ; addresses the Jews at Eome, 
580 ; his companions and friends in Eome 
— Timotheus, Luke, Aristarchus, Ty- 
chicus, Epaphroditus, Epaphras, Mark, 
Demas, 580-1 ; two years of sojourn and 
unhindered preaching in Eome, 581; his 
ahode, 582 ; discouragements, 582-3 ; post- 
ponement of his trial, 582 ; means of liv- 
ing, 583; success sf his preaching, 583 
et seq. ; position at Eome, 585 ; varying 
characteristics of his Epistles, 588 et seq. ; 
Epistles of the captivity, 592 et seq. ; lov- 
ing care for him of Lydia and other Phi- 
lippian friends when a prisoner at Eome, 
594 ; indifference of the Eoman Christians, 
594; his own account of himself to the 
Philippims, 597-8; humility in his minis- 
try and warning to the Colossian Church 
against false teachers, 617-18 ; probahle 
trial, acquittal, release, and course of 
events till death, 648 ; his intended visit 
to Spain, 650 ; visit to Crete, 659 ; founds 
the Cretan Church, 659 ; closing days, 664 
et seq. ; fear of Gnosticism, 666 ; desire to 
strengthen the Churches against it, 666; 
relations between Paul and Timothy, 667 ; 
companions in his last imprisonment, 668 ; 
writes to Timothy of his loneliness in 
prison, the support of his God, his trial, 
671 ; hardships of second imprisonment 
in Eome, and change in his position, 668-9 ; 
left in his loneliness by friend after friend, 
Luke only faithful to him, 670; kindness 
of Onesiphorus in searching biTn out and 
visiting him in prison — gratitude to him, 
666-7, 670 ; his last trial— the little that he 
says of it — strengthened by his God, 670-2, 
675 ; his desire once more to see Timothy, 
676; last letter, 676 et seq.; farewell of 
Timothy, 680 ; personal matters, 680 ; 
significance of his request for his cloak, 
books, and parchments, from Troas, 681-3 ; 
final trial, condemnation, death, 686; ap- 
parent failure — real greatness and success, 
687 ; lasting results of his life and work, 
688 ; crown of righteousness, 688 ; theology 
and antinomies of, 732-3 ; evidence as to 
liberation, 741-2 ; chronoL >gy of his life and 
Epistles, 753-7 ; dates of his Epistles, 756 ; 
traditional account of his personal ap- 
pearance, 758. 

Paulus, Sergius, Proconsul of Cyprus, 197, 
721-2. 

Peace and Hope, results of justification by 
faith, 475-6. 

Pentecost, the first, after the Eesurrection 
of our Lord, 50 ; beginning of final phase 
of God's dealings with men, 51 ; crowded 
state of Jerusalem at, 57 ; events of, 58-9. 

People, Chosen. (See Jews.) 

Perishing, Paul's view of the, 732. 

Persecutions and results, 59 et seq. , 160. 

Peter, as Cephas, Apostle of the Foundation 
Stone, 1; impress of individuality on 
Church, 1; Peter and First Pentecost, 
46 et seq. ; discourse at first Pentecost and 
its effect, 58-9 ; miracles 59, 60, 148 ; his 
reception of Paul at Jerusalem, 130 ; his 
admission of Gentiles into the Church, 
145 ; rebukes Simon Magus, 146 ; lodging 
with Simon the tanner at Joppa, 148; 
X X 



vision at Joppa and its significance, 152-6 ; 
sent for by Cornelius to Csesarea, 156 ; 
address to the Gentiles at Csesarea and its 
results, 157-8 ; address at Jerusalem and 
its results, 158-9 ; in prison, 176 ; released 
from prison by an angel, 177 ; convinced 
by Paul on circumcision, 230 ; his address 
on circumcision, 238; independence of 
Judaism, and free intercourse with Gen- 
tiles, 248-9 ; rebuked by Paul for change 
of bearing towards Gentiles, 250 et seq. ; 
spirit in which he received Paul's rebuke, 
252-3; doubts as to accounts of his 
martyrdom, 448 ; not the founder of the 
Eoman Church, 448. 

Peter and John— Two chief Apostles, 1 ; 
before the chief priests, 59, 60 ; knowledge 
of the mind of Christ, 724. 

Peter and Paul at Autioch in Syria, 248. 

Pharaoh— His hardness of heart explained, 
493. 

Pharisaism, Its various aspects, 26 ; compared 
with the monastic life, 36. 

Pharisees, Life and observances of, 35 et seq. ; 
minute points of observance, 38-9 ; scrupu- 
lous observance of Sabbath, 39 ; baptised, 
but understand Christ less than the 
Sadducees, who had handed him over to 
the secular arm, 85. 

Philemon, Causes of Paul's Epistle to, 622-7 ; 
account, subject of, &c, 628 et seq. 

Philip (Apostle) and Andrew— Hellenic names, 
but still common among the Jews, 74. 

Philip (Evangelist) appointed deacon, 75 ; 
evangelist as well as deacon, 78 ; ministry, 
78 ; baptises Simon Magus, 146 ; baptises 
the Ethiopian eunuch, 147; the respec- 
tive influence in Church advancement of 
Philip, Stephen, and Paul, 161; work in 
the Church, 160; Paul's visit to him at 
Csesarea, 519. 

Philippi, Description of, 274 et seq.; Church 
of, alone ministering to Paul's necessities, 
276 ; Paul's fellow- workers at, 276. 

Philippians — ministering to Paul's necessities 
at Corinth, 318; Epistle to, 592; causes 
of, 594 ; loving care for Paul and his 
necessities, 594. 

Philippians, Epistle to — Exhortation to unity 
in, 595, 599; characteristics of, 595-6; 
account of, 556 et seq.; writer's encourage- 
ments to Philippians, 598; digression of 
special warnings, 601 et sej.; conclusion, 
603-4 ; gratitude for help in necessities, 
604 ; future of Philippian Church, 605. 

Philosophers of Athens, 302 et seq. 

Pilate — his judicial impartiality, 323. 

Pliny — on tests of Christians, 186; his 
account of Christians in Bithynia, 186; 
letter to Sabinianus, 734. 

Pliny the Younger on Christianity, 721. 

Pompeii, Morals of, typical of those of Tarsus, 
Ephesus, Corinth, and Miletus, 21. 

Pompey— introduction of Jews into Eome, 
445 ; his treatment of them and its results, 
445-6. 

Pontius Pilate. (See Pilate.) 

Pope Adrian. (See Adrian VI.) 

Porcia Lex, 23. 

Porcias Festus. (See Festus.) 

Predestination — Definition of, 492 ; consis- 
tent with mar.'s free will, 493 ; difficulties 
of, solved by the infinity of God's love. 
484; Paul's V ew of , 732. 



770 



INDEX. 



Priests, Chief, in judgment on Peter and John, 

60-1 ; many Jewish, " obedient to the 

faith " of Christ, 76. 
Priscilla and Aquila, their relation to Paul, 

317. 
Progress, Paul the Apostle of, 1. 
Prophecy fulfilled in Messiah, 84. 
Prophets foretold the calling of the Gentiles, 

150. 
Proselytes, Greek — their conversion, 161 ; 

burdens laid on, 718-19. 
Psalms— the poetry of the, compared with 

Paul's Epistles, 10. 
P ublic Worship. ( -See "Worship. ) 
Publius' father healed by Paul at Melita, 574. 
Punishments, Capital, 706-7. 



Eabban, Eabbi, 25. 

Rabbi, Rabbis — School of the, 23 et seq. ; mis- 
conception of the oral law, 37 ; " strain 
gnats and swallow camels," 39 ; of Jeru- 
salem, their ignorance of the intent of 
God's gifts, 70. 

Rahab an ancestress of our Lord, 183. 

Recompense, Paul's view of, 732. 

Redeemed, The, Paul's view of the forgiveness 
of, 732. 

Redeemer. (See Jesus.) 

Restoration, Universal, Paul's view of, 732. 

Resurrection — Power of Christ's, 47; and 
Judgment, Athenian view of, 311; faith 
in the, confirmed, 398 et seq. 

Righteousness of God— its effect on man, 461 ; 
of the law and what depended on it, 37. 
(See God) 

Borne — character of, in the time of the 
Apostles, described by St. John, Seneca, 
and Juvenal, 186-7 ; Jews introduced into, 
by Pompey, 445 ; introduction of Chris- 
tianity into, 447 ; Jewish and Gentile 
elements in early Church of, 447-50; im- 
partiality of its law favourable to Paul, 
504 ; Paul's confidence in the Christians 
of, 508 ; Paul at, 577 et seq. ; its social con- 
Jition — its early Christians— -Paul's im- 
munity, 582 et seq. ; prevailing influences 
in, during Paul's residence there, 585 
et seq. ; indifference of the Christians of, 
to Paul and his necessities compared with 
the kindness of the Philippians, 594, 650. 

Roman, Romans — Result to, of the dispersion 
of the Jews, 66 ; their early views of Chris- 
tianity, 323 ; their judicial impartiality 
when Christians were brought before 
them, 323 ; apotheosis of their emperors, 
717-18 ; Paul's position among, as a de- 
serter of Judaism, and asserter of spiri- 
tual seed of Abraham as alone the true 
Israel of God, 453; superiority of Paul's 
Epistle to, ab<>ve the frivolity of the 
Aohoda Zara, 453-4 ; Paul's confidence, 
459 ; trials, votes in, given by tablets, 671, 
685. 

Eomans, Paul's Epistle to — cause of, 445 ; ac- 
count of Epistle, 445 et seq.; addressed to 
both Jews and Gentiles, 449 ; probably 
copied and sent to other churches, as 
Ephesus and Thessalonica, 450-1 ; object 
ot, 451 et seq. ; character and style of, 451 et 
t*q. ; character of Church wheu Paul wrote 
Epistles, 162; causes of, 452; spirit in which 



written, 452-3 ; how probably originated, 
455 ; deductions thence in writer's mind, 
455-6 ; Jesus Christ as common foundation 
for the Jew and Gentile the basis of this 
and of every one of Paul's Epistles, 456 ; 
opinions of Luther, Melancthon, Cole- 
ridge, and Tholuck, 456 ; outline of, 456 et 
seq. ; salutation and introduction, 458-9 ; 
comprehensiveness, 459; thanksgiving for 
faith of, 459; Roman Christians, 459; 
God's righteousness revealed in the Gos- 
pel of the Cross to Jew and Gentile alike, 
460 ; justification by faith the one means 
of attaining to holiness — the great subject 
of the Epistle, 461 ; God's righteousness 
— the various sources and revelations of, 
461 et seq. ; the sins of Paganism, 465-6 ; 
Jews equally guilty with Gentiles, 467; 
uselessness of circumcision, 470-1; justi- 
fication God's free gift, 474; justification 
establishing the law, 474 ; universality of 
sin and of justification, 476 ; by one, sin- 
by one, justification, 476-7 ; purpose of the 
law, 478 ; relations of sin and grace, 479 ; 
why the law was inefficacious to justify, 
480, 482; the law gave its strength the 
law, but under grace, history of man to 
sin, 482-3; Christians not under four 
phases, 483; writer's style of argument 
justified against those who censure it, 484 ; 
Christian dead to past moral condition, 
risen to new one, because Christ in His 
crucified body has destroyed the power of 
sin, 487 ; predestination and free-will not 
inconsistent with each other, 492 et seq. ; 
Jews, their fall, 495 et seq. ; their hopes of 
restoration, 498 et seq. ; obedience to the 
civil power enjoined, 503 ; Paul's respect 
for the civil power from his own expe- 
rience, 503-4 ; dues, 503, 505 ; observances 
as to fasting and use of food, 505; the 
weak and the strong, 505 et seq. ; Paul's 
defence of his Epistles, 508 ; probable end 
of Epistle as originally intended, 509 ; its 
actual conclusion, 509-10. 

Room, Upper. (See Upper Room.) 

Rulers contemporary with Paul, Table of, 
756-7. 

Running so as to obtain, 732. 

Ruth, ancestress of Christ, 183. 



Sabbath observances of Pharisees and Saddu- 
cees, 39. 

Sabbatic year, observances of, 39. 

Sabinianus, Letter of Pliny to, 734. 

Sacrifice, Living, required of all Christians, 
502. 

Sadducees, scrupulous observances of Sabbath, 
39. 

St. Denys. (See Denys.) 

St. Paul. (See Paul.) 

Saint. (In each case see Saint's name) 

Sakya Mouni, Antecedents of, 3. 

Salamis— Jews of, 196 ; Paul and Barnabas at, 
195-6. 

Salvation through fear, 732. 

Sanhedrin — not afraid of the Lord Jesus, 
afr.dd of two of his disciples, 61 ; rage of 
at Stephen's discourse, 92 ; charged with 
laxity at the time of .Stephen's martyr- 
dom, 96; marriage a condition of : 



INDEX 



771 



ship, 95 ; Paul had been a member of, 
95-6. 

Sapphira. (See Ananias.) 

Sardanapalus, Statue of, at Anchiale, 17. 

" Sanl the Pbarisee," 35 et seq. 

" ?aul the persecutor," 95 et seq. (See Paul.) 

Saviour. (See Jesus.) 

Sceva, of Ephesus, sons overcome by evil 
spirit while using the holy name of Jesus, 
364-5. 

School of the Rabbi, 23 et seq. 

Scourging, Jewish, 715-17. 

Scripture, Paul's use of, 27-8. 

Sejanus— his attempt to eject the Jews from 
Eome, 446 ; persecution of the Jews, 504. 

Seneca— his description of Eome, 187 ; relation 
to Gallio, 321 ; his supposed correspond- 
ence with Paul spurious, 325 ; account of 
Jews in Eome, 446; his disgrace by 
Nero, 587. 

Septuagint, the work of the most learned 
men of the Jewish Dispersion, 72. 

Sersrius Paulus, Proconsul of Cyprus, 197, 
721-2. 

Sermon on the Mount compared with Paul's 
Epistles, 327. 

Servants and masters, mutual duties of, 657. 

Shammai, the school of, 25 : his descent, 183 ; 
view of the oral law, 226. 

Sbema in studies of Paul as a boy, 25. 

Shipwreck, Paul's, 571-3. 

Silas— joins Paul at Antioch in Syria, 247; 
Paul's companion in his travels, 256-7. 
(See Paul.) 

Silvanus. (See Silas.) 

Simeon— his prophecy of our Lord as a Light 
to the Gentiles, 183. 

Simeon, Niger position in Church at Antioch 
in Syria, 18.1. 

Simon Magus, 146, 198. 

Simon Peter. (See Peter J 

Sin, Eelation of grace to, 479 ; relation of law 
to, 488 et seq. ; Man of, 726 et seq. ; Paul's 
views of, 732. 

Sobermindedness, key-note of Paul's Epistle 
to Titus, 662. 

Sosthenes beaten before Gallio, 32i. 

South-west and North-west explained, 5 "5-6. 

Spinoza, antecedents of, and compared with 
Paul, 3. 

Spirit, Holy. (See Holy Ghost.) 

" Stake in the flesh," Paul's, 121 et seq., 710-15. 
(See Paul.) 

Stephen — influence of his last words on Paul, 
43 ; Stephen and the Hellenists, 65 et seq. ; 
appointed one of the seven deacons, 75 ; 
influence on Paul, 76; more his teacher 
than Gamaliel, 76; what he must have 
been had he lived, 76 ; had probably heard 
the truth from the Lord Jesus, though 
the tradition that he was one of the 
seventy disciples is valueless, 77 ; elected 
deacon for his faith, 78 ; the most pro- 
minent of the seven, 78 ; equal with the 
Apostles in working wonders among the 
people, 78 ; his great part in the history 
of the Church, 78 ; evangelist as well as 
deacon, 78; compared with the twelve 
Apostles, 78 ; his dispute in the synagogue 
of the Libertines, 82 ; his triumph in 
argument, 82 ; its result, 83 ; his view of 
the law of Moses blasphemy to the Jews, 
86; taken by violence before the San- 
hedrin, 86; his view of the oral law, 87; 

x z 2 



charges against him by false witnesses, 87 ; 
his reply a concise history of the Jewish 
nation down to their own murder of 
Christ, 89 et seq.; his vision of glory, 93 ; 
martyrdom, 94 et seq.; prays for his mur- 
derers, 94; burial, 97 ; respective influence 
of Stephen, Philip, and Paul in Church 
advancement, 161. 

Stoics, stoicism, 187-8. 

Suetonius — his error as to our Lord, 186 ; his 
view of Christianity, 186, 720. 

Supper, Last, Upper room of, 48, 180-1. 

Sword, The, as the result of our Lord's 
mission, 325. 

Syntyche and Euodia, Christian women of 
Macedonia, 277. (See Euodia.) 



T. 

Tabitha raised from the dead, 148. 

Tablets, Voting. (See Eoman.) 

Tacitus— his view of Christianity, 186, 720. 

Talmud, Noble characters in, 26 ; its direction 
of observances, 34, 36; allegories, 37; 
stories from, 735. 

Tarsus, Birthplace of Paul, 8 ; description 
and natural features, 10 ; commercial and 
political advantages of situation, 12-13; 
commercial prosperity, 13 ; resisting Bru- 
tus and Cassius, 12 ; conquered by Luciu? 
Eufus, 12 ; scene of meetings of Antony 
and Cleopatra, 13 ; its moral condition in 
Paul's youth, 17-18 ; morals of Tarsus and 
other cities judged from evidence of 
Pompeii, 21. 

Temperance. (See Sobermindedness.) 

Temple at Jerusalem — scene of the great 
events of the first Pentecost after our 
Lord's resurrection, 51 ; destruction of, 
342 ; Paul charged by Jews with defiling,531. 

Terah, Legend of, 183. 

Tertius, Scribe of Paul's Epistle to Eomans, 
452. 

Tertullus accuses Paul to Felix, 547-8. 

Theology of Paul, 732. 

Theophilus, high priest, 100. 

Thessalonica, Description of, 286-7; Famine 
at time of Paul's visit, 287; Paul's 
ministry at, 288 et seq. ; Paul's Epistle to 
Eomans probably sent to Thessalonica 
also, 450-1. 

Thessaloniaus sent to stir up Beraeans against 
Paul, 294; Paul's Epistles to, 289-90; 

1 Thess., Account of, 328; their faith and 
Christian spirit commended, 329-30 ; cha- 
racteristics of, 330-7; Paul's joy in, 333; 
their faith reported to Paul by Timothy, 
333 ; expected to advance in Christian 
course, 333 ; brotherly love and quietness 
commended, 334 ; second coming of Christ 
and judgment, 335 ei seq.; results of 1 
Thess., 338 ; disturbed by idea of day of 
the Lord as very near, 340 et seq. ; 2 Thess. : 
Object of 2 Thess.. 343 ; ; most important 
passage of 2 Thess., 345-6; explanation of 

2 Thess., 348-351. 

Tholuck, his account of Paul's Epistle to th« 

Eomans, 456. 
"Thorn in the flesh," Paul's, 121 et seq., 710-15. 

(See Paul; Stake.) 
Tiberius, Death of, 137. 
Tigellinus, Prastorian Prefect, his character. 



772 



INDEX. 



Timotheus. (See Timothy.) 

Timothy — converted by Paul at Lystra, 217 ; 
circ-jmcised, 232, 261 ; Paul's love for him, 
259-60 ; Paul's Epistles to, 260 ; with Paul 
at Ephesus, 260; places at which he is 
mentioned as having been with Paul — 
character of Timothy, 259; goes with 
Paul on his travels, 259 ; returns with 
Silas to Paul at Corinth from Thessa- 
lonioa, 326 ; sent by Paul to Thessalonica, 
333 ; his report of the faith of the Thes- 
salonians, 333; Paul's personal advice to, 
656-7; his relation to Paul, 667; Paul's 
account to him (in 2 Timothy) of his 
loneliness in prison, 671; of the support 
of his God, 67 L ; of his trial, 671 et seq. 

Timothy— 1 Timothy : Account of, 650 et seq. ; 
object of Epistle, 651 ; warning against 
false teachers, 651 ; injunctions to prayer, 
quietness, sobriety, 652 ; qualifications 
for offices in the Church, 653 ; of pastors 
and deacons, 6534 ; rules as to discipline 
of the body, 655 ; marriage, 655 ; widow- 
hood, 655 ; ordination of presbyters, &c, 
656 ; 2 Timothy, account of, 664 et seq. ; 
gratitude for the kindness of Onesi- 
phorus, 666-7, 670 ; again warned against 
false teachers, of whom a picture is drawn. 
678 et seq. ; personal exhortations — appeal 
to him, as a pastor, to earnest duty, 680, 
entreaty to come to him — Paul's cloak, 
books, parchments— conclusion, 681 et seq. 

Titus — converted by Paul at Cyprus, 229; 
went with Paul and Barnabas to conference 
at Jerusalem on circumcision, 229 ; the 
question of his circumcision, 232, 261 ; 
rejoins Paul in Macedonia, 402; Paul's 
Epistle to, account of, 659 et seq. ; leading 
subject of, temperance, soberminded- 
ness, 662. 

Tongue understanded of people commended 
for use, 397. 

Tongues — Speaking with unknown, 53-4; de- 
sign of gift of, at Pentecost, 54 ; different 
view of this gift, 54-6 ; at Jerusalem and 
Corinth respectively, 56; power of, as 
used by Apostles, 57 et seq. 

Tradition of twelve years as the limit laid 
down by our Lord for his disciples to 
remain in Jerusalem, 180. 

Trials. (See Roman.) 

Troas— Paul's cloak, books, and parchments 
left at with Carpus, 21, 681 et seq. 

Trophimus of Ephesus joins Paul, 375; ill at 
Miletus, 668. 

Truth of God. (See God.) 

Twelve years. (See Tradition.) 

Tychicus of Ephesus joins Paul, 875 ; Paul's 
• companion, 663. 



Unbelievers not to judge in church matters, 

389. 
Uncial MSS. of Acts of Apostles and Paul'* 

Epistles, 730-1. 
Uncleanness, Test of, in Talmud, 735. 
Unity, Paul's exhortations to, chief subject of 

Epistle to Philippians, 595, 599. 
Universal Restoration, Paul's view of, 732. 
Unknown God, Altars to, 297, 301; Paul'* 

view of altar to, 301; Paul preaches on,, 

308. 
Unknown tongues, Speaking in, condemned, 

397. (See Tongues.) 
Upper room of Last Supper, and of assembly 

of Apostles in house of Mary, 48, 180-1. 



Verbal inspiration, 341. 

Vessels of wrath and mercy, 498. 

Virginity and marriage— Paul writes on to 

Corinthian Church, 390-1. 
Vision of man of Macedonia to Paul, 401. 
Visions, 108-10. 
Voting tablets. (See Roman.) 
Vows, 40 ; Nazarite, 524 et seq. 
Voyage, Paul's to Rome, 561 et seq. (See Paul,) 



W. 



Warnings, God's, 112. 

Wesley, John, compared with Paul, 3. 

Whitefield, compared with Paul, 3. 

Whit-Sunday, 50. 

Will. (See Free will.) 

Winds — of Paul's voyage to Rome, Etesian, 

&c, 563. 
Witness of Gospel to our Lord, 184. 
Women — their part in the dissemination of 

the Gospel, 277. 
Worship, Public, Regulations for, 652. 
Wrath, Vessels of, 498. 
Wreck. (See Shipwreck.) 



T. 

Years, Twelve. (See Tradition.) 



Zephaniah — Pro; 
Jehovah, "~ 



ci universal worship of 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 
QUOTED OR REFERRED TO, 



Genesis i. 14, p. 600 ; i 28, p. 46 ; iii. 15, p. 
81 ; iii. 16, p. 653 ; iv. 25, p. 31 ; v. 2, p. 46 ; vi. 
2, p. 701 ; vial 21, p. 604; ix 4, pp. 241, 245 ; xii 
8, pp. 183, 436 ; xiii. 15, p. 30 ; xv. 6, p. 436 ; xv. 
13, p. 437 ; xv. 18, p. 89 ; xvii 17, p. 475 ; xviii. 
16, p. 715 ; xxvi 5, p. 475 ; xxvii. 21, p. 308 ; 
xxvii. 39, p. 183 ; xxviii 20, p. 352 ; xxix 31, p. 
497 ; xxxii. 25 32, p. 16 ; xxxvi., p. 22 ; xxxvi. 37, 
p. 15 ; xxxvi. 44, p. 616; xxxviii. 17, 18, p. 409; 
xl. 8, p. 386 ; xliv. 5, p. 197 ; xliv. 7, 17, p. 435 ; 
xlv. 14, p. 517 ; xlvi 2, p. 110 ; xlvi. 10, p. 15; 
Xlvi. 29, p. 517 ; L 10, p. 97. 

Exodus iii. 2, pp. 108, 344 ; iii. 14, p. 616 ; 
iv. 26, p. 475 ; vi. 15, p. 15 ; vii. 11, p. 680 ; xii. 
2, p. 50 ; xii. 48, p. 430 ; xiv. 31, p. 243 ; xv. 5, 
p. 417 ; xvi. 10, p. 496 ; xviii. 18, p. 410 ; xviii 
21, p. 95 ; xix. 1, p. 50 ; xix. 4, p. 207 ; xix. 16, p. 
836; xix. 17, p. 454; xix. 18, p. 344 ; xx. 14, p. 
738; xx. 19, p. 437; xxii. 18, p. 365; xxii 28, 
p. 540 ; xxii. 48, p. 430 ; xxiv. 8, p. 428 ; xxiv. 
10, p. 616; xxiv. 17, p. 344; xxv., p. 473; 
xxxii. 16, 425 ; xxxiv. 32, p. 496 ; xxxiv. 15, p. 
892 ; xxxiv. 27, p. 226 ; xxxiv. 33, p. 411. 

Leviticus iv. 25, p. 490 ; xi. 7, p. 154 ; xiii. 
13, pp. 104, 727 ; xvi. 5, p. 489 ; xvi. 8, p. 50 ; 
xvi. 10, p. 473 ; xvii. 8, p. 404 ; xvii. 8-16, p. 
243 ; xvii 14, p. 245 ; xviii. 5, pp. 104, 436 ; 
xviii. 26, p. 243; xviii. 29, p. 717; xviii. 30, p. 
87 ; xix. 4, p. 330 ; xix. 18, p. 441 ; xix. 19, p. 
413 ; xx. 6, p. 278 ; xx. 11, p. 404 ; xxiv. 14, p. 
707; xxv., p. 69; xxv. 26, p. 292; xxvii. 29, 
p. 401. 

Numbers v. 18, p. 96 ; vi. 3-5, p. 527 ; vi. 
9-10, p. 524; vi. 25-26, p. 459; xi. 26, p. 728; 
xii. 1, p. 147 ; xii. 12, p. 398 ; xv. 37-41, p. 25 ; 
xvi. 5-26, p. 679 ; xxi. 2, 3, p. 401 ; xxi 17, p. 
702 ; xxiv. 25, p. 49 ; xxv. 2, p. 379 ; xxv. 9, 
p. 392; xxvi. 13, p. 15; xxvi. 55, 56, p. 50; 
xxxiii. 55, p. 711 ; xxxv. 5, p. 48. 

Deuteronomy i. 13-16, p. 95; i. 31, p. 207; 
i. 38, p. 207; i.— iii. 22, p. 207; vi. 4-9, p. 25; 
vii. 3, p. 705; vii. 25, p. 469 ; vii. 46, p. 496 ; ix. 
6, 13, p. 92 ; x. 12, p. 227 ; x. 16, pp. 92, 602 ; xi. 
13-27, p. 25; xiii. 8, 9, p. 96; xiv. 8, p. 154; 
rvi. 11, p. 58 ; xvi. 16, 17, p. 69 ; xvii. 7, p. 707 ; 
xvii. 14-20, p. 736; xvii. 15, p. 175; xviii. 18, 
p. 502 ; xxi. 22, 23, p. 707 ; xxi. 23, pp. 84, 395, 
436 ; xxii. 10, p. 413 ; xxiii. 1, pp. 147, 441 ; 
xxiii. 18, p. 601 ; xxv. 2, p. 61 ; xxv. 2, 4, p. 716 ; 
xxv. 4, pp. 656, 717 ; xxvii. 14-26, p. 618 ; xxvii. 

20, p. 404 ; xxvii. 26, p. 436 ; xxviii. 25, p. 65 ; 
xxviii. 58, 59, p. 716 ; xxix. 9, p. 716 ; xxix. 28, 
p. 254 ; xxx. 6, p. 92 ; xxxii. 15, p. Ill]; xxxii. 

21, p. 499 ; xxxii. 43, p. 508 ; xxxiii. 2, pp. 92, 
437, 454; xxxiii 4, p. 223; xxxiv. 2, p. 728; 
xxxiv. 8 p. 94. 

Joshua i. 8, p. 22 ; ii. 16, p. 128 ; vi. 17, p. 
401; vii 11, p. 20 ; vii. 14, p. 50 ; x. 26, p. 436 ; 
xv. 58. p. 147 ; xxiji. 13, p. 711 : xxiv. 2, p. 183; 
xxiv. 15, p. 702. 



Judges iii 31, p. Ill ; ix. 27, p. 391 ; ix. 5S, 

p. 49 ; xviii. 21, p. 521. 

L Samuel iv. 22, p. 496 ; viii. 15, p. 30 ; x. 

10, 11, p. 58 ; x. 11, p. 57 ; x. 20, p. 50 ; xii. 18, 
p. 243; xiv. 24, p. 544; xv. 22, p. 227; xviii. 10, 
pp. 57, 58 ; xviii. 22, p. 619 ; xix. 12, p. 128 ; xix. 
23, 24, p. 57 ; xxi 5, p. 334 ; xxviii. 3, 9, p. 365. 

IL Samuel v. 33, p. 575 ; vii. 8, 14, p. 413; 
xxii. 48, p. 344 ; xxiv. 1, p. 333. 

I. Kings ii. 38, p. 120; v. 9, p. 178 ; vi. 1, p. 
208 ; vii. 13, 14, p. 14 ; viii. 27, p. 90 ; xii. 2, p. 
13 ; xv. 22, p. 4 ; xvii. 21, p. 514 ; xvii. 22, p. 521 ; 
xviii. 26, p. 373; xix. 11, p. 52; xix. 14, p. 153; 
xx. 35, p. 336 ; xxii. 11, p. 520 ; xxii. 24, p. 417. 

II. Kin. s ii. 3, p. 26; iii. 9, p. 575 ; iv. 34, 
p. 514 ; iv. 38, p. 26; xix. 37, p. 391 ; xxiii. 13 
seq., p. 469. 

I. Chronicles xxi. 1, p. 333; xxix. 11, p. 90. 

II. Chronicles vi. 32, 33, p. 310; vii. 1, p. 
344. 

JEzra ii. 3S-39, pp. 65, 77; iii 3, p. 646; 
iii. 7, p. 178 ; vi. 16, p 66. 

Nehemiah iii. 16, p. 147; ix. 16, p. 92. 

JOB i. 6, p. 417; v. 9, p. 640; v. 10, p. 11; 
v. 13, p. 19 ; v. 24, p. 46 ; xii. 23, p. 308 ; xiii. 7, 
8, p. 487 ; xiii. 27, p. 282 ; xiv. 2, p. 497 ; xxv. 4, 
p. 445 ; xxxiii. 11, p. 282 ; xxxiii. 19, p. 16 ; xii. 

11, p. 310. 

Psalms ii., pp. 84, 209 ; ii. 3, p. 454 ; ii 
7, p. 209 ; ii. 12, p. 145 ; vii. 13, p. 646 ; xiv. 
p. 29 ; xvi. 10, p. 85 ; xviii. 31, p. 646 ; xviii 
49, p. 508 ; xix. 4, p. 499 ; xxii. 18, p. 50 ; 
xxii. 21, p. 672 ; xxii 31, p. 242 ; xxiv. 4, p. 
653 ; xxvi. 6, p. 653; xl. 7, p. 490; xii 9, pp. 
49, 85 ; xlviii. 12, p. 385 ; 1. 11-12, p. 310 ; liii. 
p. 29 ; lviii. 8, p. 398 ; lix. 10, p. 308 ; lxiii. 
7, p. 651; lxvi 1-2, p. 90; lxvi 18, p. 4t>9; 
lxvii. 18, p. 92 ; lxvii. 19, p. 496 ; lxviii, p. 
643 ; lxviii 11, p. 211 ; lxviii. 12, pp. 92, 385, 
437 ; lxviii. 31, p. 147 ; lxxi. 1, p. 651 ; lxxviii. 
2, p. 85 ; lxxviii. 38-39, p. 716 ; lxxix. 14, p. 97 ; 
lxxxi. 12, p. 473 ; 1 xxxii. 6, p. 397 ; 1 xxxiv. 7, 
p. 464; lxxxvi 9, p. 242; 1 xxxviii. 15, p. 646; 
1-snnri-sr 7, p. 333 ; Ixxxix. 27, p. 616 ; xci. 7, p. 
702 ; xciv. 11, p. 19 ; xcv. 7, p. 343 ; cii., p. 
479 ■ oil 18, p. 242; civ. 15, p. 11; cv. 15, p. 
170 ; cvi 28, p. 379 ; evil 23, p. 69 ; cix. 8, p. 
49; ex. 1, p. 85 ; cxiii.-exviii., p. 25; cxvii. 
1, p. 508 ; cxviii. 22, p. 85 ; exxxviii. 1, p. 394 3 
exxxix. 7, p. 333 ; cxliii 2, p. 435 ; cxlv. 13, p. 
652 ; cxlvii. 2, p. 65 ; cxlvii. 8-9, p. 11. 

Proverbs ii. 4, p. 617 ; ii 17, p. 46 ; iii 3, 
pp. 410, 414; v. 18, p. 46 ; vi. 12, p. 413 ; vii. 3, 
p. 410 ; viii 30, p. 410 ; xi. 24, p. 414 ; xiv. 9, p„ 
311 ; xiv. 14, p. 657 ; xiv. 34, p. 157 ; xvi. 20, 
p. 466 ; xvi. 33, p. 50 ; xx. 25, p. 539 ; xxi. 18, 
p. 388; xxii. 9, p. 414; xxiii. 6, p. 266 ; xxv. 19, 
p. 255 ; xxv. 21, 22, p. 503. 

Ecclesiastes v. 18, p. 304 ; vi. 6, p. 49 ; vii. 
20, p. 105 ; ix. 18, p. 345 ; x. 8, p. 181 ; xi. 6, p. 46. 



774 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 



Canticles iii 7, 8, p. 702 ; vii. 12, p. 256. 

Isaiah i. 1-22, p. 207 ; i. 2, p. 207 ; i. 3, p. 
716; i 9, p. 498 ; i. 11-15, p. 34 ; i 22, p. 410 ; 
ii. 2, 3, p. 125 ; iii. 10, p. 240 ; v. 24, p. 52 ; viii. 

14, pp. 33, 85, 498 ; ix. 1, p. 85 ; ix. 12, p. 71; 
x. 22, p. 498 ; x. 28, p. 521 ; xi. 4, p. 346 ; xi. 
5, p. 619 ; xi. 10, p. 508 ; xiv. 1, p. 227 ; xx. 2, 
p. 520 ; xxiv. 18, p. 84 ; xxvi. 12, p. 267 ; xxviii. 

4, p. 396 ; xxviii 11, pp. 30, 53 ; xxviii. 16, pp. 
33, 479, 498, 499 ; xxix. 14, p. 19 ; xxx. 7, p. 
334 ; xxxii. 2, p. 105 ; xxxiii. 12, p. 70 ; xxxiii. 
18, pp. 19, 385, 386 ; xl. 3, p. 85 ; xliii. 6, p. 413; 
xliii. 7, p. 242 ; xliii. 9, p. 454; xliv. 25, p. 19 ; 
xlv. 9, p. 497 ; xlv. 14, p. 147 ; xlix. 6, p. 125 ; 
Iii. 10, p. 183; Iii. 14, p. 104; Iii. 15, p. 386; liii., 
p. 84; liii. 4, p. 104; liii. 4-6, p. 104 ; liii. 

5, pp. 343, 469 ; liii. 7, 8, p. 147 ; liii. 9, p. 85 ; 
liv. 1, p. 32 ; lvi. 3, 8, p. 147 ; lvii. 20, p. 466 ; 
lviii. 3, p. 34; lviii. 5-7, p. 34; lix. 10, p. 308 ; 
lix. 16-19, p. 616; lix. 20, p. 501; Ix. 1, 2, p. 
645 ; lx. 3, 9, p. 183 ; lxi. 1, p. 85 ; lxiii. 9, 207 ; 
lxiv. 4, p. 386 ; lxv. 1, 2, p. 499 ; lxv. 4, p. 154 ; 
lxv. 17, p. 386 ; lxvi. 1, 2, p. 90 ; lxvi. 3, p. 154 ; 
lxvi. 16, p. 221. 

Jeremiah i. 6, p. 153 ; vii. 21, p. 34 ; vii. 22, 

23, p. 485 ; viii. 9, p. 19 ; viii. 16, p. 616 ; ix. 23, 

24, ». 386 ; ix. 26, p. 92 ; xiii. 1, p. 520 ; xvii. 16, 
p. 387 ; xviii. 6, p. 497 ; xix. 13, p. 151 ; xxiii. 

6, p. 462 ; xxix. 7, p. 720 ; xxix. 26, p 282 ; xxxi. 
3-33, p. 413 ; xxxi. 29, p. 485 ; xxxiii. 16, p. 462; 
xxxiii. 25, pp. 226, 428; xxxviii. 7, p. 147 ; xxxix. 
16, p. 147. 

Ezekiel i. 24, p. 52 ; xi. 19, p. 410 ; xvi. 12, 
p. 333 ; xviii. 2, p. 485 ; xx. 25, pp. 227, 485 ; 
xxiv. 6, p. 50; xxvii. 17, p. 178; xxviii. 24, 
p. 711 ; xxxiii. 4, p. 319 ; xxxvi. 21-23, p. 469 ; 
xxxvi. 28, p. 413 ; xxxviii. 16, 17, pp. 351, 728 ; 
xliii. 2, p. 52 ; xliv. 7, pp. 92, 531, 602 ; xlv. 7, 
p. 274. 

Daniel i. 8, p. 241; i. 8-12, p. 240; i. 12, 
p. 30; v. 6, p. 539 ; v. 12, p. 386; vii. 9, p. 344 ; 
vii. 10, 11, 23-26, p. 351 ; ix. 23, p. 110 ; ix. 24, 
p. 333; x. 7, p. 108; xi., p. 727; xi. 31-36, 
p. 351 ; xi. 36, p. 346 ; xii. 10, p. 349 ; xii. 13, 
p. 49. 

Hosea i. 9, 10, p. 498 ; ii. 6, p. 711 ; ii. 23, p. 
498 ; iv. 14, p. 96 ; vi. 6, pp. 227, 485 ; xii. 8, p. 
69 ; xiii. 14, p. 501. 

Joel ii. 32, p. 499. 

Amos ii. 10, p. 207 ; iii. 12, p. 672 ; viii. 4-6, 
p. 69 ; ix. 11, 12, p. 241. 

Jonah i. 3, p. 152 ; i. 7, p. 50 ; iv. 1, 9, p. 
153. 

Micah iv. 2, p. 125 ; v. 12, p. 365 ; vi. 8, p. 
227 ; vi. 12, p. 484. 

H4.BAKKUK i. 5, p. 210 ; ii. 4, pp. 29, 436, 457 ; 
iii 3, p. 454 ; iii. 6, p. 510. 

Zlphaniah i. 5, p. 151 ; ii. 11, p. 183 ; iii. 
10, p. 147. 

Haggai ii. 8, p. 454. 

Zechabiah xi. 7, p. 240 ; xi. 12, p. 85 ; xii. 
10, pp. 84, 85; xiv. 11, p. 496; xiv. 16, p. 454; 
riv. 21, p. 69. 

Malachi i. 2, 3, p. 497 ; i. 7, p. 241 ; i. 8, p. 
469 ; iii. 1, p. 85 ; iii. 8-10, p. 469. 

II. Esdbas xiii. 45, p. 65. 

Tobit i. 10-14, p. 3^9 ; i. 11, 12, p. 240 ; v. 
18, p. 388; xi. 13, p. 114; xii. 12, p. 391; xii. 

15, p. 656. 

Esther (Apocr.) xiv. 13, p. 672. 

Wisdom of Solomon i. 13-16, p. 478 ; ii. 
7-9, p. 304; ii. 24, p. 704 ; iii. 8, p. 697, 701; 
iii. 10, p. 409 ; iii. 14, 15, p. 144 ; v. 4, p. 559 ; 
▼. 17, p. 697; v. 17-20, p. 646; v. 18. p. 336 ; v. 



19, p. 646 ; v. 23, p. 419 ; vii. 22, seq., p. 73 ; ix 
15, pp. 412, 704; x.-xii., p. 73; xi., xvi. -xviii 
p. 33; xi. 20, 21, p. 346; xi 23-26, p. 704; xui- 
xix., p. 73 ; xiv. 15, p. 330 ; xv. 7, pp. 497, 697 ; 
xxv. 24, p. 653. 

Sirach xxiii. 13, p. 497. 

Ecclesiasticus vii. 25, p. 46; xiv. 6, p. 
266 ; xxv. 22, p. 414 ; xxx. 11, p. 311 ; xxxvi. 
29, p. 334; xxxviii. 1, p. 575; xxxviii. 25, p. 
Ill ; xiii. 9, p. 46. 

Bartjch v. 12, p. 336; vi. 43, p. 246. 

I. Maccabees i 15, pp. 72, 390, 470; ii. 48, 
62, p. 627 ; ii. 52, p. 474; iii. 37, p. 165; x. 36, p. 
266. 

II. Maccabees i. 27, p. 66 ; iii. 10, p. 74 ; 
iii. 15, p. 717 ; iv. 7-9, 33, p. 165 ; iv. 10, 15, 
p. 71 ; iv. 13, p. 71; iv. 13, seq , p. 72 ; iv. 33, 
p. 166 ; iv. 40, p. 363 j v. 9, p. 179 ; v. 21, p. 165; 
vi. 1, p. 538 ; vi. 9, p. 71 ; vi. 18, 19, p. 151 ; vii 

27, p. 207; vii. 31, p. 466; xi. 36, p. 165; xiv. 
35, p. 310. 

III. Maccabkes (Extra- Apocryphal Book), 
p. 140. 

St. Matthew iii. 10, p. 387; iv. 14, p. 85; 
v. 10-12, p. 476 ; v. 14, p. 175 ; v. 17, p. 149 ; v. 
18, pp. 81, 149 ; v. 32, p. 81 ; v. 37, p. 409 ; v. 39, 
p. 417 ; v. 47, p. 435 ; vi. 2, p. 36 ; vi. 5, p. 36 j 
vi. 7, p. 373 ; vi. 13, p. 433 ; vi. 24, p. 497 ; vii 
6, p. 680 ; vii. 17, p. 644 ; viii 4, p. 149 ; ix. 10, 
11, p. 435; ix. 13, pp. 81, 150; ix. 29, 30, p. 238; 
x. 14, p. 21-2 ; x. 17, p. 98 ; x. 23, p. 98 ; x. 25, p. 
212 ; x. 27, p. 151 ; x. 37, p. 497 ; xi. 3, p. 234 ; 
xi. 10, pp. 85, 304 ; xi 25, p. 600 ; xi. 27, pp. 
151, 495 ; xi. 29, 30, p. 238 ; xii. 7, pp. 81, 150 ; 
xii. 10, p. 150; xii. 19, 20, p. 679; xii. 39, p. 96; 
xii. 40, p. 85; xii. 46, p. 131; xii. 55, p. 48; 
xiii. 35, p. 85; xiii. 44, p. 617; xiii. 46, pp. 
48, 468 ; xiii. 52, p. 302 ; xiv. 2, p. 267 ; xv. 2- 
6, p. 87; xv. 13, p. 62; xv. 17, p. 150; xv. 

20, p. 150; xv. 26, p. 601; xvi. 4, p. 96; xvi 
22, p. 153 ; xvi. 27, p. 333 ; xvii. 9, p. 271 ; 
xviii. 8, p. 390 ; xviii. 17, p. 157 ; xix. 3, 6, 8, 
p. 81; xix. 8, pp. 150, 469, 626; xx. 21, p. 724; 
xxi 13, p. 469 ; xxi. 31, 32, p. 455 ; xxii 4, p. 
388 ; xxii. 17, pp. 36, 501 ; xxii. 21, p. 503 ; xxii. 

28, p. 541 ; xxii. 40, pp. 150, 441 ; xxiii. 5, p. 36; 
xxiii. 6, p. 206 ; xxiii. 13-25, p. 469 ; xxiii. 15, 
pp. 36, 44, 185, 601, 738; xxiii. 25-27, p. 542; 
xxiii. 27, p. 539 ; xxiii. 27-29, p. 333 ; xxiii. 37, 
pp. 345, 708 ; xxiii. 37-39, p. 333 ; xxiv. 6, 16, 
p. 333 ; xxiv. 17, p. 151 ; xxiv. 23, 24, p. 198 ; 
xxiv. 29, 30, 34, p. 342 ; xxiv. 31, pp. 336, 345 ; 
xxiv. 37, p. 336 ; xxv. 27, p. 75 ; xxvi. 15, p. 85 ; 
xxvi. 24, p. 390 ; xxvi. 28, p. 711 ; xxvi. 49, j>. 
517 ; xxvi. 74, p. 401 ; xxvii. 9, 10, p. 85 ; xxvii 
13, p. 490; xxvii. 25, p. 332; xxvii. 28, p. 711. 

St. Mark i. 3, p. 85; i. 44, p. 149; ii. 23, p. 
150; ii. 27, p. 81; iii. 31, p. 131 ; iv. 16, p. 410; 
v. 26, p. 436 ; vi. 3, p. 48 ; vii. 1-23, 619 ; vii. 3, 
5, 8, 9, 13, p. 87 ; vii. 4-8, p. 36 ; vii. 14, 16, p. 
155; vii. 19, pp. 150, 155; ix. 14, p. 228; x. 5-9, 
p. 150 ; xii. 33, p. 150 ; xiii. 9, p. 98 ; xiv. 15, p. 
48 ; xiv. 52, p. 43 ; xv. 7, p. 228 ; xv. 16, p. 597 ; 
xv. 22, p. 509 ; xv. 41, p. 561 ; xvi. 15, p. 184 ; 
xvi. 17, p. 54. 

St. Luke i. 3, p. 198 ; i 9, p. 50 ; L 22, p. 
109 ; i. 23, p. 182 ; i. 36, p. 680 ; 1 52, p. 207 ; ii 
34, pp. 33, 85; ii. 37, 602; iii. 22, p. 52; 
iv. 18, p. 85; iv. 20, pp. 75, 194, 207, 538, 715 ; 
iv. 23, p. 272 ; v. 17, p. 663 j vi. 29, p. 539 ; vi 
32, 33, p. 435 ; vii. 45, p. 509 ; viii. 3, p. 561 ; 
viii. 19, p. 131 ; viii. 27, p. 220 ; ix. 53, p. 529 ; 
ix. 54, p. 724 ; x. 1, p. 50 ; x. 7, p. 656 ; x. 21, 
p. 600; x. 41, p 891 ; xii. 15-21, p. 657; xii 50* 



QUOTED OB REFEBRED TO. 



775 



p. 'oxB ; xiii. 2, p. 168 ; xiii 14, p. 150; xiv. 1-6, 
p. 150 ; xiv. 26, p. 497 ; xvi 16, p. 150 ; xvi. 
17, p. 149; xvii. 31, p. 151; xviii 8, p. 728 ; 
xviii. 11, p. 36 ; xviii 13, p. 651 ; xix. 23, p. 75 ; 
xx. 9, p. 220 ; xx. 47, p. 36 ; xxi. 9, p. 340 ; xxii 
26, p. 75 ; xxii. 41, p. 517 ; xxii. 44, p. 272 ; xxii 

56, p. 715 ; xxii 64, p. 417 ; xxiii. 18, p. 533 ; 
yrm . 19, p. 228 ; xxiii. 34, p. 50 ; xxiii. 34, 46, 
p. 94; xxiii. 41, p. 347 ; xxiii. 43, p. 418 ; xxiv. 
23, p. 109; xxiv. 25, pp. 59, 436; xxiv. 26, p. 
84 ; xxiv. 47, p. 125 • xxiv. 48, p. 47 ; xxiv. 49, 
p 47 ; xxiv. 53, p. 5C. 

St. John i. 11, p. 223 ; i 14, p. 51 ; i. 14, 16, 
p 606 ; i. 46, p. 168 ; i. 47, p. 9 ; iii. 8, p. 57 ; 
iii. 27, p. 479 ; iii. 30, p. 507 ; iv. 21-23, p. 51 ; 
iv. 22, pp. 81, 125, 460 ; v. 10, p. 150 ; v. 17, 
p. 81 ; v. 24, p. 479 ; v. 38, p. 638; vi. 63, p. 410; 
vii. 5, p. 131 ; vii 12, 47, p. 115 ; vii. 15, p. 60 ; 
vii. 35, p. 66; vii. 49, p. 36; viii 43, p. 472; 
viii. 44, p. 199 ; viii 58, p. 616 ; viii. 59, p. 708 ; 
ix. 14, p. 150 ; ix. 16, p. 115 ; ix. 41, p. 386 ; x. 

16, pp. 145, 150 ; x. 20, p. 115 ; x. 28, p. 479 ; 
x. 31-33, p. 708 ; x. 34, p. 397 ; xi 25, p. 479 ; xi. 
52, p. 345 ; xii. 20, pp. 71, 74, 161 ; xii. 29, p. 108 ; 
xii 31, p. 505 ; xii. 42, p. 76 ; xii. 43, p. 542 ; 
xiii. 8, p. 153; xiii. 18, p. 85; xiii. 27, p. 654; 
xiv. 19, p. 479 ; xiv. 20, p. 479 ; xiv. 30, pp. 411, 
646 ; xv. 4-10, p. 479 ; xv. 5, p. 479 ; xv. 22, 
p. 265 ; xvi. 7, p. 230 ; xvi. 11, p. 646 ; xvii 12, 
p. 346 ; xvii. 18, p. 188 ; xviii. 22, p. 539 ; xviii. 
28, p. 157; xix. 11, pp. 265, 711; xix. 36, 
p. 395 ; xix. 37, p. 85 ; xix. 40, p. 152 ; xx. 5, 6, 
p. 517 ; xx. 17, p. 638 ; xx. 19, 26, p. 48. 

Acts i. 2, p. 50 ; i. 3, p. 47 ; i. 4, p. 47 ; i. 6, 
P. 48 ; i. 7, p. 48 ; i. 8, pp. 48, 184, 460 ; i. 10, p. 
715; i. 12, p. 736; i. 13, p. 48; i. 15, p. 77; i 

17, p. 50; i. 19, p. 272 ; i. 22, p. 47 ; i. 25, p. 49 ; 
ii. 1, p. 79 ; ii 2, pp. 51, 57 ; ii. 2, 3, pp. 52, 53; 
ii. 4, p. 53 ; ii. 6, p. 57 ; ii. 9, pp. 317, 448 ; ii. 
14, p. 58 ; ii. 15, p. 58 ; ii. 17, p. 110; ii. 22, p. 
59 ; ii. 27, pp. 85, 209 ; ii. 32, p. 47 ; ii. 33 p. 
85; ii. 39, p. 245; ii. 44, p. 655; ii. 46, p. 50; 
ii. 47, p. 211; iii. 1, pp. 50, 79; iii. 2-4, p. 715; 
iii. 7, p. 272 ; iii. 15, p. 47 ; iii. 16, p. 336 ; iii. 
19, p. 37 ; iii- 19-21, p. 498 ; iii. 21, p. 494 ; iii. 26, 
p. 125 ; iv. 2, p. 279 ; iv. 8, p. GO ; iv. 11, p. 85 ; 
iv. 13, p. 59 ; iv. 29, p. 279 ; iv. 33, p. 47 ; v. 14, 
p. 169 ; v. 21, p. 60 ; v. 26, p. 708 ; v. 32, p. 
47; v. 34, pp. 25, 26; v. 38, 39, p. 62; v. 39, 
p. 543 ; v. 41, pp. 94, 476 ; vi. 1, pp. 9, 71, 
655; vi. 2, p. 74; vi. 5, pp. 71,77; vi. 5, 
10, p. 75 ; vi. 6, p. 749 ; vi 8, p. 78 ; vi 9, 
pp. 82, 448; vi. 12, p. 86; vi. 13, p. 87; vi. 
14, p. 87; vi. 15, pp. 88, 715; vi. 56, p. 88; 
vii. 2, pp. 92, 534; vii 2, 4, 14, 16, 22, 23, 42, 53, 
p. 92 ; vii 5-8, p. 92 ; vii. 6, p. 437 ; vii. 6, 7, 
14, 16, p. 92; vii. 48, 51, p. 92; vii 51, p. 602; 
vii. 52, pp. 91, 535 ; vii. 53, pp. 91, 92, 437 ; vii. 
54, p. 92 ; vii. 55, p. 715 ; vii 56, pp. 88, 93 ; vii. 

57, p. 93 ; vii. 58, pp. 7, 707 ; viii. 1, p. 100 ; 
viii. 2, p. 97; viii. 3, p. 97; viii. 9, p. 198; 
viii. 11, p. 220; viii. 14, p. 98; viii 17, p. 749; 
viii. 21, p. 50; viii. 26, p. 146; viii. 30, p. 
695 ; viii. 33, p. 147 ; ix. 1, 2, p. 100 ; ix. 2, p. 
159; ix. 3, p. 108; ix. 5, p. 43; ix. 7, pp. 108, 
HI ; ix 10-12, p. 110 ; ix. 13, p. 97 ; ix. 15, pp. 
1, 182, 411, 689; ix. 15, 16, p. 183; ix. 17, p. 
Ill ; ix. 19, p. 116 ; ix. 19, 20, p. 116 ; ix. 20, p. 
116; ix. 21, pp. 97, 126; ix. 23, p. 127; ix. 24, 
pp. 128, 272, 332; ix. 25, p. 128; ix. 26, pp. 130, 
169, 228 ; ix. 27, pp. Ill, 134; ix. 29, pp. 71, 72, 
134; ix. 30, pp. 44, 190; ix. 31, p. 137; ix. 34, 
p. 169 ; X. 1, 2, p. 462; X. 2, pp. 68, 71; x. 3, 
p. 271} X. 4, p. 538} x. 9, 10, p. 272; s. 9, 



14, 30, p. 79; x. 10, p. 152; x. 12, p. 153; 
x. 13, p. 388 ; x. 23, p. 157 ; x. 28, p. 157 ; 
X. 30, p. 79 ; X. 36, p. 158 ; x. 38, p. 169 ; 
x. 40, 41, p. 47; x. 46, p. 54; xi. 2, p. 159; 
xi. 3, p. 71 ; xi. 5, p. 110 ; xi. 12, p. 157 ; xi. 

15, pp. 54, 238 ; xi. 17, p. 238; xi. 18, p. 159; 
xi. 20, pp. 71, 160. 195 ; xi. 25, pp. 44, 190 ; xi. 
28, p. 272 ; xi. 29, pp. 169, 231 ; xi. 30, pp. 228, 
435 ; xii. 1-3, p. 175 ; xii. 1-11, p. 659 ; xii. 2, p. 
176 ; xii 3-6, p. 180 ; xii. 4, p. 176 ; xii 9, p. 
110, 177; xii. 13, p. 215; xii. 17, pp. 207, 534; 
xii. 23, pp. 179, 272 ; xiii. 2, pp. 182, 459 ; x ii. 
2-3, p. 79 ; xiii. 3, pp. 188, 652 ; xiii. 5, pp. 194, 
196 ; xiii. 6, p. 197 ; xiii. 7, p. 722 ; xiii. 9, pp. 
538, 715 ; xiii. 11, p. 199 ; xiii. 12, p. 199 ; xiii. 

16, p. 9; xiii. 16-22, p. 208; xiii. 17, p. 207; 
xiii. 18, p. 207 ; xiii. 19, p. 207 ; xiii. 20-21, p. 
701 ; xiii. 23-31, p. 208 ; xiii. 25, p. 208 ; xiii. 26, p. 
208; xiii. 27, p. 208 ; xiii. 32-41, p. 208 ; xiii. 33- 
34, p. 208 ; xiii. 35-37, p. 209 ; xiii. 38, 39, 46, p. 
125 ; xiii. 39, p. 208 ; xiii. 41, pp. 85, 210 ; xiii. 
42, p. 210 ; xiii. 43, pp. 68, 210 ; xiii. 45, p. 
211 ; xiii. 46, p. 211 ; xiii. 49, p. 211 ; xiii. 50, p. 
317; xiii. 51, p. 212; xiv. 1, p. 161; xiv. 
3, p. 220 ; xiv. 4, p. 509 ; xiv. 4, 14, p. 188 ; 
xiv. 9, p. 214 ; xiv. 14, p 194 ; xiv. 15, pp. 4, 
216 ; xiv. 16, pp. 215, 216, 473 ; xiv. 17, pp. 11, 
216, 697 ; xiv. 19, p. 317 ; xiv. 22, p. 219 ; xiv. 
23, pp. 219, 749; xv., p. 448; xv. 1, pp. 169, 
225, 226, 243 ; xv. 2, pp. 227, 228, 234 ; xv. 4, 
p. 230; xv. 5, p. 542; xv. 6, pp. 230,241; xv.7, 
p. 229 ; xv. 7-11, p. 238 ; xv. 9-11, p. 150 ; xv. 12, 
p. 262; xv. 10, pp. 235, 243; xv. 19, p. 241; xv. 

20, p. 241 ; xv. 22, pp. 50, 242 ; xv. 22, 32, 34, 
p. 328 ; xv 23, 41, p. 136 ; xv. 24, pp. 242, 253, 
435 ; xv. 25, p. 194 ; xv. 29, p. 241 ; xv. 32, pp. 
258, 652; xv. 37, p. 254; xv. 38, pp. 201, 681; 
xv. 39, pp. 228, 254; xv. 41, p., 190; xvi. pp. 
221, 346 ; xvi. 1, pp. 217, 655, 749 ; xvi 1, 2, p. 
259 ; xvi. 2, p. 259 ; xvi. 3, pp. 235, 260 ; xvi 6, 
pp. 221, 262, 607 ; xvi. 6, 7, p. 333 ; xvi 7, pp. 269, 
712 ; xvi. 8, p. 269 ; xvi 9, p. 110 ; xvi 10, pp. 
270, 271 ; xvi. 11, p. 512 ; xvi. 13, p. 275 ; xvi. 

14, pp. 68, 276 ; xvi 15, p. 283 ; xvi. 16, pp. 
198, 278, 279 ; xvi 16, 17, 18, 19, p. 279 ; xvi. 

17, pp. 279, 283, 512; xvi. 19, pp.- 279, 371; 
xvi. 20, pp. 279, 280 ; xvi. 20, 37, p. 257 ; 
xvi. 21, p. 284; xvi. 24, p. 282; xvi 25, p. 
620 ; xvi. 26, p. 283 ; xvi 30, p. 283 ; xvi. 32, 
p. 311; xvi. 33, p. 2?3; xvi. 34, 35, p. 284; 
xvi. 37, p. 284 ; xvi. 39, p. 285 ; xvi 40, p. 277 ; 
xvii. 1, pp. 285, 287 ; xvii. 2, 3, p. 288 ; xvii 4, 
pp. 288, 330, 332 ; xvii. 5, pp. 86, 290, 291 ; xvii. 
6, p. 533 ; xvii. 9, p. 291 ; xvii. 11, p. 293 ; xvii 
13, pp. 294, 317; xvii. 14, pp. 260, 285; xvii. 14, 

15, p. 715 ; xvii. 15, p. 296 ; xvii. 16, p. 301 ; xvii. 
17, p. 302 ; xvii. 18, p. 305 ; xvii. 21, p. 306 ; xvii 

21, p. 311 ; xvii. 22, pp. 307, 556 ; xvii. 23, pp. 
297, 301; xvii. 24, pp. 10, 90. 92 ; xvii. 27, p. 697 ; 
xvii. 28, p. 696 ; xvii. 30, pp. 216, 473 ; xvii. 32, 
p. 311; xviii. 2, pp. 279, 446; xviii. 3, p. 13; 
xviii. 4. p. 161 ; xviii. 5, pp. 260, 318 ; xviii. 6, 
p. 319; xviii. 8, p. 320; xviii. 9, pp. 42, 110; 
xviii. 12, p. 509 ; xviii. 13, 14, 15, p. 322 ; xviii 
17, pp. 71, 385 ; xviii. 18, 21, p. 79 ; xviii. 18, 
26, p. 317; xviii. 19, p. 285; xviii. 22, p. 228; 
xviii 23, pp. 263, 607 ; xviii. 25, p. 361 ; xviii 
26, p. 317 ; xviii. 27, p. 361 ; xix. 6, p. 54 ; xix. 
9, 23, p. 169 ; xix. 10, p. 262 ; xix. 10-26, p. 607 ; 
xix. 11, p. 363; xix. 14, p. 864; xix. 15, p. 365; 
xix. 19, p. 198 ; xix. 21, pp. 270, 369, 591 ; xix. 

22, p. 260 ; xix. 29, pp. 218, 259, 288 ; xix. 32, p. 
509 ; xix. 33, pp. 534, 652 ; xix. 35, p. 356 ; xix. 36, 
p. 374 ; xix. 36, 37, p. 469 ; xix. 37, p. 358} xx. 1, 



776 



PASSAGES OP SCRIPTURE 



p. 375; xx. 1, 2, p. 270; XX.3, p. 510; xx. 4, pp. 
218, 259, 260, 288, 372, 663 ; xx. 5, pp. 271, 285, 
512; xx. 6, pp. 270, 273, 512; xx. 6, 16, p. 79; 
xx. 9, p. 513 ; xx. 11, 12, p. 514 ; xx. 13, p. 
211; xx 16, p. 515 ; xx. 17, 28, pp. 749, 750; 
xx. 18-35, pp. 366, 368 ; xx. 19, p. 366 ; xx. 19, 
31, 37, p. 516 ; xx. 20, p. 515 ; xx. 20, 31, 34, 
p. 367 ; xx. 22, p. 515 ; xx. 22, 27, 28, 32, p. 
630 ; xx. 23, p. 368 ; xx. 24, pp. 208, 210 ; xx. 
24, 32, p. 630 ; xx. 27, p. 515 ; xx. 28, p. 515 ; 
xx. 29, p. 728; xx. 31, pp. 272, 366, 375, 607; 
xx. 32, p. 208; xx 33, p. 331; xx. 34, p. 318; 
xx. 37, p. 677 ; xx. 38, p. 517 ; xxi. 1, p. 517 ; xxi. 
i, 4, 5, p. 519 ; xxi. 2, p. 136 ; xxi. 3, p. 318 ; xxi. 

4, pp. 333, 512, 519, 712; xxi. 5, pp. 241, 519; 
xxi. 8, p. 75 ; xxi. 8, 9, p. 148 ; xxi. 15, p. 521 ; 
xxi. 16, pp. 195, 238, 578 ; xxi. 18, p. 271 ; xxi. 
19, p. 523 ; xxi. 20, p. 536 ; xxi. 20, 24, p. 79 ; 
xxi. 21, pp. 485, 523 ; xxi. 24, p. 249 ; xxi. 25, 
p. 241 ; xxi. 29, pp. 71, 511, 663 ; xxi. 30, p. 
532 ; xxi. 33, p. 537 ; xxi. 33, 38, p. 533 ; xxi. 
39, pp. 7, 534 ; xxi. 40, pp. 10, 207, 534 ; xxii 

1, p. 92 ; xxii. 2. p. 534 ; xxii. 3, pp. 3, 8, 25, 
26, 35, 38, 79, 534 ; xxii. 4, p. 98 ; xxii. 6, p. 
108 ; xxii. 8, pp. 43, 111 ; xxii. 12, p. 125 ; xxii. 

14, 15, p. 114 ; xxii. 16, 17, p. 116 ; xxii. 17, pp. 
110, 135, 712 ; xxii. 17-21, p. 135 ; xxii. 18, p. 42; 
xxii 19, p. 153 ; xxii. 21, pp. 109, 182, 372 ; xxii. 
22, pp. 536, 620 ; xxii. 23, p. 536 ; xxii. 25, pp. 
281, 536; xxii. 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, p. 537; xxii. 
28, p. 24; xxiii. 1, pp. 199, 538, 715 ; xxiii. 1, 6, 
p. 38 ; xxiii. 2, p. 417 ; xxiii 3, pp. 8, 539 ; xxiii. 

5, p. 715 ; xxiii. 6, pp. 3, 15 ; xxiii. 11, p. 591 ; 
xxiii. 12, p. 401 ; xxiii. 16, p. 15 ; xxiii. 26, p. 
243 ; xxiii. 28, p. 323 ; xxiii. 35, p. 597 ; xxiv. 

2, p. 548 ; xxiv. 5, pp. 78, 168 ; xxiv. 6-8, p. 
548 ; xxiv. 9, 10, 22, p. 548 ; xxiv. 10, p. 694 ; 
xxiv. 11, p. 521 ; xxiv. 17, pp. 231, 522 ; xxiv. 
21, pp. 208, 542; xxiv. 22, 23, p. 549; xxiv. 25, 
p. 312 ; xxv. 8, p. 554 ; xxv. 9, p. 554 ; xxv. 14, pp. 
234, 434 ; xxv. 15, p. 60 ; xxv. 19, pp. 307, 556 ; 
xxv. 22, p. 556 ; xxv. 24, p. 553 ; xxv. 26, p. 557 ; 
xxvi. 1, p. 207 ; xxvi. 2, 3, p. 694 ; xxvi. 4, p. 
3; xxvi. 5, pp. 3, 25, 35, 534; xxvi. 7, pp. 
65, 272; xxvi. 10, p. 95; xxvi. 11, pp. 98, 100; 
xxvi. 14, p. Ill ; xxvi. 15, p. 43 ; xxvi. 16, 
p. Ill ; xxvi 17, p. 188 ; xxvi. 17, 18, p. 109 ; 
xxvi. 18, p. 50 ; xxvi. 19, p. 109 ; xxvi 20, pp. 
128, 519; xxvi. 23, p. 84; xxvi. 24, pp. 412, 683; 
xxvi 26, p. 560 ; xxvi. 28, p. 168 ; xxvi. 29, p. 
692 ; xxvii. 1, pp. 271, 561; xxvii. 2, pp. 372, 511, 
670; xxvii. 3, pp. 136, 563 ; xxvii. 7, pp. 564, 602 j 
xxvii. 9, p. 220 ; xxvii. 10, p. 566 ; xxvii. 13, pp. 
514, 566, 568 ; xxvii. 14, p. 567 ; xxvii. 16, p. 
568 ; xxvii. 17, p. 568 ; xxvii. 19, pp. 568, 569 ; 
xxvii. 27, p. 573 ; xxvii. 30, p. 571 ; xxvii. 39, p. 
519 ; xxvii. 40, pp. 570, 572 ; xxvii. 41, p. 573 ; 
xxviii. 2, 3, " 573 ; xxviii. 6, p. 347 ; xxviii. 8, 
p. 272 ; xx\ i 13, p. 575 ; xxviii. 14, pp. 317, 
448, 512 ; xxvui. 16, p. 577 ; xxviii 17, pp. 318, 
323; xxviii 21, 22, p. 459; xxviii, 22, p. 78; 
xxviii. 23, p. 578; xxviii. 29, p. 580. 

Romans i 1, pp. 182. 279, 443; i 1-7, p. 
459 ; i. 4, pp. 208, 459, 655 ; i. 5, 6, p. 449 ; i. 7, 

15, p. 450; i 8, pp. 336, 579; i 8-11, p. 592; 
i. 8-15, p. 460; i. 11-14, p. 459: i. 13, pp. 270, 
425, 449 ; i. 14, p. 71 ; i. 15, p. 369 ; i. 16, pp. 71, 
125, 739 ; i 16, 17, pp. 460, 733 ; i 16 32, p. 466; 
i 16-iii 20, p. 457; 1. 17, pp. 29, 472; i. 18, p. 333; 
i. 18-20, p. 456; i. 18-32, p. 18; i. 19, 20, p. 216; 
i 20, pp. 216, 308, 694, 697, 698 ; i. 21, p. 308 ; i. 
21, 22, p. 19 ; L 21-32, p. 316 ; i. 22, p. 695 ; i 24, 
pp. 27, 311 ; i 24, 25, p. 419 ; i 24, 26, 28, p. 
466 j i 25, pp. 463, 496; i 27, p. 466; 



i 27, 28, 29-31, p. 466 : i 28, pp. 465, 694, 695 ; 
i. 29, pp. 651, 695 ; i 30, pp. 466, 695; i. 30, 32, 
p. 466 ; ii, pp. 463, 542 ; ii. 1, p. 695; ii. 1-16, 
p. 468 ; ii. 4, p. 467 ; ii 5-12, p. 732 ; ii. 6, pp. 
486, 493 ; ii. 6-10, pp. 486. 732, 748 ; ii 6, 10, p. 
694 ; ii. 6, 10, 14, 15, p. 158 ; ii. 6-13, p. 484; ii 
6-15, p. 507 ; ii. 7-10, p. 698; ii 8, pp. 16, 463? 
ii. 9, p. 71 ; ii. 13, p. 486 ; ii 13-14, p. 485 ; ii 
14, p. 468 ; ii. 15, p. 216 ; ii. 16, pp. 193, 468, 
732; ii 17, 18, 21, 22, p. 469; ii. 17-21, p. 694; 
ii 17-24, p. 469; ii. 18, p. 592 ; ii. 21, p. 469; ii 
22, pp. 374, 539 ; ii 24, p. 27 ; ii. 25-29, p. 470 ; 
ii. 29, p. 92 ; iii 1-4, p, 471 ; iii 2, p. 20, 27, 452, 
471 ; iii 3-20, p. 471, 472 ; iii. 4, 6, 31, p. 471, 
487 ; iii. 5, p. 471 ; iii. 5-8, p. 472 ; iii 6, p. 27 ; 
iii. 8, pp. 486, 487 ; iii. 9, pp. 71, 472. 694 ; iii. 
9-20, p. 472 ; iii. 10-18, p. 27 ; iii 16, p. 646 ; iii 
19, p. 472 ; iii. 20, pp. 480, 481, 525, 694; iii 21, 
p. 461 ; iii 21-26, pp. 663, 732 ; iii. 21-30, 457; iii 
22-27, p. 473 ; iii. 24, p. 474 ; iii. 24, 25, p. 463 ; iii 
25, pp. 412, 473, 739 ; iii. 25-29, p. 602 ; iii. 27-30, 
p. 474; iii. 28, p. 474 ; iii. 31, p. 474 ; iii. 31-iv. 25, 
p. 457 ; iv. 1, p. 474 ; iv. 1-25, p. 475; iv. 4, pp. 484, 
732 ; iv. 5, 13, p. 702 ; iv. 9, p. 92 ; iv. 10-19, p. 92 ; 
iv. 11, p. 475 ; iv. 12, p. 89 ; iv. 13, p. 702 ; iv. 
13, 16, 18, p. 31 ; iv. 15, pp. 410, 482, 483 ; iv. 16, 
p. 452 ; iv. 17, p. 27 ; iv. 18, p. 463 ; v., pp. 410, 
483 ; v., vii, xi, p. 483 ; v. 1, p. 475 ; V. 1-11, p. 
457 ; v. 1-12, p. 476; v. 3-5, p. 694; v. 6, p 114; 
v. 7, 11, p. 476 ; v. 9, p. 2('8 ; v. 10, p. 652 ; v. 11, 
p. 336 ; v. 12, pp. 33, 476, 651, 704; v. 12-20, p. 
478 ; v. 12-21, pp. 457, 490, 732 ; v. 13, p. 482 ; 
v. 13,14,15-18, 18, 19 p. 477; v. 14, pp.477, 
480 ; v. 15-20, p. 468 ; v. 16, p. 477; v. 18, p. 478 ; 
v. 20, pp. 399, 437, 478, 480, 482 ; v. 20, 21, pp. 
479, 494 ; vi, pp. 457, 474; vi-viii, p. 41 ; vi 1, 
p. 471 ; vi. 1-15, p. 480 ; vi 1-23, p. 490 ; vi. 2, 15, 
pp. 471, 487 ; vi. 3-23, p. 436 ; vi. 4, p. 679 ; vi. 
4, 9, p. 115 ; vi. 4, 11, p. 410 ; vi. 5, p. 479 ; vi. 7, 
p. 208; vi. 8, pp. 479, 480, 678 ; vi. 9, p. 208; 
vi. 13, 16, p. 480; vi 14, p. 483 ; vi. 15-23, p. 
480 ; vi. 18, p. 480; vi 23, p. 336; vii, pp. 471, 
483 ; vii 1-6, p. 487 ; vii. 1-6, 7-25, p. 490 ; vii 
1-11, p. 435; vii. 1-viii. 11, p. 457; vii. 2, p, 
699; vii. 2, 3, p. 653; vii. 6, 7, 10, 11, p. 410; 
vii 7, pp. 471, 482, 487 ; vii. 7 seq., p. 475 ; vii. 
7-12, p. 488 ; vii. 7, 13, pp. 437, 471 ; vii. 8-10, p. 
102 ; vii 10-13, p. 4?3 ; vii. 12, p. 651 ; vii. 13, 
p. 408 ; vii. 13-viii. 11, p. 490 ; vii. 14, p. 489 ; 
vii. 24, p. 698 ; vii. 25, pp. 489, 692 ; viii, p. 482 ; 
viii 1, pp. 41, 489; viii 2, 10, p. 410 ; viii 3, 
pp. 2, 208 ; viii. 3, 11, p. 114 ; viii. 4, p. 474 ; viii 
6, p. 490 ; viii 11, pp. 115, 490 ; viii 12-39, p. 
457 ; viii. 18-25, p. 490 ; viii. 19-23, pp. 399, 491, 
495, 732 ; viii 19-24, p. 494 ; viii. 22-24, p. 498 ; 
viii. 23, p. 409 ; viii 24, p. 203 ; viii. 26-30, p. 
490 ; viii 27, p. 169 ; viii. 29, pp. 592, 599, 680 ; 
viii. 29, 30, p. 694 ; viii. 31-39, p. 491 ; viii 34, 
p. 695 ; viii. 36, pp. 123, 368, 445 ; viii. 38, pp. 
345, 433 ; viii. 39, p, 491 ; ix., pp. 236, 455, 499, 
732; ix.-xi, pp. 454, 455, 457; ix. 1, p. 449; 
ix. 1-3, p. 124 ; ix. 1-5, pp. 20, 332, 694; ix. 3, pp. 
14, 20 ; ix. 4, p. 9 ; ix. 4, 5, p. 471 ; ix. 5, pp. 
114, 610 ; ix. 6-9, p. 497 ; ix. 8, p. 31 ; ix 9, p. 
702 ; ix. 11, p. 732 ; ix. 14, p. 471 ; ix. 14-18, p. 
497 ; ix. 14, 30, p. 471 ; ix. 15, p. 27 ; ix. 16, pp. 
600, 732 ; ix. 19-22, p. 497 ; ix. 22-30, p 498 ; 
ix. 26, p. 216 ; ix. 28, p. 498 ; ix. 30, pp. 435, 695 ; 
ix 30-x. 4, p. 498; ix. 30-x. 21, p. 732; ix. 31, 
p. 105 ; ix. 33, pp. 27, 33, 498, 499 ; ix. 34, p.85 ; x., 
pp. 455, 499, 692 ; x. 1, pp. 20, 449, 616 ; x. 3, p. 592; 
x. 4, p. 498 ; x. 4-12, p. 499 ; x. 5, pp. 39, 104 ; 
x. 6, p. 115 ; x. 6-8, p. 308 ; x. 6-9, p. 27 ; x. 9, 
p. 463; x. 11, p. 499 ; X. 12, p. 468; X. 14, 15, 



QUOTED OR REFERRED TO. 



777 



p. 694 ; x. 14-21, p. 499 ; x. 15, p. 646 ; x. 15-21, 

?. 27 ; x. 18, pp. 27, 193 ; xi., pp. 449, 483 ; xi. 
, pp. 20. 592, 652 ; xi. 1, 11, pp. 471, 500 ; xi. 6, 
p. 732 ; xi 8, p. 27 ; xi. 12, 25, p. 616 ; xi. 15-36, 
p. 495 ; xi. 16-24, p 500; xi. 16-25, p. 12 ; xi. 17, 
p. 695 ; xi. 22, p. 419 ; xi. 24, p. 12 ; xi. 24-27, 
p. 342 ; xi. 25, p- 459 ; xi. 26, pp. 452, 494 ; xi. 
26, 32, p. 494 ; xi. 30-36, pp. 399, 732; xi. 30, 31, 
p. 501; xi. 32, pp. 399, 494, 495, 704; xi. 33, 
p. 640; xi. 36, p. 495; xii., p. 457; xii-xiv., 
p. 510; xii. 1, p. 501; xii. 1, 10, p. 592; xii. 
1-21, p. 503; xii. 2, p. 502, 599; xii. 3, pp. 
463, 502, 695 ; xii 1, 3, 10, 16, p. 592 ; xii. 5, p. 
479 ; xii. 6, p. 502 ; xii. 7, pp. 654, 749 ; xii. 9, 
10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, p. 503 ; xii. 11, pp. 361, 
694 ; xii. 13, p. 442 ; xiii, p. 458 ; xiii, xiv., p. 584 ; 
xiii. 1, p. 475 ; xiii. 3, p. 748 ; xiii. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, p. 
503 ; xiii. 8, p. 441 ; xiii 10, pp. 474, 616 ; xiii. 
11-14, p. 336 ; xiii. 12, pp. 48, 336, 480, 505, 652 ; 
xiii. 14, p. 479 ; xiv., p. 244 ; xiv.-xv., p. 415 ; xi v.- 
xv. 13, p. 458 ; xiv. 1, p. 224 ; xiv. 1-4, p. 655 ; xiv. 
1-12, p. 507 ; xiv. 2, p. 657 ; xiv. 5, pp. 25, 79, 513 ; 
xiv. 6, pp. 505, 592 ; xiv. 9-11, p. 592 ; xiv. 10, pp. 
485, 732 ; xiv. 13-21, p. 507 ; xiv. 15, p. 115 ; xiv. 
21, p. 723 ; xiv. 22, 23, p. 508 ; xiv. 23, pp. 435, 
450 ; xiv. 24, p. 450 ; xv. 1, pp. 261, 507 ; xv. 1-8, 
p. 508 ; xv. 3, p. 115 ; xv. 4, pp. 203, 436 ; xv. 5, 
p. 266 ; xv. 9, 10, 11, p. 150 ; xv. 9-33, p. 509 ; xv. 
14-21, p. 458 ; xv. 15-20, p. 450 ; xv. 16, pp. 182, 
221, 508 , xv. 18, p. 193 ; xv. 19, pp. 402, 660 ; 
xv. 22, pp. 333, 459 ; xv. 23, pp. 270, 422, 459 ; xv. 
23-28, p. 369 ; xv. 24, pp. 459, 508, 715, 742 ; xv. 
24, 28, p. 648 ; xv. 24, 32, p 425; xv. 25, p. 169 ; 
xv. 25, 26, p. 354 ; xv. 25-32, p. 422 ; xv. 26, 27, 
p. 172 ; xv. 27, pp. 231, 459 ; xv. 29, p. 616 ; xv. 
31, p. 523; xv. 32, pp. 459, 509; xv. 33, pp. 450, 
652 ; xvi. 1, p. 320 ; xvi. 1, 2, pp. 319, 450, 458 ; 
xvi. 3, pp. 317, 318, 352, 511 ; xvi. 3-16, p. 458 ; 
xvi. 3--20, p. 375 ; xvi. 4, pp. 371, 511 ; xvi. 5, 
pp. 315, 363, 511 ; xvi. 5, 14, 15, p. 447 ; xvi. 4, 
5, 7, 13, 14, 16, p. 509 ; xvi. 7, pp. 317, 432, 621 ; 
xvi. 7, 9, 12, 13, p. 450 ; xvi. 7, 11, 21, p. 14 ; 
xvi. 16, p. 337 ; xvi 17-20, pp. 450, 458, 509 ; xvi. 
17-20, 19, 20, 24, 27, p. 509 ; xvi. 18, p. 592 ; xvi. 
20, 24, p. 450 ; xvi. 21, pp. 287, 319, 423. 511 ; 
xvi. 21-24, p. 458 ; xvi. 22, 23, 27, 32, p. 459 ; 
xvi. 23, pp. 218, 259, 369, 372 ; xvi. 24, p. 338 ; 
xvi. 25, pp. 119, 450 ; xvi. 25-27, pp. 508, 694 ; 
xvi. 27, pp. 450, 652. 

L Corinthians i-iii., p. 692 ; i. 1, pp. 193, 
823 ; i. 1-3, p. 385 ; i. 2, p. 313 ; i. 4-9, 10, 20 ; 
p. 385 ; i. 7, p. 342 ; i. 10, p. 386 ; i. 12, p. 253 ; 
i. 13, 14, p. 386 ; i. 13-17, p. 194 ; i. 14, p. 218. 
259, 319 ; i. 16, p. 283 ; i. 17, p. 320 ; i. 18-25, 
p. 19 ; i. 18-27, p. 19; i. 19, p. 386 ; i. 21, pp. 19, 
301, 386, 661 ; i. 21, 23, 24, p. 386 ; i. 22, 23, 
p. 71; i 23, pp. 114, 320; i. 23, 24, p. 695; 
l. 27, 28, p. 188 ; i. 28, p. 411 ; i 29, p. 694 ; 
i. 30, p 462 ; ii. 1-5, p. 320 ; ii. 2, pp. 114, 
820, 334 ; ii 3, pp. 123, 192, 315, 319 ; ii. 5, 
p. 386 ; ii. 6, p. 411 ; ii. 6-16, p. 386 ; ii. 7, p. 617 ; 
ii 13, p. 695 ; ii. 14, p. 19 ; iii. 2, pp. 45, 386, 
694 ; iii. 4, p. 387 ; iii. 6, pp. 362, 653 ; iii. 8. p. 
493 ; iii. 9, p. 333 ; iii. 10, p. 193 ; iii 12, p. 
815; iii. 13, pp. 387, 463, 732; iii 17, p. 694; 
iii. 18-20, p. 19 ; iii. 19, pp. 10, 19 ; iii. 22, p. 345 ; 
iii. 23, p. 496; iv., p. 698; iv. 1-4, p. 387; iv.3, 
pp. 16, 123, 387, 680 ; iv. 3, 4, p. 387 ; iv. 5, pp. 
411, 617, 732 ; iv. 6, pp. 387, 440, 489; iv. 6-21, 
p. 388 ; iv. 7, 9, p. 387 ; iv. 8. p. 692 ; iv. 8-10, 
p. 303; iv. 8-11, p. 416, 694; iv. 8-13, p. 368; iv. 
9, pp. 293, 316, 372, 698; iv. 10, pp. 19, 123 ; iv. 
11, 12, p. 318 ; iv. 12, 13, p. 691 ; iv. 13, pp. 123, 
698 ; iv. 15, pp. 45, 193, 388 ; iv. 17, p. 260 ; iv. 



18-19, p. 387 ; v. 1, pp. 246, 316 ; v. 1-2, pp. 334, 

694; v. 1-9, p. 389 ; v. 2, p. 703 ; v. 5, pp. 401, 

652,710; 

v. 9. p. 3 

9-13, p. 3 

v. 16-21 

27, 333, 

507 ; vi 

9-20, p. I 

13, p. 411 



v. t>, p. 3»« ; v. 7, pp. 114, 388, 392: 

5 ; v. 9, 10, p. 317 ; v. 10, 11, p. 389 ; v. 

9 ; v. 10, p. 389 ; v. 11, pp. 383, 389 ; 

p. 337 ; vi. 1-20, p 389 ; vi. 2, pp. 

97, 704 ; vi 3-8, p. 416 ; vi. 7, p. 

9, p. 651 ; vi. 9-11, pp. 193, 317 ; vi 

316; vi. 11, pp. 171, 389, 663; vi 
vi. 14, p. 343 ; vi 15, pp. 471, 487 ; 
15-18, p. 383; vi. 17, p. 463; vii, p. 746; 
vii. 1, p. 390; vii. 1-7, p. 390; vii. 1-40, p. 391 ; 
vii. 2, p. 334 ; vii. 3, 5, 7, 9, 18, 19, p. 390 ; vii 
7, 8, 9, p. 713 ; vii 8, pp. 45, 96 ; vii. 9, 36, p. 
46 ; vii. 10, p. 347 ; vii. 10-24 (17-24), 23, p. 391 ; 
vii. 12, p. 169; vii. 14. p. 45; vii. 18, p. 72; 
vii. 18, 19, p. 390; vii. 19, p. 697 ; vii 21, pp. 390, 
657 ; vii. 25, p. 391 ; vii 26, p. 390; vii. 29-31, 
pp. 391, 691 ; vii. 31, pp. 599, 695, 698 ; vii. 36, 
p. 46 ; vii. 39, p. 653 ; viii, pp. 244, 395 ; viii. 1, 
pp. 379, 751 ; viii. 1-13, p. 391; viii. 6, pp. 348, 
495,496, 610; viii. 8, p. 655; viii. 10, pp. 22, 
695 ; viii. 13, pp. 507, 723 ; ix., 442 ; ix. 1, pp. 41, 
109, 111, 407; ix. 1, 3, 7, p. 253 ; ix. 1-16, p. 416; 
ix. 1-27, p. 392; ix. 4, p. 318; ix. 4, 11, p. 33; 
ix. 5, pp. 45, 134, 253 ; ix. 6, p. 255 ; ix. 7, pp. 
27, 392; ix. 8-10, 11, 12, 13, 14, p. 392; ix. 

9, pp. 33, 481, 656 ; ix. 10, pp. 33, 250 ; ix. 12, 
318 ; ix. 12, 18, p. 391 ; ix. 15, p. 331 ; ix. 16, 
p. 193 ; ix 17, pp. 119, 463, 493; ix. 19, pp. 193, 
224; ix. 20, p. 261; ix. 21, pp. 221, 265, 435; 
ix. 24, pp. 316, 600, 699, 732 ; ix. 24-27, 
p. 699; ix. 25, pp. 316, 352; ix. 25-27, p. 
484; x. 1, pp. 459, 617; x. 1, 2, p. 481; x. 
1-4, p. 27; x. 1-14, p. 378; x. 1-xi 1, p. 392; 
x. 4, p. 481 ; x. 6, p. 33 ; x. 6, 11, p. 33 ; x. 7, p. 
389 ; x. 7, 8, pp. 316, 723 ; x. 8, pp. 383, 392 ; 
x. 11, p. 33 ; x. 15, p. 123; x. 16, p. 114 ; x. 20, 
p. 655 ; x. 20, 21, p. 244 ; x. 26, p. 616 ; x. 32, 
pp. 71, 723 ; xi 1, p. 38 ; xi. 1-17, p. 394 ; xi. 
2, p. 378 ; xi. 8, 9, p. 653 ; xi. 10, pp. 656, 701 ; 
xi. 14, pp. 316, 352 ; xi. 17, p. 347 ; xi. 17-34, p. 
395 ; xi. 19, p. 663 ; xi. 21, p. 317 ; xi. 22, pp. 
694, 698 ; xi. 23, p. 282 ; xi. 24, 27, 29, p. 395 ; 
xi. 29, p. 695; xii., p. 698; xii. -xiv. 33, p. 54; 
xii. 1, p. 459 ; xii. 1-31, p. 396 ; xii. 3, pp. 382, 
496 ; xii 4-6, p. 80 ; xii. 8-10, p. 395 ; xii. 10, pp. 
267, 337 ; xii. 11, pp. 334, 423 ; xii. 12, 13, 27, p. 
479 ; xii. 12-27, p. 502 ; xii. 13, p. 396 ; xii. 28, 
pp. 182, 654, 749 ; xii. 29, 30, p. 617 ; xii. 31, p. 
408 ; xii. 31-xiii. 13, p. 396 ; xiii., p. 744 ; xiii. 

I, pp. 56, 463 ; xiii. 2, p. 395 ; xiii. 3, 4, p. 692 ; 
xiii. 4, pp. 16, 396 ; xiii. 4, 5, 7. 8, p. 396 ; xiii. 
5, pp. 297, 396 ; xiii 8, pp. 56, 396, 497 ; xiii. 8, 

II, p. 411 ; xiii. 9, p. 80 ; xiii. 9-12, p. 222 ; xiii. 

10, p. 151 ; xiv. 1-26, p. 397 ; xiv. 2, p. 57 ; xiv. 2, 
4, 11, p. 56 ; xiv. 4, 13, 14, 27, p. 54 ; xiv 7, 8, p. 
56 ; xiv. 9, 11, 17, 20, 23, 26-28, 33, 40, p. 57 ; xiv. 
16, p. 396 ; xiv. 18, p. 55 ; xiv. 19, p 56 ; xiv. 21, 
pp. 27, 30, 397 ; xiv. 22, p. 55 ; xiv. 23, p. 57 ; 
xiv. 26-40, p. 398 ; xiv. 27, p. 56 ; xiv. 32, p. 58 ; 
xiv. 34, p. 751; xiv. 39, p. 337; x v., pp. 43, 
115, 752; xv. 1-12, p. 398; xv 3, 318; xv. " 
416 ; xv. 7, p. 48 ; xv. 8, pp. 109, 111, 398, 
xv. 9, pp. 43, 98, 124, 640 ; xv. 10, pp. 123, 210, 
407; xv. 10-29, p. 109; xv. 12, p. 679; xv. 
12-35, p. 398; xv. 18, p. 109; xv. 19, p. 368; 
xv. 22, pp. 119, 336, 456, 495 ; xv. 23, pp. 3o3, 
339 ; xv. 24, p. 411 ; xv. 24, 25, p. 732 ; xv. 25- 
28; p. 495; xv. 28, pp 16, 468; xv. 30-32, p. 
483 ; xv. 31, pp. 1, 123, 678 ; xv. 32, pp. 17, 
316, 372 ; xv. 33, p. 696; xv. 33, 34, p. 383; xv. 
35-50, p. 399 ; xv. 36, p. 33 ; xv. 37, 45, p. 703 j 
xv. 38, p. 31; xv. 41, p. 10; xv. 43, p. 695; xv. 



412J 



778 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 



45, pp. 27, 476; xv. 47, 52, p. 701 ; xv. 50 seq., 
p. 732; xv. 50 58, p. 399; xv. 51, pp. 342, 343, 
395 ; xv. 51, 52, p. 598; xv. 52, p. 399; xv. 54 ; 
p. 491; xv. 56, pp. 437, 483; xv. 58, p. 484; 
xvi 1, 2, p. 354 ; xvi. 1-4, p. 405 ; xvi. 1, 15, p. 
640 ; xvi. 3, p. 231 ; xvi. 3, 4, p. 511 ; xv. 5-7, 
p. 369; xvi. 5-8, p. 401; xvi. 5-9, p. 270; xvi. 

9, pp. 361, 402; xvi. 10, pp. 260, 388; xvi. 10, 
11, p. 656 ; xvi. 11, p. 260; xvi. 12, pp. 362, 400, 
694; xvi. 15, pp. 319, 749; xvi. 19, pp. 317, 366, 
450 ; xvi. 20, p. 337 ; xvi. 22, pp. 48, 496, 601, 
727 ; xvi. 23, p. 338. 

II. Corinthians i., p. 698 ; i -vii., p. 406 ; i. 
1, pp. 320, 423 ; i 1-11, p. 408 ; i. 3, p. 496 ; i 4, 
6, 8, p. 403 ; i. 5, pp. 114, 336 ; i. 6, p. 408 ; i. 7, p. 
617 ; i. 8, pp. 368. 408, 459 ; i. 8, 15, p. 408 ; i. 

10, p. 375 ; i. 11, 12, 13-17, p. 42 ; i. 12, p. 408; 
i. 12-ii 11, p. 410; i. 14, p. 408; i. 15, 16, 
p. 367; i 15, 23, p. 122 ; i. 16-23, p. 369 ; i. 

17, pp. 122, 402 ; i. 18, p. 320 ; i. 22, p. 13 ; i 23, 
p. 409 ; ii., p. 698 ; ii. 1, 409 ; ii. 1, 12, 13, p. 408 ; 
ii. 2, p. 695 ; ii. 4, pp. 124, 327, 403 ; ii 5, p. 265 ; ii. 
5-10, p. 402 ; ii. 6, p. 409 ; ii. 7, p. 423 ; ii. 10, 11, p. 
410; ii. 12, p. 270; ii. 12, 13, p 401 ; ii. 12-17, p. 
410 ; ii. 13, pp. 194, 512 ; ii. 14, pp. 109, 407, 411, 
619, 652, 692 ; ii. 14-16, pp. 316, 368, 692, 700 ; ii. 

15, p. 732 ; ii. 16, pp. 462, 703 ; ii. 17, pp. 13, 
122, 331, 410, 484 ; iii. 1, pp. 253, 361, 402, 410, 
416, 692; iii. 1-3, p. 410; iii. 1-18, p. 407; iii. 2, 
p. 407 ; iii. 3, p. 411 ; iii. 4-iv. 6, p. 411 ; iii. 6, 
pp. 410, 452, 482, 652 ; iii. 7, p. 411 ; iii. 7-13, 
p. 481 ; iii. 10, 11, p. 411 ; iii. 16, 18, p. 411 ; iii. 

18, pp. 464-479; iv. 1, p. 652; iv. 1-7, p. 484; 
iv. 2, pp. 13, 122, 331, 411, 416, 484; iv. 4, 
pp. 342, 484, 496, 610, 646; iv. 6, p. 109; iv. 
6, 7, p. 80; iv. 6-8, p. 598; iv. 7-vi. 10, 
p. 413; iv. 7, pd. 123, 192, 334; iv. 8, pp. 403, 
408, 695 ; iv. 8, 9, p. 368 ; iv. 8-10, p. 123 ; iv. 
8-12, p. 403; iv. 10, pp. 368, 411, 711 ; iv. 11, 
p. 123 ; iv. 14, p. 343 ; iv. 17, p. 408 ; iv. 18, 
p. 678 ; v. l,p. 598 ; v. 1-4, p. 399 ; v. 2, p. 703; 
v. 3, p. 412 ; v. 4, pp. 123, 476, 491, 602, 704 ; 
V. 13, p. 405 ; v. 10, pp. 316, 411, 463, 485, 732 ; 
v. 11, pp. 402, 412, 423; v. 11, 15, 21, p. 423; 
V. 12, p. 416 ; v. 13, pp. 405, 559 ; v. 14, p. 318 ; 
v. 15, pp. 423, 468; v. 15-21, p. 436; v. 16, 
pp. 222, 395, 412; v. 17, pp. 423, 479; v. 18, 
p. 498 ; v. 19, pp. 610, 652 ; v. 19, 21, p. 412 ; v. 
21, pp. 423, 462 ; vi., p. 692; vi. 1, pp. 210, 333 ; 
vi. 3-11, p. 692 ; vi. 3-16, p. 694 ; vi. 7, p. 480 ; 
vi. 9, p. 694 ; vi. 9, 10, p. 691 ; vi. 10, p. 695 ; 
vi. 11,-vii. 16, p. 414; vi 14, pp. 316, 393, 724; 
vi. 14- vii. 1, pp. 392, 413 ; vi. 15, 18, p. 413 ; vi. 

16, p. 234; vi. 18, p. 496; vii, viii, p. 660; vii 
1, pp. 316, 402 ; vii. 2, pp. 318, 713 ; vii 2, 3, 
p. 402 ; vii. 5, pp. 192, 335, 403, 408 ; vii. 6-11, 13, 
14, 15, p. 402; vii. 8, pp. 327, 401; vii. 8-12, 
p. 415 ; vii. 11, pp. 334, 694 ; vii 11, 12, p. 404, 
vii. 12, pp. 411, 423 ; viii.-end, p. 733 ; viii., ix., 
pp. 231, 406 ; viii. 1,-ix. 15, p. 414 ; viii 1, p. 408 ; 
viii 2, pp. 403, 408, 695 ; viii. 6, pp. 402, 423 ; 
viii. 9, p. 636 ; viii. 13, p. 403 ; viii 15, p. 10 ; 
viii. 17, p. 402 ; viii. 18, pp. 271, 415; viii. 18, 
23, p. 402; viii. 19, p. 219 ; viii. 20, pp. 414, 515 ; 
viii. 21, p. 347 ; viii. 22, p. 695 ; viii. 23, pp. 432, 
509 ; viii. 24, p. 422 ; ix. 1, pp. 334, 694; ix. 2, 
pp. 402, 408; ix. 5, p. 239 ; ix. 6, p. 414; ix. 8, 
pp. 303, 657, 695 ; ix. 10, p. 414 ; ix. 11, 13, p. 
408; ix. 12, p. 182; ix. 12-15, p. 422; ix. 14, 
p. 422 ; ix. 15, p. 652 ; x.-xiii, pp. 406, 693 ; 
x. 1, pp. 413, 415 ; x 1, 2, p. 122; x. 1, 10, pp. 
320, 415; x. 1-11, p. 416; x. 2, pp. 122,415; 
x. 2, 7, 10, 11, 12, 18, p. 415; x. 3, 4, p. 646 ; 
x. 5, p. 652; x. 7, pp. 253, 415; x. 7, 10, 11, 18, 



p. 713; x. 7, 10, 11, 12, p. 416; x. 9, p. 825 1 
x. 10, pp. 122, 192, 265, 402; x 10-16, p. 758; 
x. 12-18, pp. 415, 416; x. 12, 16, 17, 18, p. 416; 
X. 14, p. 758; x. 15, p. 416, 463; x. 18, p. 416; 
x. 20-23, p. 407; xi, pp. 398, 692, 698; xi. 1, 
pp. 405, 416; xi. 1, 4, 16, 17, 19, 20, p. 416; xi 
19, 21, p. 416 ; xi. 1-33, p. 418; xi. 2, p. 193, 423, 
487; xi 2, 20, p. 423 ; xi. 3, pp. 408, 416, 653; 
xi. 4, pp. 405, 415, 416, 423, 433, 702 ; xi. 4, 20, 
p. 713; xi. 5, pp. 124, 417; xi. 6, pp. 122, 
192, 411, 415, 417, 423, 691; xi. 6-21, p. 417; 
xi. 7, pp. 16, 122, 207 ; xi. 8, pp. 331, 692, 713 ; 
xi. 8, 20, p 416; xi. 9, pp. 16, 276, 318, 331; 
xi. 10, p. 417 ; xi 10, 12, 18, 30, p. 416 ; xi. 13, 
pp. 331, 410, 525, 601 ; xi. 14, p. 33; xi. 16, p. 
405 ; xi. 16-19, pp. 19, 123 ; xi. 16, 17, 19, p. 415 ; 
xi. 16-20, p. 692 ; xi. 18-20, p. 402 ; xi 20, pp. 
423, 509, 539 ; xi. 20, 21, p. 416 ; xi. 22, pp. 9, 38 ; 
xi. 22-28, p. 694; xi. 23, pp. 1, 123, 282, 368 ; 
xi. 23, 33, pp. 191, 417 ; xi. 24-33, p. 5 ; xi. 25, 573 ; 
xi. 26, p. 366 ; xi. 27, pp. 367, 388 ; xi. 27-29, p. 
367 ; xi. 28, p. 418 ; xi 29, pp. 191, 367, 723 ; 
xi. 29-34, p. 398 ; xi. 31, pp. 496, 652 ; xi. 32, pp. 
101, 128 ; xi. 33, p. 128 ; xii. 1, pp. 42, 108, 109; xii. 
1-3, 12-16, p. 692; xii. 1-10, pp. 417, 710; xii. 1, 
5, 6, 11, p. 416 ; xii. 1-11, p. 418; xii. 2, p. 33 ; 
xii. 2, 4, p. 703; xii. 3, p. 418 ; xii. 5, p. 405 ; xii. 
5, 9, p. 320 ; xii. 6, 11, p. 416 ; xii. 6, 16, p. 405 ; 
xii. 7, pp. 121, 124; xii. 9, p. 418; xii 10, p. 
695 ; xii. 10, 11, p. 476 ; xii. 11, pp. 123, 124, 423 ; 
xii. 11, 12, p. 417 ; xii. 12, p. 320 ; xii. 13, p. 16; 
xii. 13, 14, p. 461 ; xii. 13-xiii. 10, p. 419 ; xii. 
14, pp. 331, 419; xii. 16, pp. 122, 331; xii. 18, 
p. 415; xii. 20, pp. 380, 387, 466 ; xii. 20, 21, p. 
423 ; xii. 21, p. 317, 383 ; xiii. 1, pp. 367, 408, 409 ; 
xiii 3, p. 42 ; xiii. 3-9, p. 192 ; xiii. 5, p. 423 ; 
xiii. 11-13, p. 419 ; xiii. 12, p. 337 ; xiii 14, 
p. 338. 

Galatians i, ii., p. 432 ; i. 1, pp. 118, 182, 
423, 485; i. 1-5, p. 433; i 1, 6, 10, p. 423; i. 
1-10, p. 433; i. 4, pp. 345, 433; i. 6, pp. 
268, 423, 696 ; i. 6-9, p. 525 ; i. 7, p. 618 ; i 8, 
pp. 193, 433 ; i. 8-9, pp. 62, 401, 496 ; i. 9, p. 
713; i 10, pp. 221, 222, 423; i. 11-12, p. 118; 
i 11-24, p. 434 ; i. 12, p. 652 ; i 13, pp. 98, 434 ; 
i. 13-14, p. 23 ; i. 14, pp. 3, 35, 701 ; i 15, p. 102 ; 
i. 15-16, pp. 109, 412 ; i. 16, pp. 42, 44, 116, 193 ; 
i 17, pp. 116, 709; i 17-18, p. 432 ; i. 18, pp. 
120, 130, 134 ; i 18, 19, p. 432 ; i. 19, pp. 134, 
239 ; i. 21, pp. 44, 136, 190, 519 ; i. 21-24, p. 136 ; 
i 22, p. 128 ; i. 23, p. 98 ; i. 24, p. 42 ; ii. pp. 
228, 640; ii. 1, pp. 180, 221, 228 ; ii 1-6, p. 233 ; 
ii. 1-10, p. 435; ii 2, pp. 434, 712; ii. 2-6, p. 
229; ii. 2. 7, p. 119; ii. 3, pp. 71, 660, ii. 4, pp. 
224, 225, 478, 525 ; ii. 4-5, p. 551 ; ii. 6, pp. 423, 
434, 694 ; ii. 6, 9, p. 525 ; ii. 6, 20, p. 423 ; ii. 7, 
pp. 228, 230, 468 ; ii. 7-8, p. 134 ; ii. 7, 9, p. 229 ; 
ii. 9, pp. 1, 230, 255, 382, 448, 654 ; ii. 9, 10, p. 
432; ii. 9, 11, 14, p. 134 ; ii 10, p. 231 ; ii. 11, 
pp. 228, 249, 250, 435, 448; ii. 11-21, pp. 432, 
436 ; ii. 12, pp. 71, 243, 248, 253, 410, 435 ; ii. 13, 
pp. 84, 408 ; ii. 14, pp. 248, 250, 525 ; ii 14, 
16, 18, p. 525; ii 15, p. 467; ii. 15-21, p. 
251 ; ii. 16, pp. 463, 525, 695 ; ii. 16, 20, p. 695, 
ii 17, pp. 265, 471, 487 ; ii. 19, p. 618 ; ii. 20, pp. 
4, 252, 423, 463, 479, 695, 711 ; ii. 21, p. 481 ; iii., 
pp. 471, 483, 506 ; iii., iv., p. 483 ; iii. 1, pp. 124, 
244, 266, 436, 713 ; iii. 1-5, p. 432 ; iii. 1-14, p. 436; 
iii. 2, p. 463 ; iii. 3, 13, p. 423 ; iii. 4, pp. 436, 639, 
695 ; iii. 5, p. 414 ; iii. 6-18, p. 432 ; iii. 6-29, p. 424 ; 
iii. 7, p. 92 ; iii. 10, pp. 39, 410, 482, 490 ; iii 11, 
pp. 29, 208, 457 ; iii. 12, p. 104 ; iii. 14, p. 183; 
iii. 15, p. 437; iii. 15-18, p. 437 ; iii. 15, 19, p. 
437; iii 16, pp. 28, 30; M. 17, 18, p. 699; ifl. 



QUOTED OE .REFERRED TO. 



77* 



19, pp. 33, W, 92, 437, 478, 482, 651, 701 ; iii. 19, 

20, pp. 437, 438 ; iii. 19-29, p. 432 ; iii. 21, pp. 
471,481,487; iii. 21-29, p. 438; iii. 22-26, p. 
474 ; iii. 24, p. 438 ; iii. 26, p. 463 ; iii. 27, pp. 
479, 505; iii. 27, 28, p. 269; iii. 28, pp. 20, 49, 
148, 348, 620, 653, 657; iii. 28, 29, p. 31; iv. 

I, 2, p. 699 ; iv. 1-11, pp. 432, 439 ; iv. 3, pp. 
439, 452, 663; iv. 3, 9, p. 618; iv. 4, pp. 496, 
616 ; iv. 4, 5, p. 439 ; iv. 5, pp. 617, 700 ; iv. 7, 
p. 680 ; iv. 8, pp. 269, 330 ; iv. 9, pp. 2, 269, 
618; iv. 10, pp. 25, 79, 513; iv. 11, p. 695; iv. 
12, pp. 123, 253; iv. 12-14, p. 264; iv. 12- 
16, pp. 440, 710 ; iv. 13, pp. 123, 192, 262, 265, 
738; iv. 14, pp. 123,265,440, 713; iv. 15, p. 
265 ; iv. 16, pp. 253, 265, 354 ; iv. 17, pp. 124, 
234, 423, 440, 692, 697; iv. 17-20, p. 440 ; iv. 19, 
pp. 124, 193, 599 ; iv. 20, p. 556 ; iv. 21-31, 
p. 441 ; iv. 22, p. 392 ; iv. 24, p. 481 ; iv. 
24-31, p. 27; iv. 25, p. 709; iv. 29, pp. 
33, 702; v. 1-6, p. 441; v. 1-9, p. 506; v. 
1-12, p. 432 ; v. 1, 13, 14, p. 252 ; v. 2, p. 79, 
244, 269, 410, 415 ; v. 3, p. 238 ; v. 3, 6, 12-14, p. 
430 ; v. 6, pp. 330, 697, 748 ; v. 7-12, p. 441 ; v. 
7, 15, 21, 26, p. 268 ; v. 8, p. 330 ; v. 10, p. 441; 
v. 11, pp. 44, 221, 433 ; v. 12, pp. 235, 431, 525, 
533, 692; v. 13-15, p. 441; v. 13-18, p. 432; v. 
14, p. 441 ; v. 15, 20, 21, p. 423 ; v. 16-26, p. 442 ; 
v. 20, p. 365 ; v. 16-vi. 10, p. 432 ; v. 17, p. 482 ; 
v. 19, pp. 466, 651 ; v. 20, p. 663 ; v. 21, p. 354 ; 
vi. 1, pp. 423, 695 ; vi. 1-5, p. 442 ; vi. 1, 4, 8, 15, 
p. 423; vi. 2, p. 442 ; vi. 5, p. 442; vi. 6-10, p. 
442 ; vi. 7, pp. 463, 484, 485 ; vi. 7-12, p. 713 ; vi. 

II, p. 15; vi. 11-18, pp. 432, 443; vi. 12, pp. 99, 
269; vi. 12, 13, pp. 442, 506 ; vi. 13, p. 252; vi. 
14, pp. 443, 487 ; vi. 15, pp. 20, 601, 697 ; vi. 16, 
p. 443, 651; vi. 17, pp. 221, 368, 433, 443, 711; 
vi. 18, pp 338, 443 ; vi. 19, p. 114. 

Ephesians i, p. 698; i. 1, p. 169; i. 1, 2, p. 
637 ; i. 1, 5, 9, 11, p. 636 ; i. 2, 6, 7, p. 636 ; i. 3, 
638 ; i. 3-6, p. 637 ; i. 3-14, pp. 632, 637 ; i. 3, 13, 17, 
p. 636 ; i. 3, 20, p. 636 ; i. 4, pp. 346, 740 ; i, 5, pp. 
636, 700, 740 ; i. 5, 9, p. 345 ; i. 6, p. 740 ; i. 6, 12, 
14, 17, 18, p. 636 ; i 7, pp. 473, 615, 739 ; i. 7-12, p. 
637 ; i. 7-18, p. 636 ; i. 8, p. 638 ; i. 9, p. 636 ; i. 9 
seq., p. 640 ; i. 10, pp. 50, 616, 617, 635, 636 ; i. 11, 
pp. 630, 636, 740 ; i. 11, 14, 18, p. 630 ; i. 13, pp. 
13, 740 ; i. 13, 14, p. 637 ; i. 14, pp. 630, 740 ; i. 15, 
18, p. 330; i 15-23, pp. 637, 638 ; i. 17, pp. 496, 
638, 639, 740; i. 18, pp. 630, 633; i. 19, 21, p. 
636 ; i. 20-22, pp. 495, 610 ; i 21, p. 701 ; i. 23, 
p. 606, 616, 633, 636 ; ii., pp. 636, 663 ; ii. 1-6, p. 
740 ; ii 1-22, pp. 637, 639 ; ii. 2, pp. 411, 505, 638, 
701 ; ii. 3, pp. 739, 740; ii. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 19, 22, p, 
636 ; ii 6, pp. 115, 204, 610, 612, 636 ; ii. 8-10, p. 
748 ; ii. 9, 10, p. 638 ; ii. 10, p. 636 ; ii. 11, p. 633 ; 
ii. 13, p. 114; ii. 13 $eq., p. 640 ; ii. 14, pp. 429, 
531, 532, 703; ii 15, p. 618; ii. 16, p. 640; ii. 18, 
22, p. 636 ; ii. 19-22, p. 479 ; ii. 20, pp. 85, 640, 654, 
739 ; ii 20, 22, p. 740 ; ii. 21, p. 632 ; iii. 1, pp. 415, 
630 ; iii. 1, 8, p. 633 ; iii. 1-19, p. 640 ; iii. 1-21, p. 
637 ; iii. 2, pp. 630, 635; iii. 2-4, p. 630 ; iii. 2, 7, 8, 
p. 636 ; iii. 2-9, p. 617 ; iii. 3, pp. 119, 266, 436, 560, 
638; iii 3, 4, 9, p. 636 ; iii 3-6, p. 118 ; 3, 8, p. 
617 ; iii. 3, 9, p. 638 ; iii. 4, p. 638 ; iii. 5, pp. 
253, 739, 740 ; iii. 5, 16, p. 636 ; iii. 6, pp. 221, 
479, 636, 640, 740; iii. 8, p. 640; iii 8, 16, p. 
636 ; iii. 9, p. 638 ; iii. 10, pp. 394 ; 636, 701 ; iii. 
11, p. 636 ; iii. 16, p. 640 ; iii. 16-21, &c, p. 636 ; 
iii. 17, 18, 20, p. 330 ; iii. 19, pp. 606, 616, 636, 
638 ; iii. 19, 20, p. 636 ; iii 20, 21, pp. 510, 641 ; 
iv. 1, p. 630; iv. 1-16, pp. 637, 643; iv. 2, p. 
740 ; iv. 3-13, p. 642 ; iv. 3, 16, p. 636 ; iv. 4, p. 
630; iv. 3, 4, 23, 30, p. 636 ; iv. 5-15, p. 632 ; iv. 
6, pp. 348, 496; iv. 7, 32, p. 636 ; iv. 8, pp. 33, 



496, 739; iv. 8-11, p. 692; iv. 10, pp. 636, 638, 
703; iv. 10-13, p. 636 ; iv. 11, pp. 182, 739, 749; 
iv. 12, p. 221 ; iv. 12-16, p. 740 ; iv. 13, pp. 606, 
616, 638; iv. 14, p. 740; iv. 15, p. 643; iv. 16, 
pp. 414, 479, 606 ; iv. 17-v. 21, p. 637 ; iv. 17-24, 
p. 643 ; iv. 21, pp. 630, 639 ; iv. 22, p. 633 ; iv. 
24, p. 479 ; iv. 25- v. 2, p. 644 ; iv. 27, pp. 333, 
654 ; iv. 29, p. 644 ; iv. 30, p. 13 ; iv. 32, p. 644; 
v., p. 712 ; v. 3, 4, p. 466 ; v. 3, 12, p. 334 ; v 3-17, 
p. 645 ; v. 4, p. 694 ; v. 4, 6, p 644 ; v. 6 pp. 387, 
620 ; v. 7-14, 23-31, p. 6*2 ; v. 12-15, p. 692 ; v. 14, 
pp. 620, 739 ; v. 17, p. 636 ; v. 18, pp. 58, 636 ; v. 
18-21, p. 645; v. 19, p. 654; v. 19,20, p. 620; V. 

22, vi. 9, pp. 637, 645 ; v. 24, p. 390 ; v. 25, pp. 
169, 487 ; v. 25-27, p. 740 ; v. 28, p. 334 ; v., 32, 
p. 636 ; vi. 6, p. 636 ; vi. 8, p. 485 ; vi 10, pp. 
630, 645; vi 10-17, pp. 632, 637; vi. 10-20, p. 
647; vi 10-24, p. 637; vi. 11, pp. 333, 654; vi. 

12, pp. 636, 701 ; vi. 13-17, p. 336 ; vi. 15, p. 
695 ; vi. 17-18, p. 636 ; vi 18, p. 647 ; vi. 19, pp. 
119, 338, 636 ; vi. 19, 20, p. 591 ; vi. 20, pp. 8, 
628 ; vi 21, pp. 580, 631, 663; vi. 21-24, p. 647; 
vi. 22, p. 645 ; vi. 24, pp. 338, 347, 636. 

Philippians i. 1, pp. 242, 580, 654, 749, 750; 
i. 1, 2, p. 597 ; i 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, p. 592 ; i 3-11, p. 
597; i 4, p. 515; i 7, p. 592; i 10, p. 516; l. 
11, p. 479 ; i. 12-18, p. 598 ; i 12-26, p. 597 ; i. 

13, p. 597; i 14-20, p. 589; i. 15, 16, p. 597; i 
15, 17, p. 253; i. 16, pp. 452, 583; i 18, 25, 
p. 601; i. 19, p. 267; i 19-26, p. 598; i. 19,20, 

23, 27, p. 598 ; i. 20-23, p. 342 ; i. 21, p. 463 ; 
i. 23, pp. 592, 596, 680; i. 25, p. 516; i 27, 
pp. 277, 538; i 27-30, p. 599; i. 27-ii 16, 
p. 597; i 28-30, p. 285; ii. 1, pp. 599, 694; ii 
1-4, 599 ; ii 2, 5, 17, p. 592 ; ii. 3-6, 18, p. 589 ; ii 
4, 8, 9, 10, 11, p. 592 ; ii. 6, pp. 496, 599, 603 ; 
ii. 6, 9, p. 595 ; ii. 7, pp 16, 636 ; ii. 8, pp. 502, 
695 ; ii. 9-11, 12, 13, p. 600 ; ii. 12, 13, p. 732 ; ii 
14-18, p. 600; ii. 15, p. 278; ii. 16, pp. 234, 434, 
516; ii. 17, p. 601, 683; ii. 17-30, p. 597; ii. 
18-20, p. 260 ; ii. 19, pp. 328, 580 ; ii. 19, 20, 
p. 194; ii. 19-23, p. 658 ; ii 19-30, p. 601; ii. 20, 
p. 259 ; ii. 22, p. 259 ; ii. 24, pp. 516, 591; ii. 25, 
pp. 432, 580 ; fl. 26, pp. 408, 594; ii. 30, p. 182 ; 
iii 1, pp. 594, 601 ; iii 1, 2, p. 597 ; iii. 2, 
pp. 79, 273, 525, 692; iii 2, 3, pp. 441, 695; 
ui. 2-11, p. 602 ; iii., 2, 18, p. 509 ; iii. 3, p. 602; 
iii. 3, 4, 5, 9, 19, 21, p. 592 ; iii. 3-iv. 1, p. 597 ; 
iii 5, pp. 3, 9, 602 ; iii. 6, p. 98 ; iii. 7, p. 463 ; 
iii. 8, pp. 123, 273, 287 ; iii. 8, 9, p. 602 ; iii. 9, 
651 ; iii. 10, pp. 617, 618, 711 ; iii. 12, pp. 101, 
126, 277, 476, 680; iii 12-14, p. 699; iii. 12-16, 
pp. 277, 603; iii. 13, p. 435; iii. 14, pp. 277, 484, 
699 ; iii. 14, 15, p. 592 ; iii. 17-iv. 1, p. 603 ; iii. 

18, p. 752 ; iii. 19, p. 346 ; iii. 20, p. 204, 277 ; iii. 
21, pp. 599, 603 ; iv. 2, p. 277 ; iv. 2, 3, pp. 597, 
603 ; iv. 3, pp. 45, 277, 333, 603, 617, 696, 741 ; 
iv. 4, p. 601 ; iv. 4-9, pp. 597, 604 ; iv. 5, p. 48 ; 
iv. 6, p. 652 ; iv. 8, pp. 305, 604, 618, 694; iv, 
8, 10, p. 604; iv. 10, pp. 181, 276, 288, 476 ; iv. 
10-20, p. 604 ; iv. 11, p. 657 ; iv. 11, 12, p. 288 ; 
iv. 11-13, p. 657 ; iv. 11-18, p. 303 ; iv. 12, p. 507 ; 
iv. 15, pp 238, 318 ; iv. 15, 16, p. 287 ; iv. 16, 
p. 276 ; iv. 18, pp. 580, 604 ; iv. 20, p. 652 ; iv. 
21-23, p. 597; iv. 23 p. 338. 

Colossians i 1, p. 580; i. 1, 2, p. 615; i 2, 
6, 7, 9-14, 10, p. 615; i 3-8, p. 615; i 4, p. 330; 
i 4, 6, 7, p. 262 ; i. 4, 6, 9, p. 607 ; i 5, p. 245; 
i. 6, 23, p. 739 ; i 7, pp. 366, 581 ; i. 7, 9-14, p. 
615 ; i 8, 9, p. 636 ; i. 9-13, p. 615 ; i 11, p. 515 ; 
i. 13-ii. 3, p. 615; i. 14, p. 739; i. 15, p. 496; 
i 15-18, pp. 612, 616; i 15-23, p. 617 ; i 16, pp. 
616, 701; i 16, 17, pp. 495, 751; i. 18, p. 479 ; i. 

19, pp. 606, 618, 633, 636, 638 ; i. 19, 20-22, p. 616 j 



780 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 



i 20, p. 114; i 20, 22, pp. 610, 639 ; i. 20, 21-23, 
p. 617 ; i. 21, p. 617 ; i. 24, p. 711 ; i. 24-29, p. 617; 
!. 25, p. 118 ; i. 26, p. 640 ; i 27, pp. 617, 633 ; i. 
29, p. 617 ; ii. 1, pp. 262, 607, 617; ii. 1-7, p. 618; 
ii. 2, pp. 515, 617; ii 4-iii. 4, p. 615; ii. 6, pp. 
620, 692, 733; ii. 6-9, p. 616; ii. 7, p. 618; ii. 
7-10, p. 618; ii. 8, pp. 439, 618; ii. 8, 18, p. 751; 
ii. 8, 16-19, p. 728 ; ii. 9, pp. 496, 606, 616, 636 ; 
ii. 11, pp. 602, 609, 618, 620, 633 ; ii. 11-15, p. 
619 ; ii. 12, p. 679 ; ii. 14, pp. 237, 412 ; ii. 15, pfr. 
700, 701 ; ii. 15, 18, pp. 652 ; ii. 16, pp. 25, 439, 
513, 608 ; ii. 16-23, p. 619 ; ii. 17, p. 151 ; ii. 18, 
pp. 16, 387, 406, 599; ii. 19, pp. 414, 606; 
ii. 21, p. 632 ; ii. 23, p. 619 ; ii. 23, p. 273 ; 
iii. 1, pp. 115, 612; iii. 1-8, &c, p. 633; iii. 
1-17, p. 620 : iii. 3, p. 479 ; iii. 4, p. 479 ; iii. 5, p. 
389 ; iii. 5-17, p. 615 ; iii, p. 387 ; iii. 6, 11, p. 
620 ; iii. 9, p. 633 ; iii. 10, 479 ; iii. 11, pp. 
468, 739; iii. 12, p. 599; iii. 16, p. 645; 
iii. 18-25, p. 620; iii 18-iv. 6, p. 615; iii. 
22, pp. 390, 657 ; iii. 24, p. 493 ; iii. 24, 25, p. 
485 ; iv. 1-6, p. 621 ; iv. 3, pp. 119, 338 ; iv. 3, 4. 
p. 591 ; iv. 5, p. 245 ; iv. 6, p. 644 ; iv. 7, p. 663 ; 
iv. 7, 10, 14, p. 580 ; iv. 7-18, p. 615 ; iv. 8, p. 
621 ; iv. 9, 10, 12, 14, p. 581 ; iv. 10, pp. 133, 255, 
256, 372, 621, 670 ; iv. 10, 11, p. 450 ; iv. 10, 11, 

14, p. 272 ; iv. 11. pp. 452, 579 ; iv. 12, p. 515 ; 
iv. 12, 13, 15, p. 607 ; iv. 12-16, p. 366; iv. 14, p. 
271 ; iv. 15, p. 621 ; iv. 16, p. 631 ; iv. 17, p. 695; 
iv. 18, p. 338. 

I. Thessalonians i. 1, pp. 242, 610; i. 1-3, 
p. 329 ; i 1-10, p. 330 ; i. 2-10, p. 329 ; i. 2, 3, 5, 
6-8, p. 289 ; i. 6, pp. 289, 327, 330, 338, 695 ; i. 

8, pp. 286, 330 ; i 9, pp. 216, 289 ; i. 9, 10, p. 
342 ; i 10, pp. 330, 338, 727 ; ii. 1, 2, p. 289 ; ii. 
1-12, pp. 329, 332 ; ii 2, pp. 280, 288 ; ii. 3, p. 
713 ; ii 3-5, p. 122 ; ii. 3-6, p. 289 ; ii 4, pp. 

332, 652 ; ii. 5, p. 331 ; ii. 5, 7, 9, p. 276 ; ii. 5, 

9, 10, p. 331 ; ii. 6, p. 329 ; ii. 6, 9, p. 14 ; ii. 

7, pp. 45, 331; ii. 7, 11, p. 193; ii. 8, pp. 16, 
331 ; ii. 9, pp. 272, 285, 287, 290, 318, 338 ; ii. 
11, p. 332 ; ii. 12, pp. 291, 338 ; ii. 13-16, p. 329 ; 
ii. 14, p. 289 ; ii. 14-16, pp. 321, 332 ; ii. 15, p. 
135 ; ii. 17, pp. 333, 338 ; ii. 17-iii. 10, p. 329 ; 
ii. 17-iii. 13, p. 333 ; ii. 18, pp. 292, 294, 328, 711 ; 
ii 19, pp. 339, 699; iii. 1, pp. 194, 715; iii. 1- 

8, p. 329 ; iii. 2, pp. 260, 312 ; iii. 2, 6, p. 328 ; 
iii. 4, p. 289 ; iii. 4, 7, p. 315 ; iii. 5, p. 234, 333 ; 
iii. 10, pp. 272, 332 ; iii. 13, p. 339 ; iv. 1, p. 
601; iv. 1-8, pp. 334; iv. 3, p 338; iv. 4, p. 
334; iv. 6, pp. 334, 694; iv. 7, p. 334; iv. 9, pp. 
694, 698; iv. 9, 10, p. 329; iv. 11, pp. 347, 694; 
iv. 11, 12, p. 335 ; iv. 13, p. 459 ; iv. 13-18, pp. 
329, 336 ; iv. 13-v. 11, p. 329 ; iv. 14, p. 336 ; iv. 

15, pp. 118, 119, 339, 341 ; iv. 15-17, p. 342 ; iv. 

16, pp. 33, 333, 701 ; iv. 16, 17, p. 48 ; iv. 17, p. 
338, 345; iv. 17, 18, p. 733; v. 1, pp. 334, 336, 
694, 698; v. 1, 2, 4, p. 336; v. 1-11, pp. 329, 
336; v. 3, p. 45; v. 4, p. 727; v. 5, 15, 16, p. 
338 ; v. 8, pp. 646, 652 ; v. 9, p. 346 ; v. 12, pp. 

333, 442, 749 ; v. 12-15, pp. 322, 329, 337 ; v. 15, 
pp. 337, 338; v. 16-22, p. 329; v. 23, pp. 337, 
339 ; v. 23, 24, p. 329 ; v. 25-28, p. 329 ; v. 26, p. 
509 ; v. 27, p. 434 ; v. 28, pp. 338, 610. 

II. Thessalohians i. 1, p. 242; i 1, 2, 
p. 344; i. 2, p. 328; i 3-12, pp. 344, 345; 
i 4, p. 344; i. 4, 5, p. 289; i. 5, p. 291 ; i. 9, 
p. 344; i 11, p. 345; i 12, p. 662; ii., pp. 
3*2, 694; ii. 1, p. 333; ii. 1, 2, p. 733; ii. 
1,8, p. 339 ; ii. 1-12, pp. 344, 346 ; ii. 2, 
pp. 341, 347; ii 3, 7, p. 694; ii 4, 5, p. 695; 
ii. 6, 7, pp. 291, 349 ; ii. 8, p. 48 ; ii. 13 17, pp. 
344, 346; ii. 14, p. 119; iii. 1, p. 338; iii. 1-5, 
p. 344 ; iii 1-11, p. 347 ; iii. 4, 6, 10. 12, p. 347; 



iii. 5, p. 342 ; iii. 6, p. 515 ; iii. 6-16, p. 344 ; fit 
8, pp. 14, 272, 318, 331, 332; iii. 8-10, p. 289 1 
iii. 11, pp. 347, 695,698; iii. 12-16, p. 347; iii 
13, p. 484 ; iii. 16, p. 344 ; iii. 17, p. 326 ; iii 17, 
18, pp. 344, 347 ; iii 18, p. 338. 

I. Timothy i 1, pp. 662, 748 ; i. 1, 2, p. 650 ; 
i. 2, 18, pp. 217, 259 ; i 3, pp. 260, 516, 743, 
750, 751 ; i. 3, 4, p. 651 ; i 3-11, p. 650; i. 4, pp. 
651, 747, 751 ; i. 6, p. 747 ; i. 7, p. 752 ; i 7, 19, p. 
752; i. 8, p. 390; i 8, 9, p. 651 ; i 8-11, p. 651; i. 9, 
p. 466 ; i. 10, pp. 273, 743, 747, 748 ; i. 11, p. 617; i 
11, seq., pp. 42, 745 ; i. 12-17, p. 650 ; i 12-20, 
p. 652 ; i. 13, p. 98; i. 15, pp. 663, 745, 746, 747; 
i. 16, pp. 42, 680 ; i 17, p. 695 ; i. 18, pp. 261, 
262 ; i. 18-20, p. 650 ; i. 19, p. 748 ; i. 20, pp. 401, 
516, 678 ; ii., p. 650 ; ii. 1-7, p. 652 ; ii. 2, p. 747 ; 
ii. 3, pp. 484, 748; ii. 3-5, p. 662 ; ii. 3-6, p. 494; 
ii. 3, 7, p. 746 ; ii. 4, p. 494 ; ii 4-6, p. 745 ; ii 
5, pp. 438, 496 ; ii. 7, p. 748; ii. 8, pp. 653, 743; 
ii. 8-15, p. 653 ; ii. 12-14, p. 751 ; ii. 14, p. 476 ; 
ii. 15, pp. 390, 746 ; iii., pp. 75, 650, 750 ; iii 1, 
pp. 663, 747 ; iii. 1-7, pp. 654, 750 ; iii. 2, p. 246 ; 
iii. 3, pp. 417, 539 ; iii. 6, p. 273 ; iii. 8, p. 331 ; 
iii. 8-10, p. 654 ; iii. 8-13, p. 750 ; iii. 9, p. 748 ; 
iii. 11-13, p. 654 ; iii. 14, pp. 516, 750 ; iii. 14, 15, 
p. 746 ; iii. 14-16, p. 654 ; iii 15, p. 750 ; iii. 16, 
pp. 114, 115, 620, 745, 747 ; iv., p. 650 ; iv. 1, 2, 
p. 346; iv. 1-3, p. 728 ; iv. 1-6, 10, 21, p. 748 ; iv. 
1-16, p. 655 ; iv. 2, pp. 273, 752 ; iv. 3, pp. 46, 
694 ; iv. 4, p. 751 ; iv. 7, p. 747 ; iv. 7. 8, p. 484 ; 
iv. 8, p. 273 ; iv. 9, p. 747 ; iv. 10, p. 748 ; iv. 12, 
pp. 260, 262 ; iv. 12-20, p. 516 ; iv . 14, pp. 261, 
262, 652, 749 ; v. 1, 2, p. 650 ; v. 1-16, p. 656 ; v. 
3-16, p. 650 ; v. 5, p. 272 ; v. 6, p. 694 ; v. 11-14, 
p. 750 ; v. 13, p. 695 ; v. 14, p. 46, 390, 653 ; v. 
17 19, p. 750; v. 17-23, p. 657 ; v. 17-25. p. 650 ; 
v. 22, p. 749 ; v. 21, p. 662 ; v. 23, pp. 273, 746 ; 
v. 24, p. 94 ; vi., p. 650 ; vi. 1, p. 748 ; vi. 1, 2, 
p. 747 ; vi 1-16, p. 658 ; vi. 2, p. 390 ; vi. 3, p. 273 ; 
vi 3, 4, p. 747 ; vi. 4, p. 273 ; vi. 11, p. 747 ; vi. 12, 
pp. 261, 699; vi. 13, pp. 347, 662; vi. 14-16, p. 
108; vi. 15, 16, p. 620; vi 17-19, p. 658; vi. 19, 
pp. 654, 746 ; vi. 20, pp. 743, 747, 751 ; vi. 21, p. 
338. 

II. Timothy i. 1-5, p. 677 ; i 6, pp. 261, 262, 
655 ; i. 6-12, p. 677 ; i 9, p. 745 ; i. 10, p. 495 ; 
i. 11, 15 seq., p 745; i 13, pp. 644, 747, 749; i. 
13,14, p. 677 ; i. 15, pp. 669, 728; i. 15-18, p. 678 ; 
i. 16, 17, p. 670 ; i. 18, p. 667; ii., p. 13; ii. 1, 
p. 217 ; ii. 1-6, 7, p. 678; ii. 1-8, p. 680; ii. 2, p. 
259 ; ii 3, p. 600 ; ii. 5, p. 699 ; ii. 7-13, p. 678 ; 
ii. 8, p. 119 ; ii. 10, p. 169 ; ii. 11, pp. 663, 747 ; 
ii. 11-13, pp. 620-745 ; ii. 14, p. 678 ; ii 14-26, p. 
679 ; ii. 16, pp. 680, 747 ; ii. 17, pp. 273, 652, 752 ; 
ii. 18, p. 751 ; ii. 19, pp. 10, 470; ii. 21, pp. 491, 
494, 679, 747 ; ii. 22, p. 260 ; ii. 24, pp. 331, 420; 
iii. 1, p. 666 ; iii. 1-7, pp. 613, 752 ; iii. 1-9, p. 
728; iii. 1-17, p. 680; iii. 2, p. 466; iii. 2-5, 10, 
11, p. 695 ; iii. 5, 12, p. 747; iii. 6, pp. 600, 751 ; 
iii. 8, pp. 198, 701 ; iii. 10, p. 259; iii. 11, pp. 
217, 221, 259 ; iii. 13, pp. 198, 365, 680 ; iii. 16, 
pp. 28, 663; iv. 1-8, p. 680 ; iv. 2, pp. 285, 680; 
iv. 3, pp. 273, 747; iv. 6, p. 734; iv. 6 seq., p. 
745 ; iv. 6-8, p. 592 ; iv. 7, pp. 208, 515, 652 ; iv. 
8, pp. 493, 699 ; iv. 9, p. 750; iv. 9, 13, p. 260; 
iv. 9-21, pp. 676, 750 ; iv. 9-22, p. 681 ; iv. 10, 
pp. 420, 621 ; iv. 10-11, p. 581 ; iv. 11, pp. 194, 
255, 256, 271, 512 ; iv. 12, p. 422 ; iv. 13, pp. 21, 
270 ; iv. 14, p. 652 ; iv. 16, pp. 92, 450, 670, 715 ; 
iv. 16-17, p. 742 ; iv. 17, pp. 373, 672 ; iv. 19, pp. 
317, 352, 450, 670 ; iv. 20, pp. 369, 423 ; iv. 21, 
p. 450 ; iv. 22, pp. 338, 658. 

Titus i 1, pp. 279, 747 ; i 3, p. 748 ; i. 4, p, 
660; i. 5. pp. 285, 750; i. 5-7, p. 750 ; i 5-9 p. 



QUOTED OR REFERRED TO. 



781 



601 ; i. 6, p. 655 ; i. 7, pp. 331, 417, 539 ; i. 9, 13, 
p. 747 ; i. 10, p. 747 ; i. 10, 14, pp. 743, 752 ; i. 
10-16, p. 662; i. 11, 15, 16, p. 752 ; i. 12, p. 696; 
i. 13, p. 419 ; i. 15, p. 745 ; ii. 1, 8, p. 747 ; ii. 3, 
p. 662 ; ii. 3-5, p. 662 ; ii. 9, p. 747 ; ii. 10, 748 ; 
u. 11, pp. 494, 745 ; ii. 11-14, p. 662 ; ii. 12, p. 
747 ; ii. 13, pp. 203, 638, 748 ; ii. 14, p. 484 ; iii. 
3, pp. 305, 745 ; iii. 3-7, p. 732 ; iii. 5, p. 748 ; 
iii. 5-7, p. 663 ; iii. 8, p. 484 ; iii. 9, pp. 743, 
747, 752 ; iii. 12, pp. 668. 750 ; iii. 13, 14, p. 
362; iii. 15, pp. 338,658. 

Philemon 1, 2, p. 607 ; 1, 24, p. 580 ; 2, p. 
600 ; 5, 9, p. 628 ; 9, p. 7 ; 10, pp. 193, 581 ; lo, 
12, p. 626 ; 11, pp. 629, 695, 698; 11, 18, p. 694; 

11, 20, pp. 629, 695; 12, p. 733; 13, p. 627 ; 19, 
pp. 334,415, 694; 22, T .p. 578, 591,648; 23, p. 
621 ; 24, pp. 256, 271, 288, 372, 581, 670 ; 25, p. 
838. 

Hebrews i. 3, p. 638 ; i. 13, p. 85 ; ii. 2, p. 
92 ; ii. 8, p. 468 ; ii. 8, 14. p. 495 ; iii. 1, p. 188 ; 
iii. 4, p. 334; v. 8, p. 695 ; v. 14, pp. 337, 469 ; 
vi. 4-6, p. 362 ; vii. p. 392 ; vii 9, 10, p. 477 ; 
vii. 18, p. 2 ; viii. 13, p. 154 ; ix. 5, p. 151 ; ix. 
25, p. 473 ; x. 1, p. 151 ; x. 5, p. 490 ; x. 24, p. 254 ; 
X. 25, pp. 345, 513; x. 33, p. 698 ; x. 37, p. 48; 
x. 38, p. 29; x. 39, p. 346; xi. 1, p. 463; xii. 
1, p. 619 ; xii. 2, p. 464 ; xii. 4, p. 99 ; xiii. 21, p. 
267 ; xiii. 23, pp. 654, 685 ; xiii. 25, p. 347. 

James i. 1, pp. 65, 66, 243, 638 ; i. 4, p. 337 ; 
i. 6, p. 695 ; i. 11, pp. 396, 497 ; i. 17, p. 395 ; i. 
25, pp. 240, 425 ; ii. 5, p. 636 ; ii. 7, pp. 169, 240 ; 
ii. 10, p. 482 ; ii. 12, p. 240 ; ii. 17, 24, p. 484 ; ii. 
24, pp. 132, 474 ; iv. 4-13, p. 469 ; iv. 15, p. 352 ; 
V. 1-6, p. 469 ; v. 8, p. 48; v. 8, 9, p. 342 ; v. 12, 
p. 409. 

I. Peter i. 1, pp. 66, 255, 269, 317 ; i. 3, 
p. 740 ; i. 3, 4, p. 47 ; i. 5, 7, p. 740 ; i. 10, 11, 484 ; i. 

12, p. 656; i. 14, p. 740; i. 20, p. 740; ii. 2, 
p. 119 ; ii. 8, p. 169; ii. 4-8, p. 1; ii. 5, p. 479 ; 



ii. 9, p. 740 ; ii. 11, p. 740 ; ii. 16, p. 441 ; ii 16, 
17, p. 252 ; ii. 21 segr., p. 42 ; ii. 24, p. 252 ; iii. 
4, p. 489 ; iii. 7, pp. 334, 740 ; iii. IS seq., p. 42 ; 
iv. 5, p. 48; iv. 7, p. 342 ; iv. 11, pp. 433, 654; 
iv. 13, 14, p. 476 ; iv. 16, pp. 168, 170 ; v. 2, p. 
750 ; v. 5, p. 619 ; v. 8, p. 672 ; v. 10, p. 740; 
v. 12, pp. 242, 256; v. 13, pp. 255, 256, 448; V. 
14, pp. 337, 509. 

II. Peter i. 1, pp. 241, 662; i. 5, p. 267; i. 
10, 11, p. 484 ; ii. 1, p 225 ; ii. 1, 2, p. 728 ; ii 
4, p 701; ii. 10, p. 540; ii. 22, p. 154; iii. 3, 
p. 728; iii. 7, p. 204; iii. 9, p. 494; iii. 15, p. 
252 ; iii. 16, pp. 339, 486. 

I John i. 1, pp.42, 172, 479 ; ii 18, p. 342 ; 
ii. 19, p. 516; ii. 22, p 382; ii. 24, p. 479 ; iv. 
1-3, p. 382 ; iv. 2, 3, p. 643 ; iv. 3, pp. 350, 728 ; 
iv. 10, p. 473 ; v. 4, p. 491 ; v. 12, p. 479 ; v. 19, 
p. 646 ; v. 20, pp. 330, 479. 

II. John i. 1, p. 623. 

III. John, 9, p. 338. 

Jude 4, pp. 266, 436, 662; 6, 14, p. 701; 
8, p. 613 ; 9, pp. 159, 336 ; 13, p. 466 ; 14, p. 
333. 

Revelation i. 13, p. 93 ; i.-iii. p. 263 ; ii. 2, 
6, 9, 14, 15, 20, 34. p. 723 ; ii. 5, p. 375 ; ii. 6, p. 
131, 516 ; ii. 6, 15, p. 75 ; ii. 9, p. 79 ; ii. 14, p. 
379; ii. 14. 20-22, p. 613 ; ii. 20, p. 131 ; ii. 24, 
pp. 243, 386 ; iii. 9, pp. 79, 131, 723 ; iii. 14, p. 
607, 612 ; iii. 15, p. 621 ; iii. 21, p. 612 ; iv. 3, p. 
110 ; v. 9, p. 724 ; vi. 1, p. 57 ; vii. 9, p. 724 ; 
vii 15, p. 79 ; ix. 17, p. 110 ; xi. 19, p. 79 ; xiii 
p. 728 ; xiii. 18, p. 349 ; xiv. 4, p. 45 ; xiv. 13, p. 
94; xiv. 14, p. 93; xv. 3, p. 620; xvii 6, p. 
535 ; xvii. 10, 11, p. 727 ; xviii. 12, 13, p. 355 ; 
xviii. 13, p. 625 ; xix. 1-4, p. 645 ; xix. 10, p. 
4 ; xix. 20, p. 198 ; xxi. 4, p. 494 ; xxi. 5, p. 651; 
xxi. 11, p. 600 ; xxi. 14, pp. 1, 679 ; xxii. 3, p. 
494 ; xxii. 6, p. 651 ; xxii. 15, p. 601 , xxii. 20, 
p. 342. 



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